Category: Here at Notre Dame

21st Century Learning, Current Affairs, Here at Notre Dame, Off Topic, professional development, Web/Tech1 Comment

Why the Startup Weekend at Notre Dame’s Innovation Park Excites Me

Laura Gekeler

54 hours. Friday April 13th at 6pm until Sunday April 15th at 3pm. Go home to sleep when/if they kick us out or you just can’t think another thought. What we hope to accomplish: Lay the groundwork to start one or more new businesses in South Bend. Period. What participants get paid: Nada. In fact, tickets to the event are $99. Who will be the participants? People like me. Really. People who care about our community and want to give back of our talents and creativity. People who can envision their satisfaction when driving by that new area business and being … Continue reading Why the Startup Weekend at Notre Dame’s Innovation Park Excites Me

Collaborative Learning Environment, Here at Notre Dame, LMS, Sakai, Web/Tech2 Comments

Pros and Cons of hosting Sakai outside of your institution

Laura Gekeler

The University of Notre Dame is moving from a proprietary LMS we host in our own Data Center to an open source system, Sakai, hosted with rSmart. Two big changes we’re lumping together. Ask yourself … What advantages do you expect to gain when switching from a proprietary system to an open source system? Does outsourcing the system’s management mitigate against those advantages? What we’ve found so far (6 months): Trade-offs   Some Fixes/enhancements: can still be deployed faster than with a proprietary system, but not as fast as we expected … rSmart, or other provider, will still have tested … Continue reading Pros and Cons of hosting Sakai outside of your institution

Course Management Server-side, Here at Notre Dame, KnowledgeBaseVista4, LMS

Bringing Blackboard Vista 8 into the Oracle 11g world..

Laura Gekeler

Just a few notes, probably only of significance to myself, of the work involved when the technology around a software changes even as that software is being brought to an end of life… Blackboard’s CE and Vista product is scheduled to be de-supported in January of 2013. Notre Dame will continue to run it as we come along side it with another system and move our Faculty and Students to it. Meanwhile Oracle has de-supported (as of June 2010) its database software version Oracle 10g, on which many institutions have been running their Bb Vista databases. Meanwhile Oracle has acquired … Continue reading Bringing Blackboard Vista 8 into the Oracle 11g world..