Sakai initial thoughts

The Sakai Project is a collaboration of universities that combines their concepts and ideas to create a larger more robust and flexible system for online education focusing on interactivity. The Sakai Project was formulated during a meeting between Joseph Hardin (U. of Michigan), Amitava Mitra (MIT), Jeff Merriman (MIT), Charles Severance ( U. of Michigan), Lance Speelmon, (Indiana U.), and Brad Wheeler (Indiana U.) on September 22nd 2003. The early versions of the software were based on existing tools created by the founding institutions, especially the University of Michigan's "CHEF" course management system. The software now contains a course management system, including document distribution, a grade book, discussion, live chat, assignment uploads, online testing and online collaboration. The University of Cambridge development of a Wiki app was the first addition of an implementation tool outside of the initial group and showed that the Sakai model was going to be viable. " A guide to participating in an open source software community " provides additional information about open source communities. The Sakai download page provides demos and actual software that can be freely used. Sakai has been around awhile now and is being used by many universities for collaborative online education so it should be reviewed by anyone interested in this topic.