FREE! Get your learning on…

We are pleased to announce new Sakai demonstrations and hands-on webinars scheduled for March. Seats fill up fast so check your calendar and register.   Sessions are open to all interested UNC faculty, staff, and students.

Sakai: 5 Big Ideas webinar
Friday, March 5
9 - 10 am
[register]

This introductory session is intended to provide a broad overview of Sakai at UNC Chapel Hill. Learn about the varied ways Sakai can be used and become familiar with the tools available. After you learn about the “5 Big Ideas” central to Sakai, you may request your own site.  Bring your questions as there will be time for discussion afterward.

Lunch & Learn: Try the Sakai Wiki!
Wednesday, March 10
11:30 am - 12:15 pm
[register]

See how easy it is to use the Sakai wiki.  Better yet, try it out for yourself. Join this hands-on webinar from the comfort of your home or office to learn more.

Sakai & Group Projects: A Demonstration
Thursday, March 25
2-3 pm
[register]

Would you like to know how you can use Sakai to help your group work and collaborate more effectively?  Project sites @ UNC are growing in numbers daily. See for yourself how easy they are to set up and use. Afterward, if you like, you can request a site for your own group.

A few disclaimers:

1. Prior to the session, you will receive the URL & instructions
2. If you want to hear and speak, you’ll need one of the following:
   • computer with speakers and a microphone OR
   • a headset with a noise-canceling microphone
3. Some are brand new Sakai webinars — so let’s agree to collectively embrace any technical difficulties that emerge and aim to grow from the learning experience.

Hope to see you there!

Sakai Webinar: 5 Big Ideas

Join us from the comfort of your home or office computer for an introductory overview of Sakai!

We’ll cover 5 Big Ideas central to Sakai. We’ll log in to UNC’s Sakai environment, peek into sites, demo tools, and do our best to answer your questions afterward. All in one hour!

The session is open to all interested UNC faculty, staff, and students. “Seating” is limited so please register.

Sign me up!
Tuesday, December 15
11 am - noon
Register for the 12/15 webinar: 5 Big Ideas!

Monday, December 21
9 am - 10 am
Register for 12/21 webinar: 5 Big Ideas!

A few disclaimers:

1. Prior to the session, you will receive the URL & instructions
2. If you want to hear and speak, you’ll need one of the following:
   • computer with speakers and a microphone OR
   • a headset with a noise-canceling microphone
3. These are our first Sakai webinars — so let’s agree to collectively embrace any technical difficulties that emerge and aim to grow from the learning experience.

Hope to see you there!

FREE: The Future of a Radical Price (& other free things)

Chris Anderson’s latest book, FREE, is available for free on GoogleBooks or on iTunes as an audiobook. It’s an interesting read (and listen) and presents many concepts related to software, copyright, pricing, and open source that are worth thinking and talking about.

In general, he highlights the counter-intuitive changes that occur when the price of anything becomes near-zero, and provides plenty of examples to support this claim. Getting close to or at free can be good, because then we can “afford to waste” those ideas, products, services or bits. (Wasting is using them in unintended ways for unintended purposes. In instructional systems/design, this is also called Subversive Use and Volatile Design; pdf).

When “waste” is affordable, innovations occur.

Of Alan Kay, the well-known Xerox PARC engineer, Anderson writes,

What Kay realized was that a technologist’s job is not to figure out what technology is good for. Instead it is to make technology so cheap, easy to use, and ubiquitous that anybody can use it, so that it propagates around the world and into every possible niche. We, the users, will figure out what to do with it, because each of us is different: different needs, different ideas, different knowledge, and different ways of interacting with the world.

Consider the incredible explosion of free or near-free web 2.0 applications as well as the growth of flourishing open source communities like Sakai, Creative Commons and the Open Educational Resources movement. If software, ideas, content, and services become free (both in terms of monetary value as well as licensing restrictions), what innovations (and positive social impact) may result? What does all of this have to do with the LMS?

We certainly don’t have all the answers but we invite you to join us on the journey in learning more!

To that end, you are invited to a (free!) Educause Live webinar on August 5: Selecting and Implementing a Course Management System for Your Campus. Three guests will speaking about Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai. Learn how others are using learning management systems or “collaborative learning environments” to enhance the mission of their universities. (Registration is required.)

New workshops! Mark your calendars…

You are warmly invited to register for our upcoming Sakai workshops and demonstrations.

Getting Started with Sakai
Friday, April 17, 2009
Saunders 322
1:30 - 3 pm
[register]

Interested in using a Sakai site but not sure how to begin? This session is for you!  Attendees are encouraged to download and complete the Sakai Site Needs Assessment document prior to the workshop.

Transforming a Bb Course to a Sakai Course
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Saunders 322
1:30 - 3 pm
[register]

“How easy is it to move a Blackboard course to Sakai?” In this demonstration, we will learn about the effort involved in transforming a course from Bb to Sakai from our pilot instructors who have first-hand experience.

Sakai Project Sites for Collaboration: A Demonstration

You are invited to attend a Sakai Project Site demo! Seating is limited to 20 so please register.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saunders 322
10:30 - 11:45 am

or

Monday, January 5, 2009
Saunders 322
10:30-11:45 am

Learn how you can use Sakai Project Sites to:

• streamline committee work for academic programs or new hires,
• collect evidence for accreditation purposes,
• collaborate with editors on book chapters and manuscripts,
• track work you are conducting for grant purposes,
• manage organization communications and documents,
• conduct research with colleagues at other institutions.

If you wish to pilot Sakai for project collaboration, we ask only that you participate in the formal assessment of how well it worked for you!