I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In general
and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish conventions
for things like this without the need for a formal standards process. I'm
asserting this one as a test case.
*Background:*
An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
Kindergarten to 12th grade.
The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how to
encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people developing
tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy for grade
level.
TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
become interesting.
*Proposal:*
So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a lot
of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and the
URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from the
example above.
*Custodianship:*
You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that domain
to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed to be the
custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention gains a
modicum of traction).
The URLs are, of course, different.
ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions rooted
someplace on the web as you describe.
My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you add
some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to add
more stuff to that domain. Eg:
Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just indicating
what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong with
solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived URL,
why wouldn't we all just use that?
On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
> Hi All:
> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
> *Background:*
> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how to
> encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people developing
> tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy for grade
> level.
> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
> become interesting.
> *Proposal:*
> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a lot
> of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and the
> URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from the
> example above.
> *Custodianship:*
> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed to
> be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
> gains a modicum of traction).
> The URLs are, of course, different.
> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
> from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
> they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level framework
as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this might be
helpful.
Thanks
Simon
On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com> wrote:
> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions rooted
> someplace on the web as you describe.
> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you add
> some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to add
> more stuff to that domain. Eg:
> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong with
> solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived URL,
> why wouldn't we all just use that?
> Best,
> Steve
> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>> Hi All:
>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
>> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
>> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>> *Background:*
>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how
>> to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>> for grade level.
>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>> become interesting.
>> *Proposal:*
>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a lot
>> of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and the
>> URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from the
>> example above.
>> *Custodianship:*
>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed to
>> be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>> gains a modicum of traction).
>> The URLs are, of course, different.
>> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
>> from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
>> they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
>> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
>> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to
represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also
to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2
URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be an
intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as a
whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original
proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org" which
I think is a weakness.
The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put
into this:
Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of
"PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high
school choices they made.
On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level framework
> as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this might be
> helpful.
> Thanks
> Simon
> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com> wrote:
>> Hey Brandt,
>> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions rooted
>> someplace on the web as you describe.
>> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you
>> add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to
>> add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
>> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
>> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
>> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong with
>> solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived URL,
>> why wouldn't we all just use that?
>> Best,
>> Steve
>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>>> Hi All:
>>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
>>> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
>>> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>>> *Background:*
>>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how
>>> to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>>> for grade level.
>>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>>> become interesting.
>>> *Proposal:*
>>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a
>>> lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and
>>> the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from
>>> the example above.
>>> *Custodianship:*
>>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed
>>> to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>>> gains a modicum of traction).
>>> The URLs are, of course, different.
>>> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
>>> from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
>>> they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
>>> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
>>> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
> To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to
> represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also
> to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2
> URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
> Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be
> an intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as
> a whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original
> proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org"
> which I think is a weakness.
> The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put
> into this:
> Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of
> "PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high
> school choices they made.
> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level framework
>> as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this might be
>> helpful.
>> Thanks
>> Simon
>> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com> wrote:
>>> Hey Brandt,
>>> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions
>>> rooted someplace on the web as you describe.
>>> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you
>>> add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to
>>> add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
>>> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
>>> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
>>> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong
>>> with solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived
>>> URL, why wouldn't we all just use that?
>>> Best,
>>> Steve
>>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>>>> Hi All:
>>>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>>>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
>>>> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
>>>> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>>>> *Background:*
>>>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>>>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>>>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>>>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>>>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>>>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>>>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>>>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>>>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>>>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how
>>>> to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>>>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>>>> for grade level.
>>>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>>>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>>>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>>>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>>>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>>>> become interesting.
>>>> *Proposal:*
>>>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a
>>>> lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>>>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>>>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>>>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>>>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and
>>>> the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from
>>>> the example above.
>>>> *Custodianship:*
>>>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>>>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed
>>>> to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>>>> gains a modicum of traction).
>>>> The URLs are, of course, different.
>>>> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
>>>> from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
>>>> they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
>>>> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
>>>> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
> On 6 November 2012 19:40, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>> To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to
>> represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also
>> to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2
>> URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
>> Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be
>> an intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as
>> a whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original
>> proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org"
>> which I think is a weakness.
