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| TECHNICAL STANDARDS FOR THE DIGITAL EDUCATION REVOLUTION NEWSLETTER |
| April 2010: Issue 5 |
ITinteroperability is a newsletter aimed at informing you about technical, standards and interoperability projects pertinent to education in Australia. It includes news items on local interoperability projects as well as summarising activity in international standards bodies relevant to education in Australia.
New editions of ITinteroperability are published once every two months.
If you wish to subscribe to this newsletter, please send a blank, plain text email to: join-itint@edna.edu.au
(106 KB)Australian News
IDEA10
This year's IDEA10 events were hosted at the Sebel Albert Park Conference and Events Centre in Melbourne from 10 - 12 March. The Technology in Education Open forum provided an engaging two days of cross-sectoral presentations from both technologists and educators discussing the opportunities and challenges in emerging technologies supporting education. IDEA10 included international keynote presentations from Dr. Larry Fruth of the Schools Interoperability Framework, Dr. Rob Abel from IMS Global Learning Consortium and Paul Jesukiewicz from the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative.
More information:
Results from the Australian Regional Finals of the IMS Learning Impact Awards (LIA)
We would like to extend our congratulations to the following three winners of the Australian Regional Finals for the IMS Learning Impact Awards (LIA) 2010, announced at IDEA10:
- Winner - Tasmanian Polytechnic and Skills Institute: Mobile Assessment and Online Recognition using QTI solutions
- First Runner-up - Education Services Australia (ESA): Personal / Professional learning network
- Second Runner-up - Western Sydney Institute of TAFE: Mobilae - mobile learning, assessment and evidence gathering
The three winners are now invited to showcase their entries at the international Learning Impact 2010 event, to be held at Long Beach, California from 17 - 20 May 2010. Alongside the top three Finalists, two Encouragement Awards were also given out to entries that demonstrated a high level of quality in addressing technology challenges facing education:
- eMarking Assistant and the University of Southern Queensland - eMarking Assistant
- University of Southern Queensland - Adoption of Tablet and screencasting technologies for multi-modal education
Delegates attending IDEA10 were also given the opportunity to vote for their favourite LIA entries during a 'speed dating' event. This year's LIA Peoples' Choice award went to ESA's Personal / Professional learning network entry.
More information:
Technical Standards for Digital Education - Digital Education Revolution (DER) Focus Group Meeting
A face-to-face meeting took place on 9 March 2010 in Melbourne to bring together the focus groups that have been formed to discuss technical standards for the Australian schools digital environment with the aim of sharing knowledge, planning for 2010, and identifying opportunities for collaboration. The standards work is split into the following 7 themed activities:
- 21st Century Curriculum Content
- Engage with W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG2.0)
- Curriculum description
- Lesson Plans
- Learning Content Discovery and Exchange
- e-Portfolios technology
- Integrated Learning Environments and 21st Century Learning
The face-to-face meeting was a very productive and engaging day which set the tone for the final three months of the Technical Standards project and foreshadowing work that is needed beyond the end of the project in June 2010. Some of the major discussions form the day included:
- the wide-spread adoption of Scootle; 38,000 teachers and 4,000 schools nationally
- the potential of machine-readable curriculum, especially with the pending release of the National Curriculum by ACARA
- a broader understanding on the challenges facing e-Portfolios, and their adoption in Australian schools
- identification of the major differences between WCAG1.0 and 2.0
- harmonisation between LOM and Dublin Core in the next-generation ISO metadata for learning resources.
The day also included demonstrations of:
- Scootle to Moodle integration
- how the IMS Common Cartridge specification supports web 2.0 and collaborative activities
- existing schools and VET learning content updated to meet the new WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines.
More information:
ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 announced
The ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 (EAC2010) will bring together national and international educators and thought leaders to showcase current e-portfolio practice.
This major national tertiary education event will highlight the ways e-portfolios are serving as a catalyst to support and engage learners in higher education (HE), vocational education and training (VET) and adult and community education (ACE).
The conference will be in Melbourne on 3-4 November 2010: ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010
VET Sector updates
Emerging technology trials
The Australian Flexible Learning Framework will fund up to six emerging technology trials in 2010 to help vocational education and training (VET) practitioners and organisation adopt and use new technologies effectively.
