MIT created the OKI project, which is intended to create a set of API's for the technology behind the open course ware project. This was to lead to two reference implementations of learning managment software.
Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan was defining an architecture for it's next generation (and to be open) courseware tools and decided on participating in OKI. This was the chef project.
Meanwhile, a large consortium of universities got together and created an open portal technology. (uPortal)
Then, they all met and out of it came a merged project, supported by a multi-million dollar grant from the Mellon foundation and subsidary grants and coming in from the Hewlett foundation and soon others. This is called Sakai:
http://www.sakaiproject.org/
Now where this get's interesting from the perspective of the University of Michigan Medical School is that we are participating the UM ur-project CHEF as a way of creating a single point of reference for our medical students into the curriculum and eventually to be a reposistory of electronic learning objects.
As part of the new Sakai project, we are looking to collaborate with the Stanford Medical School in continuing our work to add specific functionality that Medical Education requires. Our developers here already are committers to the Chef Project.
Momentum is a wonderful thing. Two years ago, I could not get anyone interested in the uPortal project, now, it's descendent is going to be integral to our curriculum and teaching!
I invite all of you who have an association with Medical Education to participate with us as we create this new system and hopefully create a free body of medical knowledge organized around learning objectives and outcomes.
-- Wayne Wilson An attachment containing my pgp-signature is included. My public key fingerprint is: 9325 05AD 866B BCCB 45BF E86A 63E1 C6ED 4130 5461 My public key can be downloaded from wwwkeys.us.pgp.net
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