Luebeck, July 2006 - The first European Sakai Day will be held in Luebeck, Germany, September 6th and 7th. Sakai is an open source environment for collaborative learning, initiated by the Universities Michigan, Indiana, Stanford, and the MIT and one of the largest open source software projects in the world of eLearning, according to Rolf Granow at Luebeck's University of Applied Sciences's eLearning firm oncampus.
Approximately 100 institutions are represented in the partner programme for research and development. The Sakai Foundation has been formed to back up and govern the multitude of activities taking place within the worldwide community. The primary goal is to deliver the Sakai application framework and associated tools for learning, teaching and collaboration that are designed to work together.
Growing European Interest
Among the Sakai partners, there is a growing community of European universities and institutes and there are already a number of Sakai implementations around Europe. As there is an increasing interest for Sakai in Europe, Luebeck University of Applied Sciences (LUAS) and its eLearning spin-off company oncampus have built a forum to focus this interest in the first European Sakai Day.
Key objectives of the European Sakai Day are
The event in Luebeck is open to everyone interested in Sakai, open source, communities, eLearning and pedagogy. The two-day program will hold general sessions particularly on the first day, while sessions on the second will focus on pedagogy, content creation, and implementation issues. There is no admission fee. However, contributors can present their company in the conference area and on the event's webpage. Participants are explicitly encouraged to share their knowledge and experience with each other. Participation is highly appreciated, and registration is required by August 15, 2006.
