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

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

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

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

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

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

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”

Thank you for your time..

• www.sakaiproject.org

• csev@sakaifoundation.org

• www.dr-chuck.com