EDUCAUSE | Open Source and Presentations/Speeches

Community Source Software: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?

drupal — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:25:46 -0500

Community source is designed to coordinate the work of different user IT organizations sharing the same purpose and requirements. An alternative to commercial applications and custom development, it gives users control and shares risk across peer organizations. Although several such public sector communities exist and yield great promises, many struggle with achieving critical mass and a viable business model. This panel will compare and contrast community source with more traditional software sourcing options and explore critical sustainability success factors.

An Open Source LMS for a Mission-Critical, Enterprise-Level Application: Are We There Yet?

drupal — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:00:25 -0500

The open source learning management system has gradually reached maturity. In this session, we will share ideas and lessons learned about making open source LMS enterprise-ready. Currently SFSU has one of the largest Moodle installations in the United States and is the sole university hosting an anonymous Moodle CVS server.

An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold?

drupal — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:14:58 -0500

Like many WebCT campuses, SUNY Delhi must select a new LMS and complete migrating to the new system in the next year. The total cost of ownership comparison led us to adopt a remotely hosted open source solution. We'll examine the facts, figures, and progress of moving from WebCT to Moodle and integrating with Banner.

The 2007 Campus Computing Survey

drupal — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:39:00 -0600

Begun in 1990, the Campus Computing Project is the largest continuing study of the role of computing, e-learning, and information technology in American higher education. The session will present the results of the 2007 Campus Computing Survey, including new data on P2P policies, open source deployment, IT security issues, strategic and financial planning for IT, instructional integration of IT, campus IT standards, course management systems, and Web site services.

Implementing, Supporting, and Maintaining Sakai

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:40 -0500

Learn how Indiana University has successfully implemented the world's largest installation of the Sakai open source collaborative learning environment on eight campuses statewide. This presentation will cover migration from an enterprise legacy system, tiered support model, virtualized hardware solutions, source code management techniques, and balancing local needs with community-driven development.

Human Futures for Technology and Education

ckeller — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:41:14 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In January 2007, Michael Wesch released a video on the history of the Web called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." The video quickly tracks the transformations of the Web from its beginnings as a place to retrieve information into a vibrant user-generated and user-organized platform of RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social networks, and folksonomies that encourage, enhance, and capitalize on collaboration. At the video's end, Wesch suggests that these transformations require us to begin rethinking virtually everything, from authorship and copyright to our sense of identity and selfhood. These new technologies also have profound implications for education. What possibilities and challenges do they bring to our teaching? What should we be teaching to students who are habituated to a new media environment where Google and Wikipedia are always at their fingertips? How are these technologies changing the way students learn and assess information? In short, we need to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and whom we think we are teaching. For this presentation, Wesch creates another video in the same genre as "The Machine is Us/ing Us." Like the earlier video, this video quickly tracks the important moments in the history of education and attempts to capture the possibilities and challenges of the current moment in such a way as to pose and clarify some of the most important questions facing us as educators today.

The University in a Networked Economy and Society

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:14:50 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. When Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, came out, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig said, "This is -- by far -- the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this." This work examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may have transformative consequences for economy and society. Benkler's presentation outlines the characteristics of the networked information economy and the roles of collaboration and commons-based production of information, knowledge, and culture, and it suggests avenues to apply these broad trends to education and education-related policy.

Collaborative Applications, Suites, and Tools

drupal — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:24:28 -0500

Our inquiry begins with brief presentations about each of several applications, application suites, or application frameworks that are in use or being readied for use to meet the needs of a range of collaboration scenarios. Each presentation will be a condensed and concise summary of the key requirements and design decisions motivating the approach taken.

Multi-Institutional IT Collaboration

ckeller — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:35:00 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In 2006, ECAR distributed three surveys: the first was designed simply to ascertain whether the responding institution collaborated in significant ways; the second asked responding collaborators to describe their experiences, views, outcomes, concerns, and readiness with and for collaborations; and the third asked self-identified non-collaborators in IT to describe the barriers to collaboration they face, the cultural assumptions and beliefs of their institutions, and their views about the possible future for IT collaboration at their institutions. The survey responses offer a rich snapshot of how and when colleges and universities collaborate, the nature of the collaborations themselves, and a sense of the effectiveness of IT collaborations in higher education.

The Year in Review

drupal — Fri, 18 May 2007 09:17:51 -0500

What's past is prologue. As we look ahead to the policy questions facing the Internet today and tomorrow, it's useful to recall what we've seen over the past 12 months, and that's what we'll do during this session.

