Sakai Foundation Announces Teaching and Learning Innovation Competition

DENVER, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Sakai Foundation is seeking
nominees for its third annual international Teaching with Sakai Innovation
Award. Representatives from the Foundation announced next year's competition
at the EDUCAUSE Conference in Denver, CO, today. The intent of the award is to
highlight examples of innovative and transformative educational applications
of Sakai.

The third annual Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA) will continue to
build on the energy generated at the 10th International Sakai Conference in
Boston, MA, where last year's first- and second-place winners, Dr. Andrea
Crampton, Charles Sturt University School of Biomedical Sciences, Australia,
and Dr. Edith Sheffer, History Department, Stanford University, excited
attendees with examples of how Sakai enhanced the educational experience of
their students.

The Sakai Project is a landmark venture creating open-source course
management, collaboration, and online research support tools for the higher
education community. Begun through a collaboration involving the University of
Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, and Stanford University, it now includes
over 200 universities, colleges, and institutions of learning around the
world.

At the heart of Sakai, whose community-source mantra is "built by educators,
for educators," is a deep passion for teaching, learning, and innovation.
Thanks to sponsorship by Wiley (www.wiley.com) with additional support from
rSmart (www.rsmart.com), both Sakai Commercial Affiliates, this passion will
continue to grow with the third annual Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award.

"Encouraging the sharing of best teaching practices and supporting the
collaborative efforts on openedpractices.org are priorities for rSmart," said
Mike Zackrison, rSmart vice president of marketing and strategy. "Our company
is excited to continue sponsorship of this important award on behalf of the
community. It is important to include teaching practitioners in meaningful
collaboration around Sakai. The Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award is an
important tool in fostering this collaboration. Thanks to all those who
volunteer to make the award happen, the winner-presentations are a highlight
of the conference each year."

Applications for the 2010 TWSIA will be accepted starting in February 2010.
Instructors or other interested parties can visit www.OpenEdPractices.org to
learn more about the award and access an online application form and
evaluation rubric. Additional information will be posted on the website next
month. Winners will be awarded a trip to Denver, CO, to present at the 11th
International Sakai Conference and receive their award.

Entries also seed a collection of innovative practices in the
OpenEdPractices.org repository, a community of practice for teaching and
learning with open/community-source tools supported in part by rSmart and the
Association of American Colleges and Universities.

"Community or open-source-developed learning environments are not constrained
by the limits of a profit margin," says Josh Baron, chair of the Sakai
Foundation Board and director of academic technology and eLearning at Marist
College in Poughkeepsie, NY. "Proprietary vendors often opt to deploy 'status
quo' technology that sells instead of promoting truly innovative instructional
technologies that can transform the learning process. The Teaching with Sakai
Innovation Award and 'OpenEd Practices' repository will allow us to capture
and share these educationally transformative applications of Sakai with all
levels of education."

Last year's entries and winners showed that instructors worldwide are using
Sakai in exciting and innovative ways. Susan Roig, co-chair for the Award
Committee and director of academic technology, SunGard Higher Education at
Claremont Graduate University, said, "The excitement generated by those
applications of Sakai encouraged additional community effort in the planning
for this year's award with technology leaders from many institutions again
coming together to make this all happen."

The judges were enthusiastic about the winning courses. Of particular note was
Dr. Crampton's use of Sakai Project Sites which facilitated a constructivist
approach to the teaching and learning process by allowing each group of
students to collaborate on a series of "crime scene scenarios" in which each
student played a particular role (e.g., "first-on-scene officer,"
"scene-of-crime officer," etc.).

Similarly, judges were impressed with Dr. Sheffer's creative use of the Sakai
Wiki tool as a means for students to develop their own historical characters
in the context of real historical events. In both cases Sakai was a catalyst
for a shift away from passive teacher-centered learning towards a more active
student-centered pedagogical approach to the courses.

"Sakai is a magical tool box for the modern educator," Dr. Crampton said.
"Whether you use one tool or ten, the only barrier to effectively teaching
today's students is your imagination. Further, the Sakai community and TWSIA
break down institutional and geographical boundaries, which enables those
interested in applying sound pedagogy to their courses to collaborate and
share experiences. Where else would you find an educator from a rural
Australian university with kangaroos for traffic hazards sharing the stage and
ideas with academics from universities in the US, UK, South Africa, and
elsewhere in the global village? The receipt of this award has been a very
humbling experience and represents not just my efforts but those of the team
that introduced Sakai to Charles Sturt University."

Second-place winner Dr. Sheffer shared that "Sakai's exciting technology
platform is truly changing the way we teach. In my class, the Wiki tool
enabled students to individualize, experience, and share history in a way that
would have been unimaginable without it. I am grateful for this innovative
resource and look forward to developing other Sakai projects at Stanford."

About Sakai
The Sakai community develops and distributes the open-source Sakai
Collaborative Learning Environment, an enterprise-ready collaboration and
courseware management platform that provides users with a suite of learning,
portfolio, library and project tools. Sakai collaborators - ranging from
educators to engineers - share in their successes and challenges, honing the
community's collective expertise to drive Sakai's rapid development . Sakai is
distributed as free and open-source software under the Educational Community
License.

Sakai is an open source software project driven by the Sakai Foundation, a
worldwide consortium of institutions, organizations, and individuals dedicated
to providing collaboration, research, and e-portfolio tools. The Sakai
Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to coordinating activities
around Sakai and the Sakai community to insure Sakai's long-term viability.
For more information, please visit www.sakaiproject.org.

Contact:
Michael Korcuska Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
mkorcuska@sakaifoundation.org
mobile: +1 510-599-2586
phone: +1 510-931-6559
skype: mkorcuska

SOURCE The Sakai Foundation

Michael Korcuska Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
mkorcuska@sakaifoundation.org, mobile: +1-510-599-2586, phone:
+1-510-931-6559, skype: mkorcuska