VLEs Going Forward Scanning the Horizon
Charles Severance
OS VLE Next Generation Workshop
Cambridge
June 29, 2006
This material is Copyright Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
One Point Solution: ProjectPad Audio Annotation
A Sad Story of a Good Idea
Web Lecture ArchiveProjectwww.wlap.orgsyncomat.com
LectureObject
ToolsAnd
Technologies
ToolsAnd
Technologies
Sad Story Timeline
• 1996 - Invented Sync-O-Matic (Real Media)• 1997 - 1999 Gave continuous talks / demos
at conferences• 1998 - Tried to commercialize product
through my job (It was the 90’s after all)• 1999 - Switched jobs (partially due to bitter
experience with intellectual property folks)• 1999-2001 Re-Invented the idea in
ClipBoard-2000 (Quicktime/Apple)
More Sad Story…
• 2001 - Switched jobs to the private sector to commercialize technology and deploy into the M.L.T.
• 2001 - Microsoft dropped M.L.T.• 2003 - Switched jobs again to work on
open source CLE (CHEF)
Anatomy of a Point Solution for T & L
• Point solutions are by nature deep explorations down a possibly fruitful path by a passionate person or small group.
• Hard to get traction because it is not a “complete” solution
• Often projects end up starving to death for lack of attention
• Often it is a situation where a poet is ahead of their time
My Background Prior to Sakai
• Twenty years in Academic Computing• Ten years in Computer Science
– High Performance Computing– Teaching with innovative technology– Researching applications of technology in teaching– Building innovative technology
• Ten years of IEEE, IMS, and SCORM standards experience
• Five years as IEEE Standards Column editor/writer• Twenty years of developer/architect experience• Three years experience in building commercial solutions
for Teaching and Learning
Chuck’s Hierarchy of Sakai Goals
Stop developer-rich schools from writing a new CLE
Appeal to IT folks - get Enterprise installs
Broaden scope to cover basics
InteroperabilityBetween CLE’s
Innovation
We must learn to walk before we fly. And wemust start at the bottom and workupwards…
Sakai is about organizations - not individuals.
Time / “Heat” Applied --->
Review: States of Water…T
empe
ratu
re -
->
Frozen - Vibrating and stuck In a Crystal Structure
Melting Point
Liquid - Fluid flows, but often downhill - cannot fill all of the space - tends to pool at minimum energy - surface tension exists
Boiling Point
Gas - Freely flows throughout entire space - space is evenly filled
Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied --->
Latent Heat of CLE InnovationB
ette
r --
>
Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs
Boiling Point
For a long time we have all been all “stuck”, vibrating in place, seemingly with no flexibility, but with plenty of energy.
Melting Point
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Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied --->
Latent Heat of CLE InnovationB
ette
r --
>
Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs
Melting Point
Liquid - We can tend toward common CLEs, and/or interoperability makes the choice of CLE irrelevant
Boiling Point
Building a reference implementation of a conventional CLE…
Safe base level functionality empowers new thinking, approaches, and standards, (i.e. good chaos). We enter a period of chaotic freedom.
Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied --->
Latent Heat of CLE InnovationB
ette
r --
>
Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs
Melting Point
Liquid - We can tend toward common CLEs, and/or interoperability makes the choice of CLE irrelevant
Boiling Point
True change in T & L happens in ways we can not anticipate. CLE/LMS’s can take completely new forms and directions…
Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied --->
Latent Heat of CLE InnovationB
ette
r --
>
Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs
Melting Point
Liquid - We can tend toward common CLEs, and/or interoperability makes the choice of CLE irrelevant
Boiling Point
Gas - Innovation can spread to cover the space of T & L practices
State of Sakai in one Slide....
• Sakai is used for Collaboration, Teaching, and Learning
• Sakai Project started January 2004 (2.5 years old)
• Non-profit Sakai Foundation October 2005
• Open Source - 100% free - Apache License
• Six Sakai Foundation paid staff members
• Full-time Executive Director for the Sakai Foundation
• Voluntary financial support from 90+ Higher Education, 15 companies, each paying $10,000 / year = $ 1M revenue
• Over 200 installations of Sakai
• Three full-scale installations > 50,000 users
• Twenty+ installations with > 500 users (often pilot uses)
• 100+ people world-wide active in developing and testing Sakai releases
Happy Stories
Sakai Map
Sakai Activity - June 2006
Sakai Code Base Growth
Collaboration Suite
Framework
Test and QuizzesRoster
JForumWiki
ModulesSyllabus
Message
Portfolio
Framework 234K
Michigan 154K
Stanford 152K
Indiana / OSP 145K
Cambridge 80K
Foothill 80K
Berkeley 35K
6/2006
Bas
ic -
-->
Inn
ovat
ive
Chuck’s Hierarchy of Sakai Goals
Stop developer-rich schools from writing a new CLE
Appeal to IT folks - get Enterprise installs
Broaden scope to cover basics
InteroperabilityBetween CLE’s
RealInnovation
We must learn to walk before we fly. And wemust start at the bottom and workupwards…
Sakai is about organizations - not individuals.