CMC and Whitman: Migration to Sakai and Beyond

drupal — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:00:11 -0500

Claremont McKenna College aims to migrate hundreds of courses and over 150 active instructors from WebCT to Sakai within a year. Whitman College has successfully completed its yearlong pilot and conversion from Blackboard to Sakai. Both schools have worked closely with faculty volunteers and have developed tools to address technical migration issues. The schools will share the different stages of their implementations, methods used, challenges, and successes.

Network Monitoring with Nagios

drupal — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:37:32 -0500

Nagios is a freely available open source network and host monitoring tool. This presentation will discuss using Nagios in an academic environment to monitor servers, detect network problems, and alert administrators to problems before the user population is affected.

Is Open Source Key to High-Speed Security?

drupal — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:37:28 -0500

As network speed has increased over the past three years, security has failed to keep pace. Traditional firewalls and intrusion protection systems can't handle proprietary rule sets or increased traffic flow. New security approaches combine high-speed traffic processing with comprehensive, robust rules enabled through open source code such as Snort. This presentation will explore Snort's benefits in securing education networks and will describe hardware architectures that can inspect traffic at 10-Gigabit speeds.

Legacy and VoIP Telephone Integration Using Open Source

drupal — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 09:30:45 -0600

We have implemented a bridge between an Avaya PBX and a Cisco VoIP system using Asterisk, an open source PBX. This system provides a uniform dial-by-name and auto attendant across multiple campus locations. The system obtains assigned extensions from Active Directory and creates a Web and Excel user telephone directory.

Closed Source/Open Source: An Update on Software Licensing 101

drupal — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:28:21 -0600

Going back to the beginning and revisiting how current practices developed over time can help us understand where we are now, and where we are headed. When viewed in this light, open source licenses and business models stop looking like aberrations and start looking like part of the natural progression of an industry.

Production Quality Open Source VoIP: Next Generation Telephony at Penn

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:49 -0500

The University of Pennsylvania is rolling out flexible, cost-effective voice services based on open-source VoIP. Hear about our experiences with converging voice and data organizations, developing technical solutions, communicating with our community, and rolling out production-quality VoIP and integrated messaging to thousands of users.

Community Source Procurement System

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:47 -0500

This presentation focuses on the unique aspects of the implementation of the first module of a collaborative, community source financial system being developed by a partnership of U.S. higher education institutions. This session will focus on the project itself, its key successes and challenges, and what it means to be the first implementation of a groundbreaking community source initiative.

Community Source Development of a Next-Generation Student System

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:47 -0500

The University of British Columbia is working with other institutions to develop a community source, next-generation student system that will use a service-oriented architecture. We will describe our approach to community source projects; a standards-based, service-oriented architecture; and the goals and design concepts for a new, open-source, student services system.

Looking Toward the Future of Core Administrative Systems

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:47 -0500

The number of vended core administrative systems options is shrinking, while the price of maintenance remains high. Meanwhile, open source is maturing as an option. This presentation will look at the present state of affairs, anticipate what's coming in the future, and make a case for cross-institution collaboration to establish our own administrative systems future.

Campus-Wide Open Source: Principles for Successful Implementation

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:46 -0500

Architects of open source adoption at Portland State University will detail a large, urban university's journey with an open source portfolio. A model for securing buy-in from administration, faculty, students, and IT will be introduced; our specific principles that have enabled successful, wide-spread implementation will be discussed; and key issues will be addressed, from aligning open source with your institutional mission to evaluating the real impact on IT staffing and infrastructure. Guidance on mitigating challenges will be provided by speakers who span faculty, IT, and administration positions.

Welcome to My Fiefdom: IT Asset Management in a Decentralized Organization and the Creation of OpenITAM

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:46 -0500

Visit feudal IT. Explore how the successes and failures of a five-year software asset management (SAM) project have given birth to a university-wide collaborative project creating a higher education open-source IT asset management (ITAM) solution: OpenITAM. Prepare for crumbling political walls, lengthened asset life cycles, and collaborative management.

Is There an OpenCourseWare Site in Your Future?

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:42 -0500

Do you want a site like MIT's OpenCourseWare site, but don't have millions of dollars to spend? Come learn how to start an OpenCourseWare project. Topics will include moving existing materials from closed learning management systems into an open-access format using eduCommons, gaining faculty and institutional support, and dealing with intellectual property.

Leveraging Open Source in Residential Networking

drupal — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:18:09 -0500

Using open source technologies, Brenau University was able to implement an authenticated captive portal and traffic shaper that keeps students connected to vital education resources without the pain normally associated with lawless student networks.

The Auditor’s Dilemma: Audit Issues for Higher Education in the Information Age

drupal — Thu, 25 May 2006 14:00:15 -0500

May 23, 2006, presentation to the Big 12 Auditors.

