RE: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

Re:

  *   We need to come up with the list of things that we want to add to 3.1 to create the finalized EPUB for Education specification.

It’s sounding more and more as if “things to add to 3.1” are actually “things for the CG to address in the context of 3.1.1 or 3.2,” and what we have called the “EPUB for Education specification” is morphing into a best practices/authoring/implementation advice document.

Rick, we missed you on the call yesterday. There was some discussion of the role of BISG, and I pointed out that you now chair the WG in BISG that would take this up. I also pointed out that such a document is smack dab in the BISG wheelhouse, but that BISG is a specifically US-based organization (and there are sister organizations in many countries). The practical way to get such a document done is for the BISG EPUB for Education WG to get revved back up and do it (at the appropriate time), but that will result in a BISG publication. There was then discussion of whether that should perhaps provide the basis for a Note to be done by the CG, which could be done from a more international perspective given the W3Cs international scope. Of course the CG EPUB for Education WG could just do that in the first place, though I think BISG genuinely has an interest in doing that as part of its mission, and the CG has a lot of irons in the fire and may not have the bandwidth to do it (but actually it just requires the right folks in the EPUB for Education TF in the CG to roll up our sleeves and do it—again, when the time is right).

Your thoughts?

--Bill K

Bill Kasdorf

VP and Principal Consultant | Apex CoVantage

p:

734-904-6252  m:   734-904-6252

ISNI: http://isni.org/isni/0000000116490786

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786?lang=en>


From: Matt Garrish [mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2017 3:21 PM
To: 'Johnson, Rick'; 'Rachel Comerford'; Bill Kasdorf
Cc: 'Ric Wright'; 'Garth Conboy'; 'W3C Publishing Business Group'; 'Dave Cramer'
Subject: RE: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

> Specifics around additions to the EPUB 3.1 specification

I'm struggling with this piece. Edupub is an implementation of epub 3; it doesn't add anything to it.

In particular, the future of annotations, distributable objects and scriptable components belongs with the EPUB CG, as those were never specifically being developed by the edupub group. They can all be brought to a close one way or the other independent of the edupub specification. All edupub did was add reading system support requirements so that all edupub RSes would be the same.

Similarly, the education semantics for epub:type are already in the structural semantics vocabulary (albeit with draft labels). And the education properties from schema.org don't belong in the core, IMO. Accessibility is already handled.

Is there anything that moves?

Matt

From: Johnson, Rick [mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com]
Sent: July 9, 2017 6:04 PM
To: Rachel Comerford <rachel.comerford@macmillan.com<mailto:rachel.comerford@macmillan.com>>; Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>>
Cc: Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>>; Ric Wright <rkwright@geofx.com<mailto:rkwright@geofx.com>>; Garth Conboy <garth@google.com<mailto:garth@google.com>>; W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>; Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

Basically, here is where my head is on this:

  *   We have EPUB 3.1 in the W3C, and a group to maintain it
  *   We want to have some specific guidance on how to best use EPUB within the ed-tech marketplace
  *   This guidance should take the form of starting with EPUB 3.1, and figuring out what is the minimum we want to add (we don’t want to create something that will not be maintained, or will fork the work going on with 3.1)
  *   These additions will come from three areas:

     *   Specifics around outcome returns, and LTI launches, to be coordinated with IMS
     *   Specifics around authoring best practices, to be coordinated with BISG
     *   Specifics around additions to the EPUB 3.1 specification, to be coordinated with the community group at W3C (responsible for epub 3.1 maintenance)

  *   We need to come up with the list of things that we want to add to 3.1 to create the finalized EPUB for Education specification.


-Rick

From: Rachel Comerford <rachel.comerford@macmillan.com<mailto:rachel.comerford@macmillan.com>>
Date: Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 10:20 AM
To: Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>>
Cc: "Johnson, Rick" <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>>, Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>>, Ric Wright <rkwright@geofx.com<mailto:rkwright@geofx.com>>, Garth Conboy <garth@google.com<mailto:garth@google.com>>, W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>, Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

This plays into a larger question I had about how these groups interplay with each other...

I like Rick's proposal for consolidation.  As a next step for the epub for education sub group in the CG, I think we should examine the elements of the spec and break out what elements need to go where. We can document this on the wiki. (Rather than outline them over email with is kind of brutal.)

Bill, this leaves room for BISG to continue down the path of authoring guides but I'd like to see some coordination btwn the authoring guides and the IMS work for messaging about ebook accessibility to the wider educational community.

I'm involved in all three of these groups, as are a few others on this chain.

So:

w3c - epub for education consolidation work; spec
BISG - authoring guidelines
IMS - ebook/accessibility education, plain language interpretations for non-technical/no-publishing professional audience


Thoughts on that breakdown?
R

Rachel Comerford | Director of Content Standards | T 212.576.9433

Macmillan Learning

On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 12:00 PM, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>> wrote:
So are you suggesting that all these things shouldn’t be mentioned in authoring guidance?

Or should the authoring guidance move, for example, to BISG, which often publishes Best Practices types of guidance?