As well as highlighting the benefits, risks and future development needs of new technologies, the trials will make an important contribution to the national e-learning standards (e-standards) for VET.
More information:
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Draft VET e-portfolio privacy guidelines released
E-portfolios are becoming increasingly popular in the vocational education and training (VET) sector as a tool to collate and demonstrate evidence of skills and achievement. To better understand the privacy considerations for learners and organisations that store and manage learner information, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) recently commissioned a privacy impact assessment (PIA) on the use of e-portfolios in the VET sector.
The PIA involved widespread consultation with key VET stakeholders and learners, a review of e-portfolio service provider obligations with respect to privacy law, and an assessment of the privacy risks associated with e-portfolios from the learner's perspective. The resulting report and draft guidelines for managers of learner information were recently published. These draft guidelines will be tested during e-portfolio trials being planned for this year.
More information:
Education Services Australia (ESA)
On 1 March 2010, Education.au merged with Curriculum Corporation to form Education Services Australia (ESA) Ltd, a new, national, not-for-profit ministerial company. ESA has a brief to provide services in support of national education priorities and initiatives across all sectors of education and training. The new company will have the capability to meet the needs of all education sectors in the areas of innovative technologies and communication systems, curriculum and assessment, professional development, career and information support services, e-learning and national infrastructure.
More information:
International News
Kuali Open Library Environment
The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit body developing open source infrastructure for higher education in the US; they are best known for their Coeus project on Financial and Research Administration projects. The Kuali Open Library Environment project is a new project being undertaken by a consortium of eight US universities, which has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for 2010-2011. Kuali OLE aims to create an open-source platform for academic library support, consisting of several modular components; these can be integrated with university enterprise systems without going through vendor-specific interfaces, and without the costs of maintaining an unresponsive monolithic system. There is keen interest in the project from the outside the US, and the UK in particular: the project goal of a service-oriented alternative to existing library systems is aligned with the imperatives of the e-Framework.
More information:
News from Standards Bodies
IMS Global Learning Consortium
... creating standards for the development and adoption of technology-enhanced learning
- IMS recently release "The Learning Impact 2010 Report: High Value Projects that Leading Institutions, Schools, and Governments are Implementing to Improve Access and Affordability to High Quality Educational Experiences". The report identifies high-value repeatable implementation projects based on analysis of the last three years of finalists in the annual IMS Learning Impact Awards.
- IMS updated a public draft of the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specification which allows remote tools and content to be integrated into a Learning Management System (LMS). IMS is pitching this specification as the "mash-up" glue for learning tools.
More information:
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)
... driving the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society
The following specifications are entering public review:
- The State of ODF Interoperability, version 1.0. This report discusses interoperability with respect to the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) and notes specific areas where implementors might focus in order to improve interoperability among ODF-supporting applications. (May 8)
- A mailing list has been formed to explore interest in creating an OASIS technical committee, to advance a Privacy Management Reference Model. The work is intended to serve as a template for developing operational solutions to privacy issues.
- The OASIS Identity in the Cloud technical committee is being formed, to collect and harmonize definitions, terminologies and vocabulary of Cloud Computing, and develop profiles of open standards for identity deployment, provisioning and management.
More information can be found at Oasis (News - March 2010):
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
... developing interoperable technologies
- In March W3C released a new working draft of the HTML5 specification and a "HTML5 differences from HTML4" document which the differences between HTML4 and HTML5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes. HTML 5 is likely to be an important tool for creating rich learning content.
More information:
About ITinteroperability
This newsletter is an output of the Technical Standards and Specifications: Development and Deployment for the Digital Education Revolution (DER) Project - funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).
The Link Affiliates team who contribute to the newsletter are part of the Australian Digital Futures Institute (ADFI) at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). To keep up to date with Link Affiliates activities go to:
Please send feedback and suggestions for news items to: linkaffiliates@usq.edu.au
Unless specifically indicated, the views expressed in this newsletter are the personal opinions of the contributors and may not represent the opinion of the University of Southern Queensland or any associated projects or funding bodies - please refer to the Policies/Disclaimers page.