The Botherd is Coming! How Education and Technology Can Stop the Stampede

drupal — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:56:54 -0500

High-speed connections and lots of personal computers make campus networks target-rich environments for botnet recruitment. UAlbany has neither a campus firewall nor pre-connection policy enforcement, yet we've managed to reduce the number of bot infections and respond quickly and effectively to new outbreaks through user education and a creative combination of open source tools.

SafetyNet: An Open Source, Self-Service, Proactive Security Scanner

drupal — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:56:53 -0500

SafetyNet, an open source, Web-based application framework, allows authorized users to proactively scan individual and groups of computer systems for security vulnerabilities. Learn how Virginia Tech has used this tool to increase security awareness and customer satisfaction and lower desktop total cost of ownership and security incidents.

Security Incident Database

drupal — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:56:53 -0500

The University of Oklahoma has developed and implemented a security incident database developed entirely on widely available open source software products. The Web-based system allows users to enter, annotate, block, and send notifications to users and administrators. The system has been in operation since 2001, with more than 8,000 incidents entered to date.

RINGS: Open Source Device Registration and Security

drupal — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:56:53 -0500

RINGS provides a complete open source system that scales to the entire campus. This system includes layered security, DHCP services, device registration, account management, security notifications, device security, and an administrator interface that provides tools to technicians, management, and IT security they need to get their job done effectively.

Topics in Identity Management: Authorization Strategies

drupal — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:42:45 -0600

As campuses develop more mature identity management infrastructures, authorization services become increasingly critical to access control. Sponsored by NMI-EDIT Consortium of Internet2 and EDUCAUSE, this session will discuss Cornell's strategies for deploying enhanced authorization services and will include overviews of two emerging open source tools, Grouper and Signet.

Cultura: A Method and Open Source Tool for Teaching Language and Culture

drupal — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:42:44 -0600

Several years ago, an MIT professor developed a novel method for explaining and teaching cultural nuances in her language classes. MIT's Academic Computing office has developed a Web-based application to support the pedagogy, and we're taking steps to release it as an open source application.

RINGS Open Source Device Registration and Security

drupal — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:58:15 -0600

Open Source E-Mail with Spam Filtering for the Enterprise

drupal — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:58:14 -0600

North Dakota State University recently added spam filtering capabilities to its open source e-mail solution that services six schools in the North Dakota University System. This presentation will offer an approach to implementing an enterprise-class e-mail and spam solution.

Different Strokes for Similar Folks: ERP, Wireless

drupal — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:58:14 -0600

From nearly identical legacy systems, Fort Hays State University (FHSU) and Wichita State University have taken very different and successful paths to providing new ERPs. Pittsburg State University and FHSU have quickly built out campus-wide wireless coverage with different but equally effective methods.

Why Sakai and How to Get Started

drupal — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:58:12 -0600

Sakai, the collaboration and learning environment built by higher education, has come to the forefront as a viable alternative to commercial learning management applications. This presentation provides an update on the Sakai initiative followed by a discussion of how Unicon provides an easy way for institutions to experience Sakai.

Open Content vs. Closed Doors (Or Closed Minds?)

drupal — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:50:30 -0600

The author discusses the evolution of the digital divide discourse, recent trends regarding content development, and how tools such as blogs and wikis are changing how content is created for marginalized communities.

An Instructor's Guide to Sakai

drupal — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:20:23 -0600

A presentation about Course/Content Management systems (not just Sakai), open/community source ecologies, and the purposeful use of tools within those environments.

Haute Software: Juggling Open Source and Vendor Software

drupal — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:44:10 -0600

This session illustrates lessons learned and provides recommendations for institutions contemplating the support of open source applications while maintaining enterprise-level vendor software. In 2004 and 2005, Virginia Tech introduced an open source portfolio and course management system (Sakai) and realized the additional support needs of open source products.

Closer to the Dream: Letting Pedagogy Transform Learning Management Systems

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:32 -0600

Three small liberal arts colleges (Luther, St. Olaf, and Macalester) share their diverse approaches in implementing Moodle, an open-source learning management system (LMS). Using the seven elements for successful LMS transformation, they show how a learning system designed, supported, and enhanced by instructors can result in a pedagogically rich online learning environment.

.LRN: An Enterprise Open-Source Learning Management System

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:30 -0600

.LRN is one of the largest international open-source projects in educational technology innovation. Backed by the .LRN Consortium, its "out-of-the-box" core capabilities include enterprise integration, course management, learning management, content management, and online community support. This presentation will demonstrate the product and describe the governance process for ongoing development.

Community Source ERP: What? Are You Crazy?

