The process of setting up OpenAcademic came out of a series of discussions and the meeting of ideas/thoughts.

Bill (FunnyMonkey) was playing around with the idea of combining Drupal, Elgg and Moodle to create a flexible tool set for K-12. We at Curverider were exploring various integration for Elgg, Elgg provides an excellent informal setting but to satisfy all the needs of a learning institution there are more pieces required. This led to the two parties talking.

During discussions we discovered that all were thinking along the same lines - there was a common feeling that much of the educational software being offered to schools is well below the standard it should be. To often it seems like a case of bending teaching practise to fit the software not the other way round! Technology should be there to improve, not hinder situations - it should work for you not against you.

We decided to get together and produce solutions which we feel will be better suited to creating worthwhile and engaging learning environments.

We are all involved with open source and know the power of these tools as well as the strength of the Moodle, Drupal and Elgg user and development communities! It is worth noting that all developments we do will go back to the respective communities.

OpenAcademic is moving along nicely - Bill (FunnyMonkey) has been doing a great job of conceptualizing his thoughts and ideas. These will shortly make their way onto this site. We are ready to ramp the project up, Ben (Technical director of Elgg) is now working full-time on Elgg related projects, this included, which is great - it means we can start to make this vision a reality.

It looks like the OpenID piece is working well on the Drupal side, now we just need to get Elgg OpenID enabled and we can begin to piece together the systems, see what we have, what still needs to be built etc.

Although we have not launched or even announced OpenAcademic, the project is getting some attention from interested individuals, which is great and bodes well for the future.

What next?

We are looking to get this site into an acceptable shape to launch - we are continuing to build out the required integrations and are working on use cases/scenarios to help those interested in this approach find out more and explore how OpenAcademic might be able to help them. Exciting times ahead!