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TECHNICAL STANDARDS FOR THE DIGITAL EDUCATION REVOLUTION NEWSLETTER
December 2009: Issue 3

ITinteroperability is a newsletter aimed at informing you about technical, standards and interoperability projects pertinent to education in Australia. It includes news items on local interoperability projects as well as summarising activity in international standards bodies relevant to education in Australia.

New editions of ITinteroperability are published once every two months.

If you wish to subscribe to this newsletter, please send a blank, plain text email to: join-itint@edna.edu.au

Australian News

IDEA10 Reminder

IDEA10 Learning futures: technology challenges due to take place at The Sebel Albert Park Melbourne Conference and Events Centre from Wednesday 10 March to Friday 12 March 2010 is now open for registration. Early Bird registrations close on 5 February so don't delay in taking advantage of this discounted rate especially with the Christmas holidays in between!

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Learning Impact Awards (LIAs) to shine at IDEA10

The IMS GLC Learning Impact Award Australian Regional Finals are once again part of the IDEA10 program. The top three finalists will automatically qualify for the international IMS GLC Learning Impact 2010 Awards to be held at Long Beach, California 17-20 May 2010. Submissions are being accepted for the Australian Regional Finals and further information can be found at the IDEA10 website. You do not need to be an IMS member to enter. Entry enquiries can be sent to - ideaconference@usq.edu.au

More information:


VET e-Portfolio Showcase Report

More than 140 teachers, trainers, managers and ICT professionals attended the inaugural VET E-portfolios Showcase 09 (VES09) in Melbourne in October, either at the actual event or by participating in free online sessions, to engage with a range of highly regarded e-portfolio researchers, leaders and practitioners. E-portfolios are becoming increasingly popular around the world as a tool to enhance learning and assist with personal career development.

Presentations covered a wide range of topics including learner identity, the use of Web 2.0 functionality, regional e-portfolios and supporting communities of practice. Plenary presentations were streamed live from VES09 and the recordings are now available online.

The VET E-portfolio Showcase was hosted by the VET sector's national e-learning strategy, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework). The Framework funds a national E-portfolio business activity, and also released the VET E-portfolio Roadmap earlier this year.

More information:

e-Research Australasia Report

This year's eResearch Australasia conference was held in Sydney, November 9-13. The conference once again provided the opportunity for e-research practitioners from Australia and New Zealand, as well as international guests, to catch up with the latest trends and thinking in e-research. Beyond the three days of conference presentations, the conference also included a series of workshops, dealing with topics such as data mining, tools for the social sciences, project management, and using ARCS and ANDS services in research.

A major focus of this year's conference was data visualisation. There were several presentations on both innovative data visualisation approaches, and on the underlying theoretical issues in data visualisation. The conference also initiated an annual visualisation challenge, focusing on a particular theme. This year, inevitably, the theme was the financial markets.

More information:

Digital Education Revolution research report findings

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) published a report at the end of October entitled "Listening to Students’ and Educators’ Voices: Research Findings". Co-authored by Dr. Kathryn Moyle and Dr. Susanne Owen, this is a comprehensive report compiled from more than 1,000 primary, secondary, university and VET students about the impact information and communication technologies have on learning.

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JISC Business Case for Standards and the Australian Context

In November, JISC released a paper entitled 'Assessing the Business Case for Standards: An introduction for strategy planning and resourcing committees'. This paper highlights the value of using standards and interoperability approaches within education. It also explores how best to approach standards in terms of generic versus education specific and how to decide where standards are relevant. It gives some examples of adding business value through using standards to ensure systems join up, ( joining up course catalogue and student records facilitates course viability assessment and course planning). While the arguments in the paper tend to focus on an institutional view, there are approaches documented that can be adapted for a national approach to standards development and use within Australian education. "Standards codify the boring so exciting things can happen on top of them" is a useful way to approach investment in technical standards work.

More information:

News from Standards Bodies

IMS Global Learning Consortium

... creating standards for the development and adoption of technology-enhanced learning

More information:


NISO (National Information Standards Organisation)

information industry standards ... where communities are able to collaborate on mutually accepted standards
  • NISO has announced a new working group, which will be defining best practices for perfecting single-sign-on (SSO) authentication to achieve seamless item-level linking through SSO technologies in a networked information environment

More information:


OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)

... driving the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society

More information:


W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

... developing interoperable technologies
  • W3C announced a new version of a standard for representing knowledge on the Web. OWL 2, part of W3C's Semantic Web toolkit, allows people to capture their knowledge about a particular domain (say, energy or medicine) and then use tools to manage information, search through it, and learn more from it. Furthermore, as an open standard based on Web technology, it lowers the cost of merging knowledge from multiple domains
  • The W3C Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group is chartered to develop standard APIs for client-side Web Application development. They have released updates to a bunch of Working Drafts of specifications that enhance the open Web platform as a runtime environment for full-featured applications:
    • Web Sockets API for communication between a Web application and a remote host
    • Web Storage for Web applications to store key-value data on the client side
      • Web Database for Web applications to store data in client-side databases that can be queried using a variant of SQL
      • Web Workers for enabling thread-like operations (using message passing) in Web applications, so that certain application tasks can be run in parallel
      • Server-Sent Events for a Web application to open an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server
    • The World Wide Web Foundation was launched with W3C's support in September 2008. It focuses on advancing the Web as a medium that empowers people to make positive social and economic change. Web Foundation's first two projects will help people to better leverage the Web to support agriculture in near-desert environments in Africa and empowering youth in inner-city centres by teaching them how to create Web content

More information:


Standards Australia

... co-ordinating Australian standardisation activities
  • Standards Australia has further refined its New Business Model. From the next financial year it will offer two pathways:
    • submit project proposals seeking Standards Australia financial support for work such as international adoptions. The budget for this is finite and funding will be subject to priority setting; or
    • develop standards under customised and user pay pathways for specific needs and for projects failing to secure Standards Australia funding. For more information on the Business Model contact Kareen Riley Takos email: kareen.rileytakos@standards.org.au
  • IT-019 "Computer Applications - Information and Documentation" and IT-019-01 "Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training": Standards Australia will continue to provide the liaison to international committees such as ISOTC46 and SC36 with Project Manager LoAnne Lam continuing to support Committee Members on International Activities
  • Standards Australia has initiated discussions with stakeholders for hosting the meeting for ISO/TC46 Information and Documentation and its subcommittees in Sydney, Australia on 2-6 May 2011. Sponsorship to host the meetings is currently being sought. For further information on sponsorship opportunities, please contact LoAnne Lam email: loanne.lam@standards.org.au

More information:


About ITinteroperability

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the growing subscribers for their interest and wish everyone an enjoyable festive season. If you have any related news pertinent to this space please do not hesitate to send us feedback (as itemised below).

This newsletter is an output of the Technical Standards and Specifications: Development and Deployment for the Digital Education Revolution (DER) Project - funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).

The Link Affiliates team who contribute to the newsletter are part of the Australian Digital Futures Institute (ADFI) at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). To keep up to date with Link Affiliates activities go to:

Please send feedback and suggestions for news items to: linkaffiliates@usq.edu.au


Unless specifically indicated, the views expressed in this newsletter are the personal opinions of the contributors and may not represent the opinion of the University of Southern Queensland or any associated projects or funding bodies - please refer to the Policies/Disclaimers page.


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