Bill Kasdorf

VP and Principal Consultant | Apex CoVantage

p:

734-904-6252<tel:(734)%20904-6252>  m:   734-904-6252<tel:(734)%20904-6252>

ISNI: http://isni.org/isni/0000000116490786

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786?lang=en>


From: Johnson, Rick [mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2017 11:50 AM
To: Matt Garrish; 'Ric Wright'; 'Garth Conboy'
Cc: 'W3C Publishing Business Group'; 'Dave Cramer'; 'Rachel Comerford'
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

My view:  With the assumption that we have had an edit thru the document to align it with 3.1, and with the assumption that section 6 (IMS stuff) is removed, I want to ask each of the remaining sections and levels these questions:
-Is what is being referenced a part of EPUB 3.1?  If yes, then we remove it.  If no, then we ask is there any existing implementations (or public plans to implement)?  If no, then we remove it.

With that filter, looking at http://idpf.org/edupub we would drop open annotations, scriptable components, and distributable objects.

Looking at http://www.idpf.org/epub/profiles/edu/spec/ that would change or remove sections 1.5, 2.1, 2.2, 3.3,  3.4, 5, 6, 8.3, 9, and 10

-Rick


From: Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>>
Date: Monday, June 26, 2017 at 8:59 AM
To: "Johnson, Rick" <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>>, 'Ric Wright' <rkwright@geofx.com<mailto:rkwright@geofx.com>>, 'Garth Conboy' <garth@google.com<mailto:garth@google.com>>
Cc: 'W3C Publishing Business Group' <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>, Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>, Rachel Comerford <rachel.comerford@macmillan.com<mailto:rachel.comerford@macmillan.com>>
Subject: RE: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

I believe the only incompatibility between 3.1 and this specification is with the refines attribute. The audience and educationalAlignment properties relied on it, so either their expressiveness has to be reduced to a single property or the metadata has to move to an external record format.

If we recommend following the accessibility specification, there are probably some bits that can be dropped (e.g., accessibility metadata and pagination).

Matt

From: Johnson, Rick [mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com]
Sent: June 26, 2017 8:35 AM
To: Ric Wright <rkwright@geofx.com<mailto:rkwright@geofx.com>>; Garth Conboy <garth@google.com<mailto:garth@google.com>>; Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>>
Cc: W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>; Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>; Rachel Comerford <rachel.comerford@macmillan.com<mailto:rachel.comerford@macmillan.com>>
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

Adding Dave/Rachel for the CG aspect.

In general, I agree with this, but I believe there needs to be another pass thru the document to align with the work done since it was created (specifically 3.1 and accessibility 1.0), and perhaps to remove some things that in hindsight we may not want to formalize until sometime after wp/pwp (or is that now wpub and pk-wpub?).

-Rick

From: Ric Wright <rkwright@geofx.com<mailto:rkwright@geofx.com>>
Date: Monday, June 26, 2017 at 8:22 AM
To: Garth Conboy <garth@google.com<mailto:garth@google.com>>, Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>>
Cc: "Johnson, Rick" <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>>, W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

+1

From: Garth Conboy <garth@google.com<mailto:garth@google.com>>
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at 9:51 AM
To: Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>>
Cc: "Johnson, Rick" <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>>, W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal
Resent-From: <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 14:51:39 +0000

Per usual, +1 to Matt's idea.

Best,
   Garth

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 8:00 PM, Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com<mailto:matt.garrish@gmail.com>> wrote:
Just curious, but was any thought given to keeping the document intact but dropping from a profile/specification to authoring guidance?

If we strip out the reading system requirements and IMS integration, and reword the RFC language to recommendations, what remains could conceivably be published as something like "EPUB Publishing Guidelines for Education" (or whatever).

If everything gets scattered, it only seems to make it that much harder for anyone to piece back together. Plus, I'm not sure how much material has another home (e.g., the required sectioning isn't really a fit for the accessibility specification or techniques).

A thought anyway, although maybe this belongs in the CG now.

Matt

From: Johnson, Rick [mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>]
Sent: May 6, 2017 12:49 PM
To: public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Subject: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

All,

For discussion on Tuesday’s business group call:

After discussions among the steering committee, and with the community group chairs, and with IMS Global board members and staff, I would like to make this proposal for a path forward for the EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) specification:

EDUPUB/EPUB for Education Proposal
(referencing the current draft at http://www.idpf.org/epub/profiles/edu/spec/ )

Consolidate work around the EPUB 3.1 specification:
All accessibility work, the ‘Education Document Models’ (section 3), Annotations (section 9), Navigation (section 7), and the inclusion of scriptable components (section 5) or distributable objects (section 10) are the purview of, and stated to align with the W3C work on EPUB and future iterations of EPUB.  In short, we tell people to use EPUB 3.1, and future versions for these items.  The work done for EDUPUB is deprecated in favor of EPUB 3.1 and future versions.  This includes the ‘Content Structure’ details in section 4 (in essence, the content structure details and associated metadata defined in Accessibility 1.0 are all that will be made normative).

The ‘Publication Metadata’ (section 8 and the related vocabulary)) have value to be made normative for educational use, and should be given to the CG to finalize as a set of specifications for educational use of EPUB 3.1.  Attention should be given to harmonizing this work with other W3C investigations, such as is illustrated in the comment at https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/846#issuecomment-290399200.  Where it makes sense, these can be rolled into a 3.1.x release. Special care should be drawn to the deprecation of epub type and the move to role in a 3.1.x release.

Dealing with (section 6) outcome results flowing back to a grade book, and integration with educational systems needing interoperability (such as LTI) are not the purview of a horizontally focused organization (like the W3C), and should be given over to a vertically focused organization (like IMS Global) to standardize any needed best practices and certification procedures.  We should allow them to have the freedom to use the EDUPUB name for that set of specifications, if they so desire.



-Rick