New Approaches, New Solutions Sakai

We have a new community online; a complementary space to our NANS website. In order to join, you must be working in or with a New Approaches, New Solutions school. For more information or to sign up, contact Holly Hampson at hhampson [at] emsb.qc.ca.

What is a Sakai?
A Sakai is an online, collaborative space that can be customised and adapted to the users needs. It is like a portal, however, in this case, instead of being specific to your schoolboard, anyone across Quebec can be a member.

Our NANS Sakai features:

• a calendar
• updates / important reminders
  
• resource folders with materials and documents relevant to NANS schools
  
• discussion board
• your NANS community

No, but really... what is 'Sakai'?
Sakai is an open-source software project that initially centred around the creation and ongoing improvement of the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE). Sakai was originally created for educators.

Who's invited?
Anyone who works with or in New Approaches, New Solutions schools.

• teachers
• resource teachers
• administrators
• guidance counsellors
• school board coordinators
• NANS mascot...

What is the purpose of having an online community?

• share resources
  
• deposit documents
  
• increase access to knowledge resources by ensuring that key information is available to everyone
• provide flexibility to our NANS community in how you access information (you can download it when you want and need it)
• share different resources with different people (i.e., administrators, coordinators, teachers, etc.)
• the ability to create private spaces - a private discussion board open only to specific groups of people (i.e., coordinators, administrators, etc.)
  
• keep our NANS community up to date via the calendar tool
• allow users to share their events
• allow users to share their success and their challenges

What do I do?
Check out the calendar. Take a look at the resources available. Add an event. Post to the discussion forum. Answer a question. Upload resources. Download resources. Ask another question. Make suggestions. The community is what the users make it.

How do I sign up?
For more information or to sign up, contact Holly Hampson at hhampson [at] emsb.qc.ca. In your e-mail, please indicate your name and role, as well as the e-mail address you will be using to access the Sakai with (preferable your school board address). You will need your LEARN password to sign into the site. We can help you get this if you do not already have it.

But wait! I'm already a member of another Sakai community!
No problem! What you will see when you log in is another 'tab' with NANS on it. You can be a part of multiple Sakai communities, depending on your needs. We don't discriminate :)