rSmart Presenting at 9th Sakai Community Conference

Come to Paris, France, this summer for the 9th Sakai Community conference! The dates will be Tuesday-Thursday, 1-3 July, with pre- and post-conference sessions and activities on Monday, 30 June and Friday, 4 July. All meetings and conference sessions will be held at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie.

Whether you're a longtime member of the community, a new face, or are simply interested in learning more about Sakai, you're sure to profit from the extended face-to-face interactions that take will place nearly 'round the clock among designers, developers, pedagogists, faculty, students, user support specialists, system administrators, educational and collaborative technology managers from all over the world.

rSmart is participating in the event and presenting 9 times on several important topic as well as co-sponsoring a technical demonstration with Giunti Labs and IBM July 2, 2008.

rSmart's Presentation Schedule

(time and location details)

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Automating with Open Source Testing Tools
Presenter: Corey McGarrahan

Outlining rSmart's experience using open source tools for Functional and Performance testing. The presentation will discuss what tools have been utilized and why we did or did not decide to use them. Focus will be put on how these tools can benefit the Sakai QA effort and how they can help to coordinate that effort.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Step-by-Step: How to set-up group template realms
Presenter: Kara Stiles, Corey McGarrahan

Are your users experiencing permission problems or other challenges when using groups and sections? Attend this quick-and-dirty-mini-training and learn how to 1. End the support nightmares by 2. Optimally configuring your !group.template realms to ensure users can use BOTH groups and sections (even simultaneously) within a worksite.

Practical Pedagogy: Constructing Sakai to Support Multiple Pedagogies
Presenter: Hannah Reeves

How do faculty capitalize on Sakai's capabilities by configuring sites to best support their instructional practice and ideals? This hands-on workshop will seek to engage participants in group-based activity aimed at answering this question by building their own hypothetical course sites.

Configuration Considerations: Get your faculty members involved
Presenter: Kara Stiles

During this session, you will hear about how some institutions are increasing the success of their Sakai pilots by getting stakeholders and power users involved at pre-implementation stage of the pilot. We will share best practices on how to discuss and decide "technical" configuration concepts with your "functional" pilot users.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Sakai SWOT Analysis
Presenter: Hannah Reeves, Michael Feldstein

What are Sakai's current strengths, weaknesses, objectives and threats. Come participate in a cross-functional strategic brain storming session designed to elicit and share our collective thinking on these questions and identify where we are today.

360 degrees Sakai Support: Real world support from every angle
Presenter: Brooke Biltimier

360 degrees of support, from the perspectives of both large and small in-house support teams as well as commercial support providers. Discussions will include, alternate models of support, what is needed to use and support Sakai and some creative suggestions in doing so. Attendees will go home with a set of good tools and solutions for support.

Spreading Community Thick: Open Source Communities in Practice
Presenter: Nate Angell, Allison Bloodworth

Interested in user experience and online pedagogy? Learn how you can benefit from and contribute to two new efforts to share best practices across open source projects: The Fluid Project's Open Source Design Pattern Library and OpenedPractices.org, a community of practice for teaching and learning with open/community-source tools.

Marketing Sakai Partie Deux-Developing Case Studies
Presenter: Mike Zackrison, Lois Brooks

Explaining the benefits of Sakai to peers can be challenging, particularly with few materials available in the community. Case studies are an excellent tool for communicating Sakai's successes. Come learn how to develop a good case study using a template being made available to the community. Examples, tips and best practices will also be shared.

More information and registration for the 9th Sakai Community Conference in Paris.