RE: Proposed W3C priorities for education

Thank you Marcos.

I understand what you are both saying about the Core Group, in which I am not myself participating. However, I am now somewhat confused about what the Education Group is meant to be doing.

My paper was intended for the Education Group, which appears to share a mailing list with the Core Group. I assumed that the existence of this group presupposes that W3C is interested in getting involved in the education vertical. I understood that the scope of the group was to look at what education needs from the web. If I was wrong in that and the scope of the Education Group is just to bring recommendations for modifications to the underlying Web Platform, then, as you suggest, it seems unlikely to me that it has anything of substance to contribute. Or maybe we just have a case of crossed wires?





On 18 February 2015, Marcos Caceres <marcos@marcosc.com> wrote:
> Hi Crispin,
> 
> To be clear, I'm not trying to discourage you, or anyone in the Edu. community, from participating. The CG model really does work. For inspiration, please see how the responsive images community group leveraged the W3C's CG standardization model to add some great new features to HTML5 (of which every sector of society will greatly benefit, particularly the education sector - which makes extensive use of visual media):
> 
> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/how-a-new-html-element-will-make-the-web-faster/>
> 
> Please see this document that the CG put together outlining how HTML5 was failing the developer community - and how standardized solutions were insufficient:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/respimg-usecases/>
> 
> As a community, we proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there was a huge problem and something needed to be done in the Web Platform. As a result, we were able to convince browser vendors and the W3C to make changes to the web platform to address our use cases.
> 
> I again want to encourage you to take the same approach. Come back showing clearly limitations of what "you CANNOT do" (and not what you would like to do - which is what you currently have).
> 
> Hope that helps!
> 
> 
> On February 18, 2015 at 4:47:22 PM, Marcos Caceres (<marcos@marcosc.com>) wrote:
> > > Hi Crispin,
> > > 
> > I'd like to echo what Michael said. There doesn't appear to be
> > any need for new foundational work to be done as part of what you
> > described below: that is, nothing that can't be done with HTML5/CSS/Web
> > APIs, RDFa, XML, etc. already. The challenges you outline below
> > are very (education) domain-specific, which is fine, but not
> > anything the web platform can really help with (apart from providing
> > the formats and protocols onto which you can standardize something
> > that helps solve the problems you outline).
> > 
> > As such, I would also strongly urge you to form a community group
> > (CG) and begin the work you propose there (for the IPR reasons
> > Michael mentioned) and so you can find limitations in practice.
> > If, as part of that work, the CG discovers they can't do something
> > with HTML5/CSS/Web APIs, RDFa, XML, etc., then we can look at
> > addressing that as part of a larger standardization process.
> > 
> > My concern with doing this work as part of the W3C "priorities"
> > banner is that it might distract us from finding more immediate
> > limitations in the Web Platform. So far, nothing has been presented
> > that would require amendments to HTML5/CSS/Web APIs, RDFa,
> > XML, etc. within the context of education. Hence, it would be
> > best for you to begin standardization of the things you describe
> > below within the W3C's Community Groups framework, together
> > with members of the education community, and see how far you get
> > before you all hit limitations (if any!). If you don't hit any,
> > then we are golden :) Otherwise, please do bring them back to the
> > priorities list for evaluation so we have a better idea what we
> > need to add/fix.
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > 
> 
>