Sakai SOLO: Taking Sakai offline

with Google Gears2 July 2008

Martilene OrfferLouis Botha

The importance of Solo

Agenda

• Business case

• The application

• Architecture

• Conclusion

Business case

• Africa not well connected!

• Bandwidth low• High connection costs=> Slow and expensive e-Learning

Business case

• “Our tests of actual Internet speeds indicate that, while users at large European or American universities enjoy Internet connections which deliver 17 million bits per second, users at African institutions operate at speeds that are 500 to 600 times slower (~30 thousand bits per second). We also routinely test hundreds of Internet servers at African institutions and find that the typical server is online only about six hours per day and has frequent disconnects lasting days or weeks.” (Appropriate information-communications technologies for developing countries, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Volume 85: 2007, Volume 85, Number 4, April 2007, 245-324 )

• SOLO also effective for other reasons:– Commuting students– Learning/working anywhere, any time

Business case

• “Disconnected learning” requirement identified in 2001

North West University - South Africa• Traditional university• Supports their distance learning students with eFundi

Unisa• Distance/Correspondence university • Support their students with My Unisa Vision “Towards the African

university in the service of humanity” drives us to find answers to Africa’s education and developmental problems. By forming partnerships in Africa and throughout the world, we are able to help the people of Africa achieve their dreams.

The application: Requirements

• Sakai in an offline mode• Small initial setup• Melete, Resources and Announcements• Synchronisation managed by Solo client• Large resources via CD-ROM• Windows-like user interface• For Sakai 2.5

The application: The user interface

Site navigation

Corporate Banner

Toolbar

Content IFRAMETool navigation

Architecture: Sakai SOLO servlet

• Using AJAX grid to extract resources to CD-ROM

• Google Gears (GG) with SQLite and local server

Architecture: Technologies used

• Google Web Toolkit (GWT) – Apache licence

• Remote Procedure Calls

Architecture: Technologies used

• CSS Stylesheets

• Native JavaScript

• Eclipse Java IDE

Architecture: Schematic diagram

Gears SQLite

Gears Cache

GW

T - A

JAX

JAVA development - ECLIPSE IDE

Solo Entry Page

SynclistXML

Navigation Treeview

PDA Content

gears.google.com

GG Sync Sakai Auth

Synclist Generator

Solo Servlet

Resource

Announce

Melete

Mneme

PD

A P

OR

TA

L

User Profile

CD-ROMLarge Resources

Resource Export

On

line

/ Offlin

e

Synclist Generator

Configuration Tool

Web browser Sakai 2.5

Architecture: Client-side navigation

Navigation XML generator

Site navigator

Site XML generator

Clean Tool content (PDA)

Tool navigator

Sakai Tool content

Sakai SERVERWEB BROWSER

Goo

gle Gears

Architecture: The offline cache

GG SQLite

GG Cache

SAKAI

GG Sync engine

Browser Application

Local server

(Switch)

Architecture: Challenges

• Early adoption of GWT • Write in Java, run in JavaScript• Asynchronous methods• Unstable connections• Calling tool API’s in SAKAI• RPC calls• CDSync

Architecture: Implementation demo

D E M O N S T R A T I O N

Pilot projects

• Unisa– Pilot with a (relatively) small group– 162,000 students off campus

• North West University– Initial Pilot with Pharmacology group – 20 students– Followed by bigger group 2000 – 4000 students– 14,000 students off campus

Conclusion: Possible future development

• Additional tools: Schedule, assignments, assessments, drop box, glossary, etc.

• Offline authoring with upload synchronization.

http://www.itu.int/AFRICA2004/media/mobile.html

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Su

bs

crib

ers

(m)

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

African Region Total Fixed and Mobile

Fixed line Mobile

• PDA / mobile phone applications

• Sakai SOLO + Freedom Toaster

Conclusion: Possible future growth

A widening gap between the

Developed and developing

Worlds ("digital divide")

in this area

(Wolff and MacKinnon, 2002)

..A Fourth World exists

everywhere, but is inevitably

dominant in Africa

(Castells, 2000).

Sakai Map

Bandwidth map

Conclusion: Possible future growth

Conclusion: Contributors

• The South African HE institutions • Team of architects from the Sakai foundation• Psybergate a commercial partner

Conclusion: More information

• Sakai Contrib : SOLO

Resources• http://gears.google.com/• http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/• http://www.gwt-ext.com/demo/ (good example)• http://groups.google.com/group/gwt-ext• http://www.sqlite.org/• http://www.freedomtoaster.org/

Website: www.psybergate.co.za

E-mail:sakai@psybergate.co.za

Questions?