Re: Proposed W3C priorities for education

Sarah,

Many thanks for that.

Can you explain me in a simple way how to add content there ? I do not see
how to do it when i’m on the page.

Pierre

Le 19/02/2015 17:29, « Sarah Horton » <shorton@paciellogroup.com> a écrit :

>I added a link on the main w3c most important page [1] to a brainstorming
>page [2] and added some representative content to get things started.
>
>[1] https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2014-2015_Priorities/w3c_most_important

>[2]
>https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2014-2015_Priorities/w3c_most_important/Opportu

>nities_Brainstorm
>
>
>Sarah Horton
>UX Strategy Lead
>The Paciello Group
>603 252-6052 mobile
>
>> On Feb 19, 2015, at 10:46 AM, Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH)
>><Michael.Champion@microsoft.com> wrote:
>>
>> > we also face a chicken-and-egg situation in which innovation is
>>impossible without the interoperability standards required to define the
>>basic infrastructure-content relationships
>>
>> “Standards” essentially mean technologies that you can assume will work
>>for a customer or partner, so you can build solutions without having to
>>build and deliver an entire stack.  That means that standards generally
>>evolve bottom up rather than being created top down.  So it’s not clear
>>to me how standards that would support disruptive innovation in the
>>education sector could emerge except by selection and adaptation of what
>>already exists. How do you suggest W3C could create the pre-requisite
>>standards in this area?  And how would those standards get implemented
>>in widely available software?
>>
>> > More flexible schema languages will allow people to declare, share,
>>reference and map declarations as their commercial interest suggests,
>> > in a way that will allow new semantic meanings to emerge out of
>>market interactions, where new technology has a chance of disrupting the
>>current community orthodoxy.
>>
>> That’s an intriguing idea, and I understand that the keepers of the
>>status quo in various existing industries might not be happy about a new
>>technology making their investments and expertise less valuable.  But
>>these new schema languages don’t yet exist, do they?  Isn’t the first
>>order of business to get people together to invent them, and then worry
>>about how to help them overcome barriers put up by the incumbents?
>>Assuming there is a set of capable and motivated people out there to
>>work on this challenge, I can’t think of a better solution than to work
>>together in a W3C Community Group to build it.
>>
>> > power of the individual to topple established interests and
>>orthodoxies by individual innovation. The principle of the community
>>group is inimical to this principle.
>>
>> I’m not following how W3C Community Groups are stuck in Web 1.0 think
>>and constrained by the status quo.  A CG can be started by 5
>>individuals, W3C membership not required, all that’s required is a
>>commitment to make their documents available under a very permissive
>>copyright and to make royalty-free patent commitments on one’s
>>contributions to the CG. There’s nothing that stakeholders with
>>antithetical business models can do to stop a CG from collaborating,
>>publishing, and evangelizing its work, yet those activities benefit from
>>exposure to the broad W3C community and alignment with W3C’s “brand.”
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Crispin Weston [mailto:crispin.weston@saltis.org]
>> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 2:06 AM
>> To: DANET PIERRE; Sarah Horton
>> Cc: Jeff Jaffe; Marcos Caceres; Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH);
>>public-most-important-priorities@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: Proposed W3C priorities for education
>>
>> I agree with Pierre and Sarah that it might be helpful to address the
>>education vertical with a separate reflector and wiki.
>>
>> At the same time, this should not be used to avoid the challenge from
>>other members of the Core Group. So I thought it might be useful if I
>>restated our argument (originally written for an education audience) in
>>more general terms.
>>
>> It seems to me that the the Core Group's perception of its own scope is
>>too narrow. One could talk about thinking inside and out of the box; or
>>whether employees of ExxonMobil see themselves as working for an oil
>>company or an energy company. In respect of W3C, I think it is about
>>perceiving whether the end goal is about browsers being able to load and
>>process quickly and efficiently online content of the right sort, or
>>whether it is about supporting connectivity more generally. People talk
>>about Web 1.0 as being about connecting and distributing documents, Web
>>2.0 as being about connecting people, and Web 3.0 as being about
>>connecting concepts and data - yet it seems to me from our discussion
>>that the CG is thinking of its role purely in terms of Web 1.0.
>>
>> The problem from an education point of view (and others that I am aware
>>of, like public health) is not a technical problem but a semantic
>>problem. The current recognized solution to this problem is to form a
>>community group. I agree that this might work in many situations -
>>however, there are many in which it does not.
>>
>> For a successful non-W3C example, take schema.org: a collaboration of
>>the 4 top search engines, which have come together to achieve a degree
>>of standardization in the semantics of microdata in their common
>>interest. The base technology is mature, the key stakeholders are clear,
