NEWSLETTER | Issue 34 5
Committed to supporting schools and state agencies in the effective usage of technical education standards …
… no matter where they originate.
Technical Standards 101 – Why Is This So Complicated?
Since 1997, there has been a growth in the usage of technical standards for software developers in the education marketplace. Most of these“ ground up” initiatives began out of frustration of software product providers and the end user customers they supported in managing educational information. The blueprints developed by these and subsequent communities were conceived to help simplify the development, delivery, implementation and utilization of software to manage educational institutions and ultimately impact learning.
The Educational Technical Standards 101 resources have been designed to deliver on“ just the fact’ s ma’ am” – a dated but still relevant reference. It is not designed to make the case of a one standard over another but more importantly to describe what technical standards are, who and how we benefit from them, what organizations are developing them, what standard is used for what functionality. 1 Standards are all around us. We have standards for cars, roads, planes, food, but most familiar to all of us who travel electrical outlets – but only within countries! No international technical standard for electrical voltage or outlets. Whether they know it or not, end users and marketplace providers can and should benefit from the usage of technical standards in software products and services. Generally their usage allows for more rapid and cost effective development, greater choice to customers, and the ability to grow an educational ecosystem that allows for the management, delivery and usage of critical information to the right person at the right time. In essence, technical standards usage is critical for numerous stakeholders’ success but ideally provide greater learning success stories.
Press
release / white paper / slide deck / video animation
Just The Facts: On the ground SIF utilization
The Access 4 Learning Community( A4L), previously the SIF Association, has changed its brand name due to the fact that the majority of its members represent schools, regional agencies, and government entities now wear more than just“ data manager” job titles. These practitioners are being asked to oversee, IT, data access, policy development like privacy, educational technology, and even additional operational roles including communications. These members drove the change in brand to indicate the Community’ s broadening mission – Access 4 Learning.
Even with this name change, the A4L Community continues to mature the SIF Specification and Certification Program, and the evolution of SIF Specification 3. x has ushered in new features and functionalities. Even with these facts, some in the educational marketplace attempt to dismiss SIF utilization in the attempts to promote their own work. To address this misinformation, the A4L Community recently developed and disseminated a brief usage survey which was sent to marketplace providers and LEA / SEA data leaders.
Without specific school district identification, care was taken to not“ double count” applications in use in districts. This means that confirmed numbers are substantiated and expected to be well under actual values.
Survey Summary results:
� SIF-Enabled applications are in place and operating in every US state: This represents over 55 million students / 3.9 million teachers
� There are at least 12 state wide implementations utilizing SIF interoperability: This represents over 11 million students in 4,100 school districts with 810,000 teachers
� Non-state wide implementations utilizing SIF interoperability: This represents over 2.5 million students in 1,000 school districts.
Press release / white paper / slide deck / video animation