Comments on: Sakai, Small Schools, and Pedagogy http://mfeldstein.com/sakai-small-schools-and-pedagogy/ What We Are Learning About Online Learning...Online Fri, 18 May 2012 06:39:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Josh Baron http://mfeldstein.com/sakai-small-schools-and-pedagogy/#comment-1687 Josh Baron Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:48:03 +0000 http://mfeldstein.com/?p=1284#comment-1687 Thanks Michael for highlighting this topic. When I first got involved with Sakai in 2005 one of the things that really struck me was the fact that I was "judged" not by the school I represented but for the ideas I brought to the community and my time and effort in contributing to the project. As I got more and more involved I started to see the benefits that comes from working within this type of meritocracy where your "stature" is based on the value the community places on your contributions and not your name or the name of your school, etc. This model is one that I've now started to feel many organizations could benefit from adopting. With regards to the specific issue of small schools and Sakai, I obviously completely agree that the notion that Sakai is only for large research institutions is, simply put, a myth. It is easy to understand how this myth began as the core institutions who started Sakai (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana, etc.) were all large research institutions with big technology budgets. But this is a bit like saying that you need to have the resources of a Ford or GM (well, maybe these aren't the best examples) just to be able to drive a car. Yes, you may need major resources to build a new car from scratch but certainly not to just drive one...which is kind of what we are doing at Marist....we drive Sakai but don't build it...with one caveat, we like to toss in our ideas that we think might improve the driving experience and then help test those ideas when someone implements them. Which, now that I think about it, wouldn't be a bad idea for car makers....;-) Again, thanks for highlighting this important issue. Thanks Michael for highlighting this topic. When I first got involved with Sakai in 2005 one of the things that really struck me was the fact that I was “judged” not by the school I represented but for the ideas I brought to the community and my time and effort in contributing to the project. As I got more and more involved I started to see the benefits that comes from working within this type of meritocracy where your “stature” is based on the value the community places on your contributions and not your name or the name of your school, etc. This model is one that I’ve now started to feel many organizations could benefit from adopting.

With regards to the specific issue of small schools and Sakai, I obviously completely agree that the notion that Sakai is only for large research institutions is, simply put, a myth. It is easy to understand how this myth began as the core institutions who started Sakai (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana, etc.) were all large research institutions with big technology budgets. But this is a bit like saying that you need to have the resources of a Ford or GM (well, maybe these aren’t the best examples) just to be able to drive a car. Yes, you may need major resources to build a new car from scratch but certainly not to just drive one…which is kind of what we are doing at Marist….we drive Sakai but don’t build it…with one caveat, we like to toss in our ideas that we think might improve the driving experience and then help test those ideas when someone implements them. Which, now that I think about it, wouldn’t be a bad idea for car makers….;-)

Again, thanks for highlighting this important issue.

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