Annoucing the Tsugi Java Library for Building Interoperable Learning Applications

I have been focused on laying the technical groundwork for interoperable learning applications for the past ten years. Through my work on Sakai and IMS I have tried to help move the entire industry forward to enable innovative teaching and learning applications. While we have made great progress, there is much to do. My recent “State of Sakai” talk at the Apereo Conference alludes to the kind of work we still need to do.

I have been exploring the space where applications are both portable and interoperable through my Tsugi. Over the past year I have spent more time on Tsugi than I have on Sakai because I think that exploring future architecture is a very high priority task.

Last week I gave a workshop at the Apereo 2015 conference on Building Applications using IMS Learning Tools Interoperability using my PHP Tsugi. While the workshop went very well, it was clear that the folks that needed to build interoperable applications *right now* were not interested in programming in PHP. Also, I am well into my Summer of Sakai 2015 effort working with a number of students over the summer and it is clear that it is simply too difficult to teach new developers how to write Sakai applications.

All of this was a “perfect storm” that motivated me to drop everything and put in an all-out effort to port my Tsugi library to Java in the past week.

Announcing Tsugi Java 0.0.1

It has been a pretty crazy week – I coded day and night and pretty much ignored my inbox – but I am pretty pleased with the results. While Java Tsugi still needs some work – it is already quite competent to build LTI 1.0 applications in Java – and they feel very clean and elegant. Here are some documents:

This will continue to move and evolve but it is in good enough shape to share with others to start getting broader input.

I also recorded a short introductory video about Tsugi Java:

Conclusion

This is a great start and there is much still to do for Java Tsugi. I am hoping that others will help move this effort forwards and contribute to the project. For the next few weeks, I now need to sprint on finishing up a bunch of things for the Sakai 11 code freeze.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or comments.