Re: Proposed W3C priorities for education

- Create a W3C account if you don't already have one [1]
- Go to the brainstorm page [2]
- Log in with your W3C credentials (login link in the top right corner)
- Select the Edit tab
- Add content

There should be a formatting toolbar you can use with a help option that shows how to enter markup to get headings and lists and such. But you can also just enter content and don't worry about formatting. 

I also found the mediawiki help documentation to be useful. [3] I find the wiki markup difficult to decipher without the help documents. 

[1] https://www.w3.org/accounts/request
[2] https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2014-2015_Priorities/w3c_most_important/Opportunities_Brainstorm
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents


Sarah Horton
UX Strategy Lead
The Paciello Group
603 252-6052 mobile

> On Feb 19, 2015, at 11:36 AM, DANET PIERRE <PDANET@hachette-livre.fr> wrote:
> 
> 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 16:46:19 UTC