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:29 -0600

ERP is the realm of large vendors, right? Only the crazy would try to play in that space. Well, some crazies are doing just that with the Kuali initiative. This panel of representatives from six partner organizations will discuss the factors that led them to join this initiative.

Open Source in Education: Evolving the IT Marketplace

drupal — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:13:59 -0500

Open source projects are proliferating throughout higher education. This trend raises hopes for new business models, opportunities for collaboration, questions of sustainability and long-term viability, and challenges for the potential adopters. This session will address these issues from the strategic perspectives of a college president and the president of a commercial support provider who will reflect on their experiences and expectations for community source development.

To Open Source or Not to Open Source: Strategic Planning

drupal — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:13:59 -0500

With open source options for most of the academic enterprise stack (e.g. Moodle, Sakai, Kuali, OSPI, uPortal) and many "open course" online resources, what are the issues? What are the risks, trade-offs, and returns on investment? Discussion will focus on how to decide whether to adopt open source and how to "sell" the idea on your campus.

Open/Community Source Applications: Learning to Play with the Other Kids!

drupal — Tue, 24 May 2005 11:29:28 -0500

Open and community source applications have begun to emerge as viable alternatives for some institutions. Unlike infrastructure efforts such as Apache or Linux, however, community source applications involve players beyond the IT space. Joining these efforts and subsequently engaging in productive collaboration with other institutions present challenges for some institutions. This presentation will offer ideas on best practices in successful collaboration.

Sharing Calendars over the Internet

drupal — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:08:32 -0500

This session reviews the work that's currently taking place to solve the problem of practical multiplatform sharing of calendar and scheduling data over the Internet. OSAF engineer Lisa Dusseult has introduced CalDAV, a proposal to the IETF standards body to extend the existing WebDAV standard to handle rich event-based data. CalDAV has been very well received and work is under way at OSAF, Mozilla, Oracle, Novell (as part of the newly open sourced Hula project), the University of Washington, and other places to implement this new standard in both clients and servers.

The session will also discuss CalConnect, a new consortium established to promote interoperable calendar and scheduling standards. In January 2005, CalConnect sponsored an interoperability event where several early versions of clients and servers successfully exchanged calendar information. The hope is that these efforts will lead to open standardization and implementations that will provide end users with the same simplicity in sharing calendars with friends and co-workers that they now enjoy in sharing e-mail messages.

© 2005 Mitchell Kapor and Lisa Dusseault. This presentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Only License; see <<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/>.

Developing an Open Source Community of Practice

drupal — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 12:10:18 -0600

Using the community of practice (COP) concept, Ohio University is supporting a group of IT staff interested in examining the creative and innovative possibilities of Open Source Software. To help the COPs gain momentum, a pilot implementation of the Sakai project was chosen as a goal for the community.

Implementing a Fedora-Based Repository on a Shoestring

drupal — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:17:45 -0600

The Fedora digital repository system requires significant integration and development work before it can be deployed for use in managing digital archives. This presentation will outline the decisions, challenges, and resources necessary in implementing Fedora, as well as provide information to help assess where the Fedora technology is most appropriate.

Open Source: National Frameworks

drupal — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:59:30 -0600

Open Source: national frameworks was a one-day conference held in central London that addressed the following topics:
* e-Government in the UK, and the status of current government recommendations about open source in software procurement
* the position of the JISC, and other central research funding bodies, on open source licensing, copyright etc
* the picture from other European countries
* what the academic study of open source is teaching us
This site includes presentations from that conference.

OSP 2.0: Developing a Flexible Assessment Portfolio

drupal — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 14:06:06 -0600

The Open Source Portfolio Initiative is developing OSP 2.0, a flexible tool for programmatic assessment as well as building e-portfolios. The panel members are responsible for funneling community input into the product's design. This session will explore OSP 2.0 and its assessment module. Attendees will learn how to make recommendations for future releases.

Collaborative Open Source Software: Panacea or Pipe Dream for Higher Education?

drupal — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 16:32:47 -0600

Dave Lambert will examine the current trend toward collaborative open source software development (Sakai, Chandler, uPortal, and so forth) in higher education, exploring issues critical to assessing the long-range impact on campus systems. His assessment will include an historical perspective, locate this new paradigm in relation to the traditional buy-versus-build choices, and discuss issues related to institutional deployment and life-cycle support.

Windows to WebDAV: A File Server Case Study

drupal — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:43:22 -0600

Migrating to open source servers provides opportunities and challenges. The rationale, migration strategy, and lessons learned in migrating a small department server from a Windows 2000 Active Directory-based file server to a Linux server will be reviewed. Security, authentication, and technical challenges will be addressed.