Attacking the “Summit”
• We are only at “base camp”
• Standards and interoperability are the place where competitors must cooperate
• Vendor lock in is bad - Open Source lock in is even worse
Interoperability and Innovation
• Likely to happen– IMS Tool Interoperability– IMS Common Cartridge (IMS CP Interoperability)– IMS Enterprise Interoperability
• Just Plain Crazy– Live Data Interoperability– Service Oriented Architecture for User Interface
(SOAUI)
IMS Tool Interoperability
• Write one tool• Integrate into many VLE
systems• Web Services and
iFrames• WebCT and University
of Wisconsin• Production shipping
4Q06
July 2005 - Sheffield - IMS TI
QuestionQuestionMarkMark SamigoSamigo ConceptConcept
TutorTutor
IMS Common Cartridge
• Publisher Initiated• Profile of IMS Content
Package Aimed at Interoperability– QTI– Web Content– Discussion– IMS TI Placements
• Load and populate courses
• Led by Blackboard, Angel, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill
June 2006 - Indianapolis - IMS CC
McGrawMcGrawHillHill PearsonPearson
IMS Changes in 2006
• New CEO of IMS - Rob Abel• IMS is getting better - more open and more
accessible• Joel Greenberg of OU hosted a VLE
interoperability workshop attended by, Sakai, Moodle, Microsoft, and WebCT
• Alt-I-Lab renamed Learning Impact– Working on Open Source VLE track at IMS
Learning Impact next April
IMS Enterprise Interoperability
• The idea is to build on IMS Enterprise to make it truly interoperable
• Planned demonstrator next year at Learning Impact - April 2007
April 2007 (planned) - IMS Enterprise
OracleOracle PeopleSoftPeopleSoft SunGardSunGard
Sakai Web 2.0 and Data Interoperability
Roadmap
... interoperability and data portability are key elements...
EnterpriseEnterpriseDirectoryDirectory
StudentStudentInformationInformation
AuthoringAuthoringEnvironmentEnvironment
PersonalPersonalLearningLearning
EnvironmentEnvironment
PortalPortalEnvironmentEnvironment
CollaboarationCollaboarationEnvironmentEnvironment
ContentContentManagementManagement
LMS SystemsLMS Systems
DataDataRepositoryRepository
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HT
ML
H
TM
LR
ES
T
WebDavSOAP
iCal
SPARQL
RSSCalDav
WebDavSOAP
Current Sakai
Future Sakai
Sakai Interoperability: “Swiss Army Knife”
Data Interoperability 2009 *• Move from interoperability with a ZIP file
moving around by hand to a continuous dynamic interchange of fully modeled data between systems
• Use cases– Add a syllabus to Sakai and it immediately appears
in Dspace, Fedora, Moodle, WebCT, and Blackboard
– Synchronize to your desktop (PLE), work off line, and then reconnect
• This requires dramatically improved protocols
* This is a crazy idea :)
Crazy Idea: Interoperability at the User Interface
• Service Oriented Architecture at the User Interface (SOAUI)
• iTunesU is the model to follow until we find something better
• This collaboration, portfolio, learning, achievement, talent, etc - is about *ME*
• But not just about “ME” - I am a different me in different “context”
• So my “essence” is a combination of “who I am and “where I am plugged in”
Interoperability at the UIRSS, ATOM, RDF,
SOAP, REST, HTML
The SOAUI
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Summary
• Sakai is “unfreezing” the LMS market in a number of important ways
• By gathering open source efforts together, we collectively “show up on radar”
• By solving the basics of the CLE space, Sakai provides a launch platform for true innovation in approaches to T & L
• By investing in standards efforts, Sakai insures the the forward progress will be across-the-board and not just for the adopters of Sakai
• Sakai must exemplify “not locking users in”