[seul-edu] Re: home schooler, and EDUML-compliant software

[Bruno Vernier <vernier@vc.bc.ca>]

On Sun, Nov 21, 1999 at 10:10:30PM -0600, Adam Cody wrote:
>   How well would the EDUML project work in laying out the framework of
> content formating and application standards for home school settings and
> open source?

From the beginning, we set out to design EDUML to be a universal XML for 
education.  Of the other 2 efforts in this area, 

SIF: is limited to North American K-12 schools and specifically to 
sharing data coming from officially compliant commercial software.  

IMS: is limited to completely computer-based distance education commercial
systems.

We took into consideration internationalisation and the wide variety ways
people manage educational data around the world.  As a principal author of
the spec, I have a particular interest in self-paced education (of which
home-schooling is usually a subset) ; my dream is to participate in building a
management tool that allows students (defined as human beings who want and/or
need to learn something) and their stakeholders to have a portal (a
personalized home page showing exactly what they have achieved and what they
still have to achieve to reach their goal, and direct links to the things
they need to do right now to work on reaching these goals efficiently;
and this could be anything from completely traditional paper-based graded
activities to completely ungraded exploration of the universe :-) 

>  Home school really being nothing more than the "course" can be
...
> Non-traditional settings wouldn't need a number of
> features a traditional school would have; ex. resource management.

The distinction between "home school" and "distance education" and
"self-paced learning centres" and "virtual schools" is practically
disappearing.  Resource management is critical though not quite the same way
(yet) as for traditional structured classroom-based education.  

A simple example:  self-paced learners often need books from a library,
microscopes, videos, museaum visits, interviews with mentors, work
experience placements (apprenticeships), counselling chats, computers and
access to networks, software and databases.  

On that note, Georges Khaznadar wrote PHYSML to complement EDUML for 
managing physics equipment inventory, usage and connection to curriculum.

Adam, in the short time since you joined the list, you have been encouraging
to me:  You have independently confirmed the flaws in IMS, and reaffirmed
the fundamental importance of content over delivery. Furthermore, your
exhortation to universality in our educational effort is nice to hear even if
I don't think you have anything to worry about here on seul-edu :-)

Thank you,

Bruno