There is always talk about open source technologies and how they will become the Microsoft killers. How Linux will ultimately defeat Windows in the desktop environment as people begin to get the open source concept, the skills develop and the ROI and TCO issues are fully fleshed out. It may happen; it just isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
I think a better discussion is around open standards. In the education world, there are many standards bodies that work diligently to create standards of interoperability, classification, taxonomy, etc. SIF, SCORM, IMS, Dublin Core are examples of standards bodies that have made good progress and actually have fairly mature standards that are open to the general public.
While standards have had a slow go of it, especially in the U.S., recent events suggest that they may be gaining traction. Language around SIF is being seen in many RFP’s issued by educational agencies. The USDOE’s national technology plan even calls for it directly. Instructional management systems are aligning to SCORM and IMS as a method to classify and distribute content. Digital learning objects, just in their infancy, are beginning to see standards that are applicable in the Dublin Core and SCORM that make their use a practical reality.
Industry vendors are also showing some surprising moves. Microsoft recently capitulated and opened up its Office document formats. Microsoft is also aligning its educational software to these recognized standards as well. Independent vendors providing education solutions and products are jumping on the bandwagon as well. All are good signs that we are moving towards an environment of a K-12 ecosystem or what many refer to as a services oriented architecture.
Let’s face it: There is no one vendor or system out there that has all of the best products or solutions for the education space. It is a highly fractured marketplace with many niche vendors providing many different products and solutions that all fit different needs. Some are open source, many are built on Microsoft technologies and there are some being built in the J2EE environments. Different operating systems, different architectures and different communication systems all guarantee that we will likely never see true interoperability between vendor applications in my lifetime.
But we should be able to get everyone to agree on a set of standards that all products can adhere to for classification of education data points. Why should we be able to do that? It offers real benefits for both education clients and vendors. It gives clients the ability to build an infrastructure around standards, not proprietary technologies. It allows clients to choose products and solutions based on their merits, not their technology or fit with existing systems.
For vendors, the competition then focuses on the product or solution itself, not the technology. The real competition becomes focused on the capabilities of the product, the ease of use, the fit to the needs of the industry, etc. Vendors make better products and clients get more flexible service oriented architectures and they both win in the end. An important point here is that the vendor with the best products wins. When you implement standards, the technology platform becomes a consumer choice. Who cares if it is open source, Microsoft, Linux or Unix? It doesn’t matter because the technology uses the standards to talk to other technologies. The clients will buy according to their needs, their skills and their budgets. The real battle then comes down to who has the best product that most closely fits the client needs.
So how do we get open standards moving at an accelerated pace? I don’t think that we can continue to rely on the process in place today. There needs to be some investment and direction from a larger body that can help propel the process forward. I think that some steps have to be taken to set the stage. Almost all states and districts are now incorporating curriculum standards into their educational processes. These standards need to be merged together into a set of national curriculum standards that represent a challenging curriculum for students.
With a national set of standards, standards for the classification and sequencing of digital learning objects can be finalized, standards for the classification of instructional content can be finalized, standards for benchmark assessments can be finalized and a schema based on an open communication standard, such as XML, can be developed and adopted by all. This isn’t going to happen in today’s environment without some assistance and intervention from national organizations. ISTE, CoSN, SETDA, CCSSO, national education bodies and the USDOE are all going to have make a rallying cry and begin to demand of vendors that standards be developed and adhered to within their products. We also will need investment in the form of grants.
Only then will we see progress being made that truly supports our most precious resource, children, and our economic future in the years ahead.
