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A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Education XML
Technical Committee has been proposed by the following members of OASIS:
James Simon, Sun Microsystems; Donald Leclair, Computer Associates;
Ronald Alepin, Fujitsu Software; Philip Rossomando, Unisys; George Ward,
Cisco Systems; David Alexander, Cisco Learning Institute; Thomas
Vreeland, OpenVES; Amber Diehl, The Ross School; and John Cona,
Individual member.
The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process
(see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to
this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list
of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's
charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by
the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions
of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical
discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.
To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS
member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC
chair, Thomas Vreeland (tsv@openves.org) of your intent to participate
at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first
meeting on 25 Match 2003. You should also subscribe to the TC's mail
list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by
organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you
time you notify the chair.
The private mail list education@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee
discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members
should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to
education-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the
body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not
make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC
chair and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding
paragraph.)
A public comment list will be available for the public to make comments
on the work of this TC; a message may be sent to the TC via the address
education-comment@lists.oasis-open.org.
The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/
-Karl
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
Vice President, OASIS
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org http://www.oasis-open.org
(i) Name of Technical Committee
The name of this Technical Committee shall be the OASIS Education XML
Technical Committee (Education XML TC).
(ii) Statement of Purpose of Technical Committee
The international PK12 (pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade) community
of practice is underrepresented in traditional eLearning standards
organizations and its unique technical and functional requirements have
not been well articulated. The rationale and motivation for the
formation of an OASIS Technical Committee to better represent PK12
interests is to provide a new and more open collaborative environment
for urgent standards conversations within the PK12 community of
practice. Because of enlightened OASIS membership policies for
non-profits and educational organizations, and the OASIS open, public,
process of collaboration, many more PK12 organizations from around the
world will be able to participate than has been possible in other
eLearning standards communities.
The United Nations Education for All (EFA) initiative makes it
imperative that eLearning technology standards be advanced in order to
support the worldwide EFA activities during the next decade. The
Education XML TC will prioritize its activities to support UN activities
and other international initiatives and to provide leadership in
development of PK12 specific XML Specifications, Implementation
Guidelines and Best Practices. Recognizing the important role played by
other eLearning standards communities from around the world, it will be
our goal to coordinate and collaborate with them whenever possible.
The aims and purposes of the Education XML TC shall be as follows:
1) XML requirements documentation for shared extensible user
profiles, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and thesauri, and other
needed specifications, not currently underway in OASIS or other
standards communities will be undertaken by sub-groups of the Education
XML Technical Committee.
2) Translation and publication of a set of XML schema and
specifications based on the authoritative Data Handbooks published by
the US Education Department National Center for Educational Statistics
for use in and by public education in the United States, as a service to
the international PK12 community of practice
3) Coordinate closely with, and establish liaison with, other OASIS
Technical Committees whose work is directly related to PK12 requirements.
4) Publish a series of Implementation Handbooks and Best Practice
Guidelines for the PK12 community of practice, which document and
illustrate the utilization and integration of OASIS XML specifications
and other XML specifications and standards in the PK12 context. These
Handbooks and Guidelines will be for the use of implementers, vendors,
and early adopters.
(iii) Relationship to other activities
Where appropriate, the Education XML TC will foster collaborative
relationships and liaisons with other activities.
(iv) Technical Committee Deliverables
The primary deliverables of the Education XML TC are the documentation
of a coordinated set of PK12 requirements, which will enable the
development of XML vocabularies, schema, and web services interfaces for
implementation of eLearning infrastructure. These implementations will
enable the PK12 community of practice to:
1) deliver eLearning applications and content to end users through a
diversity of deployment channels; directly to a browser or mobile or
handheld device, indirectly through a portal, or by embedding into web
applications and devices; and
2) create eLearning applications that can be easily modified,
adapted, aggregated, integrated, coordinated, or synchronized by simple
means to leverage worldwide eLearning application components.
The Education XML Technical Committee plans to begin its work in three
phases:
PHASE I – Requirements Gathering
In this phase PK12 requirements will be gathered, and USED Data Handbook
Translations will be initiated and first versions published.
PHASE II – Specification Development
In this phase we will identify the available set of XML specifications,
which are useful for implementation of PK12 eLearning applications and
will develop those XML specifications, which are needed. These may
include specifications for identity management and authentication,
pedagogical patterns and assessment patterns, federated PK12 content
repositories, shared extensible profiles, individual competency
profiles, PK12 directory schema, deep semantic classification of
learning standards, link management and annotation strategies, web
services middleware definitions, and other requirements of the PK12
community of practice.
PHASE III – Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and Best
Practices
In the third phase of the Education XML TC’s work we will develop
Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and document Best
Practices and encourage reference implementations and demonstrations of
interoperability.
If the work takes place in these phases, it is estimated that the first
phase will take approximately nine months, the second phase
approximately one year, and the third phase another year. If phases can
be combined or run in parallel, then it is estimated that the delivery
of an initial set of specifications and implementation guidelines will
take one to two years.
The Education XML TC Specifications will use implementation and language
neutral XML formats defined in XML Schema where appropriate.
(v) Language in which the TC will conduct business
All business of the Education XML TC will be conducted in English
(vi) Date and time of the first meeting
The first formal meeting of the Education XML Technical Committee is
proposed to be via a telephone conference on Tuesday, 25 March 2003 at
2pm Eastern Time.
(vii) Meeting schedule for the year following the formation of the
Technical Committee
It is proposed that the Education XML Technical Committee will hold
face-to-face meetings semi-annually (time and place to be determined)
and also will hold quarterly telephone or web meetings to be arranged.
The dates and places for those meetings are:
Quarterly Mtg Date and Time Type of Meeting
------------- ---------------------- ---------------------
March 2003 March 25, 2003 – 2pm EST Telephone Conference Mtg
June 2003 To be determined Face to Face Meeting - NY
September 2003 To be determined Telephone Conference Mtg
January 2004 To be determined Face to Face Meeting - NY
Other meetings will be conducted by telephone, or on the web, at such
other times as the members of the TC will determine. It is the intention
of the sponsors of the TC to adopt a meeting schedule that will maximize
contact between the persons engaged in the Education XML work, business
experts engaged in the work of OASIS and W3C, education experts engaged
in the work of IMS and ADL, and educators and persons engaged in the
work of other organizations attempting to define XML and Web Services
based eLearning application standards.
(viii) Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of
persons eligible for OASIS Technical Committee participation committed
to the stated meeting schedule and purpose:
The following OASIS members support the creation of the Education XML
Technical Committee:
James Simon, jjs@sun.com, Sun Microsystems
Donald Leclair, Donald.Leclair@ca.com, Computer Associates
Ronald Alepin, Ralepin@msn.com, Fujitsu Software
Philip Rossomando, Philip.Rossomando@unisys.com, Unisys
George Ward, gward@cisco.com, Cisco Systems
David Alexander, daalexan@cisco.com, Cisco Learning Institute
Thomas Vreeland, tsv@openves.org, OpenVES
John Cona, johncona@optonline.net, Individual member
Amber Diehl, adiehl@ross.org, The Ross School
(ix) Name of the Technical Committee Chair
Chair: Thomas Vreeland
Vice Chair: John Cona
(x) Name of phone meeting sponsor
Thomas Vreeland
(xi) Name of face-to-face meeting sponsor
Thomas Vreeland
(xiii) Policies and procedures of the Education XML Technical Committee
The Education XML Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of
OASIS.
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