>>their interests coincide: the model works.
>>
>> But many sectors are not like that at all. In education, the market has
>>not yet emerged, the technology does not exist, the key stakeholders
>>have business models which are largely antagonistic to the emergence of
>>the new technology. The power of such antagonistic interests is often
>>particularly hard to dislodge in public sector markets, where public
>>tendering processes tend to re-enforce established models of operating.
>>Education has never been short of standards-talking-shops - but the
>>proof of the pudding is in the eating and in twenty years, the model has
>>produced nothing of any significance (even SCORM, which in our paper is
>>referenced as the best effort to date, was only created by top-down
>>action by the US DoD). In public health, the UK government spent the
>>last fifteen years engaged is a massively expensive and totally
>>disastrous attempt to harmonize the systems for personal healthcare
>>records across our state-run national health system. The basic problem
>>was not that there was any special requirement for one system rather
>>than many. The problem was the lack of semantic interoperability.
>>
>> The sociological problem was best expressed, to my mind, by Niccolo
>>Machiavelli in The Prince: "And let it be noted that there is no more
>>delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more
>>doubtful in its success, than to set up as the leader in the
>>introduction of changes.  For he who innovates will have for his enemies
>>all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only
>>lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new.''
>>
>> This is the reason why standards organisations operating the community
>>group model often inhibit innovation rather than encouraging it - which
>>is a particular problem because, for reasons outlined in our paper, we
>>also face a chicken-and-egg situation in which innovation is impossible
>>without the interoperability standards required to define the basic
>>infrastructure-content relationships that are fundamental to so many
>>markets (railways, recorded music, electrical appliances, software...).
>>You get together a community of horse-drawn carriage drivers and ask
>>them to design the next form of transport and you get a horse-drawn
>>carriage with a more comfortable driving seat. You set up a community of
>>publishing houses and ask them to design the next big thing for
>>education and you get... a digital textbook format. Did you expect
>>anything else?
>>
>> If W3C sees itself as supporting innovation in a connected world, then
>>this is one of its most important challenges, in my view. The solution
>>that we proposed in our paper was to look at the process of establishing
>>new sorts of consensus in the light of a technical, social networking
>>problem. More flexible schema languages will allow people to declare,
>>share, reference and map declarations as their commercial interest
>>suggests, in a way that will allow new semantic meanings to emerge out
>>of market interactions, where new technology has a chance of disrupting
>>the current community orthodoxy. Not where new market opportunities can
>>effectively be vetoed current stakeholders. The essential dynamic of the
>>Western liberal model (which the web seeks, surely, to super-charge)
>>lies in the power of the individual to topple established interests and
>>orthodoxies by individual innovation. The principle of the community
>>group is inimical to this principle.
>>
>> Our paper also raised the question of data sharing and privacy -
>>another critical problem for a connected world which the Core Group
>>ought in my view to be addressing as a matter of urgency.
>>
>> Crispin.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 18 February 2015, DANET PIERRE <pdanet@hachette-livre.fr> wrote:
>>
>> I do agree but we need to be educated on the use of this wiki..
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> Le 18/02/2015 15:33, « Sarah Horton » <shorton@paciellogroup.com> a
>>écrit :
>>
>> My impression is that there are opportunities to expand the current
>> platform that would benefit all areas and opportunities to address the
>> education vertical specifically.
>>
>> On the subject of brainstorming, I seem to remember some mention of a
>> wiki page for this brainstorming activity? That would be helpful for
>> sharing, building on, and keeping track of ideas.
>>
>> Best,
>> Sarah
>>
>> Sarah Horton
>> UX Strategy Lead
>> The Paciello Group
>> 603 252-6052 mobile
>>
>> On Feb 18, 2015, at 8:53 AM, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>>
>> 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, let¹s
>> 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. Crispin¹s 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 i¹m 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,Šetc..
>>
>> To discuss,
>>
>> Warmly
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> De : Crispin Weston <crispin.weston@saltis.org>
>> Répondre à : "crispin.weston@saltis.org" <crispin.weston@saltis.org>
>> Date : mercredi 18 février 2015 10:19
>> À : Marcos Caceres <marcos@marcosc.com>
>> Cc : "public-most-important-priorities@w3.org"
>> <public-most-important-priorities@w3.org>, "Michael Champion (MS OPEN
>> TECH)" <michael.champion@microsoft.com>
>> Objet : RE: Proposed W3C priorities for education
>> Renvoyer - De : <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> 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-el

>> ement-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,
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 19 February 2015 16:36:59 UTC