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The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the uPortal consortium are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools. This will yield three big wins for sustainable economics and innovation in higher education:
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A framework that builds on the recently ratified JSR 168 portlet standard and the OKI open service interface definitions to create a services-based, enterprise portal for tool delivery
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A re-factored set of educational software tools that blends the best of features from the participants’ disparate software (e.g., course management systems, assessment tools, workflow, etc.)
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A synchronization of the institutional clocks of these schools in developing, adopting and using a common set of open source software.
The modular, pre-integrated tools will greatly reduce the implementation costs of one or more of these tools at any institution. The Sakai Project Core universities are committing over $2 million per year to launch and support this two year project. The core universities are also committed to implementing these tools at their own institutions starting in Fall 2004 through the duration of the project. The commitment of resources and adoption is purposefully set on an aggressive timeline to swiftly integrate and synchronize the educational software at the core institutions. This effort will demonstrate the compelling economics of “software code mobility” for higher education, and it will provide a clear roadmap for others to become part of an open source community.
From
Oren Sreebny's blog:
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Yesterday the University of Michigan, MIT, Universit of Indiana, Stanford, and the uPortal consortium announced a major new effort called Sakai.
The participating institutions intend to integrate and synchronize the software and specifications that have grown out of the Open Knowledge Initiative, the CHEF project at Michigan, and the uPortal framework. The intent is to coalesce this effort around the newly ratified JSR168 spec for Java portlets.
FredBeshears is organizing a
Video conference on SAKAI for Jan 12, 2004.
Chronicle of Higher Education article (January 20, 2004)
/ToolPortabilityProfile -- the basis for integrating other tools into Sakai. I'm looking at TPP with ScholarsBox integration in mind.
