Re: Proposed W3C priorities for education

I probably find myself in agreement with Pierre, Crispin, and Marcos; 
even if they seem to disagree with each other.

There is no question that the heart of W3C is the core Open Web 
Platform.  And if the Education vertical informs us that we need to 
change that platform, that is of primary importance.

For standards that are limited to a vertical, W3C has also been involved 
in many areas in the past.  We've worked on Open Government Data (for 
government), HLCS vocabularies (for healthcare), streaming media 
requirements (for both general Web as well as specific needs of 
entertainment companies), etc.  There are also other verticals which 
have required Web standards and have found better communities elsewhere 
such as XBRL (accounting), XML impacts on HL7 (health care).

In this task force we are exploring standardization needs for the 
education vertical.  If we end up with concrete ideas that fit well with 
W3C's technology and community we might start some new work in W3C.  If 
we come up with other ideas which seem far from W3C, we might recommend 
that it go elsewhere.  Or if it is in between these two extremes, 
starting in a CG and transitioning later to a WG could make sense.

For now, let's continue the work to brainstorm and narrow down the 
specific recommendations we want to make about educational standards.  
Once we get final recommendations, we can better assess whether it fits 
with W3C (technology and community) and belongs in a WG, or is too far 
afield and better fits elsewhere or in a CG.

Jeff

On 2/18/2015 5:04 AM, DANET PIERRE wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Thank you for your feedbacks.
>
> My opinion on that. I will be a little « pushy".
>
> Open web Platform can, as we say in French, « dormir sur ses 
> lauriers » (To rest on its laurels). Job done, everything is 
> available, let’s see.
>
> In this case, i can tell you, Education will be in proprietary and 
> closed formats in x years.
>
> I understood that as W3C members , we also had in mind other visions 
> around citizenship (Concept of webizen), privacy, accessibility and 
> interoperability.
> And this is the subject. Crispin’s descriptions of previous failures 
> are very interesting.
>
> Community Group is surely a good approach but it gives the impression 
> that you gather experts from a domain in a room, you close the doors, 
> and then you let them discussing a long time. Sometimes, you open the 
> doors and you take one new need for basic technos and again job done. 
> This is just for smiling, i i do respect all community Groups. And may 
> be i’m wrong in my vision on that.
>
> So our idea was more to show to the world that Education is in the 
> vision of a WWW open, accessible,…etc..
>
> To discuss,
>
> Warmly
>
> Pierre
>
> De : Crispin Weston <crispin.weston@saltis.org 
> <mailto:crispin.weston@saltis.org>>
> Répondre à : "crispin.weston@saltis.org 
> <mailto:crispin.weston@saltis.org>" <crispin.weston@saltis.org 
> <mailto:crispin.weston@saltis.org>>
> Date : mercredi 18 février 2015 10:19
> À : Marcos Caceres <marcos@marcosc.com <mailto:marcos@marcosc.com>>
> Cc : "public-most-important-priorities@w3.org 
> <mailto:public-most-important-priorities@w3.org>" 
> <public-most-important-priorities@w3.org 
> <mailto:public-most-important-priorities@w3.org>>, "Michael Champion 
> (MS OPEN TECH)" <michael.champion@microsoft.com 
> <mailto:michael.champion@microsoft.com>>
> Objet : RE: Proposed W3C priorities for education
> Renvoyer - De : <public-most-important-priorities@w3.org 
> <mailto:public-most-important-priorities@w3.org>>
> Renvoyer - Date : mercredi 18 février 2015 10:20
>
> 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 
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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,
>>
>>
>>