Sakai is a course management and collaborative learning system. Many teachers and professors from Elementary Schools through Colleges will use Sakai to provide course materials and activities via the web.

The Sakai Project began as a $6.8 million community source software development project founded by the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, the uPortal Consortium, and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). The purpose of the project, which received a $2.4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was to produce open source Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software. The Sakai Partners Program (SPP) extends this community source project to other academic institutions around the world, and is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and SPP member contributions.

In October 2005, the Sakai Project announced the creation of the Sakai Foundation, a non-profit membership corporation to provide a permanent home for the growing Sakai community. The Sakai Foundation provides Sakai developers, adopters, and users a place to coordinate efforts.

Mainstream Sakai Services along with the Sakai Zone.org are contributors to the Sakai community and help through the contribution of code and expertise.

We also host and maintain Sakai sites for tens of thousands of students throughout the United States.

SakaiZone, through Mainstream Sakai Services, provides full hosting, upgrades and support for Sakai for about $0.25 per month per student.

Discounts are available for School Districts and States.

Most School and University Administrators aren't aware of the speed and reliability that Mainframe Computing provides.

Mainstream Sakai Services is dedicated to providing a highly reliable and fast Sakai experience. We are able to process Sakai requests reliably in milliseconds verses more than 1 second for a commodity server from HP, Compaq or Amazon.

We are able to provide this high level of reliability at a cost significantly lower than our competitors.

From Wiktionary: 1. (computer hardware) A large, powerful computer able to manage very many simultaneous tasks and communicate with very many connected terminals; used by large, complex organizations (such as banks and supermarkets) where continuously sustained operation is vital.

The long-term plans for the future of the Sakai Software include releases in roughly November and May of each year.

Syllabus: Post a summary outline of course requirements

Lesson Builder: Create and publish online learning sequences.

Assignments: Create and grade online or offline assignments.

Drop Box: Share files privately with site participants.

Gradebook: Calculate, store and distribute grade information to students

Tests & Quizzes: Create and manage online assessments

Design, publish, share and view portfolios of work

Wizards & Matrices: Create structures to help site participants document and reflect upon their learning and development

Evaluations: Provide site participants with summative feedback on submissions to wizards and matrices

Reports: Build, view and export reports on portfolio-related site activity

Layouts & Styles: Manage pre-defined Styles used to control the visual style (fonts, colors, etc.) of Wizards and Matrices, and Portfolios

Portfolio Templates: Manage templates site participants use to create standardized portfolios

Sakai includes the robust Open Source Portfolio e-Portfolio system. Sakai’s portfolio functionality allows users to store, organize and present digital representations of their teaching, learning or institutional achievement. It facilitates the creation of portfolios for self-presentation, reflection, as well as supporting program and institutional assessment.

STUDENTS: The OSPortfolio provides an environment where portfolio owners — typically, students — can exhibit their work.

1. tools to collect items that best represent their accomplishments, their learning, or their work;
2. tools to reflect upon these items and their connections;
3. tools to design a portfolio that showcases the best selections of this work;
4. and tools to publish the portfolio to designated audiences.

FACULTY: The OSPortfolio also offers tools for faculty — anyone who coordinates a Common Interest Group (CIG) such as a course or any other club or project — to provide structure and guidance for CIG participants (students). CIG coordinators, evaluators, reviewers and portfolio guests are able to review published portfolios — and can also provide formal evaluation or informal feedback and comments. Tools for analysis of portfolio items "in aggregate" also make it possible for CIG coordinators, administrators or program evaluators to measure program effectiveness or educational outcomes.

Sakai offers a host of capabilities to support research collaboration. It offers researchers the critical flexibility to select and combine the tools required to support and achieve individual project objectives.

Accounts: Manage basic account information and passwords

Membership: View and modify site memberships

Site Setup: Create new sites, modify sites you own

Site Editor:Change the structure, content or membership of a site

Section Info: Manage sections within a course site

Super User (SU): Assume the identity of another user in the system for troubleshooting and support

Users: View and edit user data in the system

Realms: Manage roles and permissions

On-Line: Track server and system usage

Job Selector: Create scheduled data integration and data warehouse tasks

Announcements: Post current, time-critical information to a site.

Resources: Post, store and organize material related to the site.

Site Roster: View a list of site participants and their pictures

Email Archive: Access an archive of email sent to participants

Wiki:Create and edit web content collaboratively.

Blog: Provides blogging capability for your class.

Calendar: Maintain deadlines, activities and site related events

Chat: Engage in real-time conversations with site participants

Discussion Forum: Create, moderate and manage discussion topics and groups within a course and send private messages to site participants.

Glossary: Provide contextual definitions for terms used on a site

Web Page: Display external web pages.

News: Display custom news content from dynamic, online sources via rss.

Sakai Collaboration, Teaching, Learning, Portfolio and of course Administrative Tools.

"Sakai" is not an acronym; it is simply the name given to the project and the software, initially conceived as extending the CHEF technology architecture.

CHEF, nearly an acronym for "CompreHensive collaborativE Framework", was an online system designed and implemented at the University of Michigan to enable online communities to maintain relationships and share information. Chef Sakai is a Japanese cooking artist.

Sakai is also a knick-name for a city in Japan.

Absolutely! Mainstream has provided Moodle hosting along with hundreds of other systems for more than 5,000 businesses, Government Agencies and Schools for more than 15 years.

Sakai is a highly scalable enterprise application, with production installations of between 200 and 200,000 total users at more than 200 educational installations.

Mainstream Sakai Services is able to provide Sakai services to more than 250,000 simultaneous Sakai users.

Currently Mainstream Sakai Services is providing Sakai hosting, support and maintenance services for K through 12 as well as for College and Universities.

We can host it at one of our own data centers, we can maintain our clients' equipment or we can provide equipment for our customers' data centers and provide support services for them. We have been doing all three for almost 20 years.