Sakai Fellow, Well Met

I was deeply honored to be named a 2010 Sakai Fellow—mostly because fellowship bestows a coveted black “ninja” sakaiger (pictured)—but also because I read my fellowship as evidence that the Sakai community recognizes and values all forms of contribution to our collaborative work. Three out of 2010’s six Sakai fellows have made their substantial contributions … Read more

More? Or Less? Google CloudCourse

After the announcement of Google’s CloudCourse being open-sourced, I decided to give it a try and see exactly what’s under the hood…at the very least, it would give me a chance to try out a Django app via Google App Engine, which alone is worth the time. Long story short: I got CloudCourse up and … Read more

Happy Birthday, Sakai Product Council!

After almost a year in existence, the Sakai Product Council that I was honored to join is completing a planned review of its configuration and activities. My answers to the common questions posed to Councilors and community reviewers are below, but before you dig in to those details—or maybe instead, if you’re pressed for time … Read more

Sakai Does Its Business

I’ve been wondering how Sakai fares among professional schools in the USA, so as a first experiment, I grabbed the top 25 business schools in 2009 as per US News & World Report and did some research. Given how business schools have the reputation of hewing to proprietary systems and going their own way, I … Read more

Who Is Using Sakai & Moodle

A recent exchange online with colleagues in the Moodle community led me to take another look at the statistics about which institutions are using Moodle in comparison with Sakai. Before you read further, know that I think of Moodle as a sister open-source project to Sakai and would celebrate Moodle’s increased adoption and success just … Read more

Sakai 3’s Commonplace Destiny

I’ve recently been enjoying some (possibly) healthy, irreverent debate with colleagues at Blackboard and beyond about some of the differences between such proprietary regimes and the open-source community of Sakai. While the Twitter channel we’ve been using generates plenty of pithy ripostes, at times a tweet calls out for more sustained thought and response. A … Read more