RE: Integrating Sakai with Google apps

Depending on the level of integration with Sakai you're after initially,
the Web Content tool already provides a level of experimentation and
eliminates the need for intervention of an IT person to install some
tool or service.  As long as you're not concerned with passing
information back and forth, Web Content is a powerful tool for trying
out something for teaching or research that exists outside of Sakai.  

For example, prior to having a wiki available in Sakai, one of the most
common uses for Web Content at the University of Michigan (U-M) was to
"integrate" a wiki from some external site into a Sakai course site.
Similarly for blogs.  

I personally used it to integrate the php-based predecessor of the
current ImageQuiz tool in Contrib.  Doing so provided folks an
opportunity to test out the pedagogical benefits of the tool without
worrying about the IT behind it, nor requiring a large investment
upfront by building it as a Sakai tool from the start.  Confident that
it proved to be a good teaching tool, we can now worry about the
additional nice things one gets by tighter integration with Sakai, such
as grading and access to content services.  

I've also used Web Content to integrate Google Maps in Sakai sites;
depending on what you want to do with Google maps, you can now do some
nice things with much tighter integration with Sakai -- content,
permissions, etc. -- using Edia's Sakai Maps tool in Contrib.  I used
Web Content to provide access to a near real-time map of the current
location of a caravan of vehicles, and to offer push-pins of photos
along the way for students and their friends and families (and alumni,
who help fund such trips) to view during a two-week geology field trip
in the western US.

There are things you run across from time-to-time that don't work well
with Web Content, such as things that try to take over the whole browser
screen, but that doesn't prevent you from trying them.  On the whole Web
Content is an easy, powerful way for any instructor, IT-savvy or not, to
plug in a URL to some site outside of Sakai they would like to try out
in their course.

-peter

practical
> to do so.
>
> - m
>
>
> Christopher D. Coppola wrote:
> > I'll just pick up on one of those three to say that the idea in #2
is
> > one I'm really interested in. If you're not already saying it, I
hope
> > the idea gets extended to think about the ability to deploy
> > tools/gadgets/etc. as simply as you can on the Google portal.
> >
> > There was another thread on Pedagogy recently under the subject "Re:
> > eLearning 2.0 - overview of tools"  talking about the tension
between
----------------------
This automatic notification message was sent by Sakai Collab (https://collab.sakaiproject.org/portal) from the DG: Pedagogy site.
You can modify how you receive notifications at My Workspace > Preferences.