Re: OWEA-W3C Next Steps

It's great to hear W3C is offering this support. Getting help with grants and spreading the word is key to helping us reach more people. I have some concerns about moving InterACT wholesale on the W3C site, though. 

Attribution: The folks that have built InterACT to what it is today invested thousands of volunteer hours into creating the courses, building the site, and authoring a companion book. If the content moves off of the main InterACT site, I fear that those contributions might not be recognized, and all of InterACT could be perceived as the work of W3C. I think that could break the spirits of the dedicated people that have put their hearts into InterACT if they feel like their work has been given away. The InterACT brand would need to accompany course content and link back to the main site.

Management: If we have curriculum content in more than one place, management and upkeep will become exponentially more difficult. 

I think there is a way to solve both issues, though. If we keep the main InterACT site as the content hub, but provide a central data source for all of the content that could be addressed via an API, web service, or even just RSS, we could solve the management problem and alleviate some some of the feeling that InterACT is being given away. That would require a little bit of technical help to get something like that setup, but it could be really handy down the road as InterACT could more easily be integrated into learning management systems, and syndicated to various locations in order to reach a broader audience. 

We might also want to consider the peripheral content that could be published on the W3C site that relates to the curriculum. We have case studies that we still need to release, that would probably be inspiring to educators considering how InterACT could help them in the classroom.

I think the W3C's offer is incredibly generous, and will help us further our cause. We just really need get attribution and management sorted out to make sure we do this the right way.

/Aarron Walter
InterACT Lead

On Dec 3, 2010, at 3:55 AM, Doug Schepers wrote:

> Hi, Folks-
> 
> The W3C Team has been busy the past few months, and haven't had the time to devote to OWEA and the WebCraft initiative that we would have liked, but the topic has had increased interest within the W3C Team and management lately.
> 
> We are very interested in next steps, and how we can move ahead.  We were not able to fund a full-time staff member (aka 1 FTE) to commit to this, but we can commit to a few things that we hope will help:
> 
> 1) We will help, however we are able, to find external funding for this, in the form of grant applications and other means, and if funding is found, to take on the work in a more serious way;
> 
> 2) We are willing to put the W3C name on funding proposals or outreach activities, wherever it will help;
> 
> 3) We would like to host the existing curriculum materials, with your permission, and to integrate them wherever possible with our site in the form of links, tutorials, and so forth.
> 
> Does this sound reasonable to you as first steps?  Are there other ways in which W3C can help with the WebCraft Curriculum effort?
> 
> We would also like to hear from you where your priorities lie, and what next steps you would like to engage in.
> 
> Regards-
> -Doug Schepers
> W3C Team Contact, SVG, WebApps, and Web Events WGs