Sakai Regional Conference @ VT

Virginia Tech’s tagline is “Invent the future” - a major theme of this conference.

It has been a great opportunity to network with colleagues from peer institutions like Virginia Tech, Georgetown, UC Davis, U Penn, Georgia, Yale and many more.

Michael Korcuska, the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation, gave the keynote in which he outlined exciting future directions including Sakai 3.0 (wow - you have to see it!) as well as identified the challenges currently under the microscope.

UNC Chapel Hill was represented in a panel presentation entitled, “Planning, Pilot Programs and Production: A Panel.” We shared the stage with Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Georgia Tech and University of Georgia and talked about common challenges as well as successful strategies used at our schools.

The focus of this conference is pedagogy rather than software development. It’s encouraging to see so many others engaged in teaching, learning, and faculty/user support. A new teaching award competition was announced. The deadline for submissions is 2/27/09.

The prolific use of Sakai project sites for accreditation purposes was a bit of a surprise to me — but has worked very successfully for others. Perhaps worth exploring at Chapel Hill?