I’m on a Chamilo newsletter list, and through that got this link to a web conference on the above title. I don’t know what Sakai is. Alas, this link is in Spanish. As we know Gloria is working with Chamilo…
If you go to this link’s page, and translate with google, you will find some active and interesting webinar links. Some are in Blackboard Collaborate format…which perhaps is Blackboard version of Adobe Connect????
The link eventually downloads some Blackboard java script software to your desktop, and then eventually opens the webinar. Though people are speaking in Spanish… the process of how it “works” is of note. And if you speak spanish, no doubt you would learn a whole lot about LMS in current use.
Embedded in the question of what LMS to work with, is the question of what functions do we need/want to have available for our PSA DLE.
Sakai is one of the major (open source) Higher Ed LMSs, analogous at some level to Blackboard and Moodle, hence the Webinar topic.
Sakai positions itself as a “Collaboration & Learning Environment” which may or may not mean anything. The Sakai Project is also aspires to a broader effort in the future.
It appears that there is now some kind of umbrella organization the Apereo Foundation – they are holding a big conference in San Diego in early June. You can see details on the Sakai website – http://www.sakaiproject.org.
I happened to see this 2011 article on why Pepperdine chose to migrate to Sakai, it has a few interesting comments on the commoditization of LMS
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/10/06/why-we-switched-to-sakai.aspx