>> The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put
>> into this:
>> Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of
>> "PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high
>> school choices they made.
>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level
>>> framework as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this
>>> might be helpful.
>>> Thanks
>>> Simon
>>> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com>wrote:
>>>> Hey Brandt,
>>>> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions
>>>> rooted someplace on the web as you describe.
>>>> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you
>>>> add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to
>>>> add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
>>>> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
>>>> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
>>>> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong
>>>> with solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived
>>>> URL, why wouldn't we all just use that?
>>>> Best,
>>>> Steve
>>>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>>>>> Hi All:
>>>>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>>>>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
>>>>> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
>>>>> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>>>>> *Background:*
>>>>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>>>>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>>>>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>>>>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>>>>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>>>>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>>>>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>>>>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>>>>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>>>>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on
>>>>> how to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>>>>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>>>>> for grade level.
>>>>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>>>>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>>>>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>>>>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>>>>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>>>>> become interesting.
>>>>> *Proposal:*
>>>>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a
>>>>> lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>>>>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>>>>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>>>>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>>>>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and
>>>>> the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from
>>>>> the example above.
>>>>> *Custodianship:*
>>>>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>>>>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed
>>>>> to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>>>>> gains a modicum of traction).
>>>>> The URLs are, of course, different.
>>>>> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the
>>>>> one from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K"
>>>>> and they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
>>>>> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
>>>>> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
Brandt, I like the idea and construct and as tweaked with input from Steve & Simon.
(CEDS v3 has additional options for p20levels, such as a proposed option for "grade 13" to cover dual enrolled students, but that is a different use case, not for aligning resources, not an issue. Early learning is more concerned with developmental levels and ages, and both can be covered with typicalAgeRange and EducationalAlignment to the EL developmental framework .) ...It would be good for the framework authority (eg ASN SETDA) to match CEDS definitions for each grade level option. I think ASN list is already based on same NCES Handbook option set from which the CeDS list draws....we would just need to verify exact wording.
This educationLevel vocabulary for the U.S. used by the ASN was developed
as part of a U.S. Department of Education project back in 1996 and has been
used consistently since in a number of projects--e.g., The Gateway for 21st
Century Skills, the ASN, and a slight variant used with the National
Science Digital Library (NSDL) [1]. Sorry, Brandt, but I am afraid I don't
recall the discussions at the level of specific terms. I do recall that
much of the development was done at Syracuse University during a awesome
snow storm.
The initial framing was done by a group of about 20 people led by the U.S.
Department of Ed's ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology and
included a rich cross section of representatives from the Department, state
education departments, digital repositories of learning resources, and a
few K-12 master teachers. The early drafts relied on both the expertise of
the participants and a fairly rich subsequent scan of term usage in
practice. That was followed with evaluation of the emerging vocabulary by
teacher focus groups before usage of the vocabulary began in early 1997.
I would note that from the beginning of this particular educationLevel
vocabulary, the goal was to develop unambiguous identifiers for use by
machines (thus the URI). The human-readable labels were intended to be
just that, labels. When the vocabulary was transitioned from vanilla RDF
to SKOS, there was discussion around not privileging any particular label
for individual concepts by only using altLabel. I guess common sense won
out.
Brandt, sorry I cannot directly address your question.
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
> To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to
> represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also
> to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2
> URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
> Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be
> an intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as
> a whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original
> proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org"
> which I think is a weakness.
> The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put
> into this:
> Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of
> "PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high
> school choices they made.
> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level framework
>> as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this might be
>> helpful.
>> Thanks
>> Simon
>> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com> wrote:
>>> Hey Brandt,
>>> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions
>>> rooted someplace on the web as you describe.
>>> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you
>>> add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to
>>> add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
>>> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
>>> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
>>> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong
>>> with solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived
>>> URL, why wouldn't we all just use that?
>>> Best,
>>> Steve
>>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>>>> Hi All:
>>>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>>>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
>>>> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
>>>> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>>>> *Background:*
>>>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>>>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>>>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>>>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>>>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>>>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>>>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>>>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>>>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>>>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how
>>>> to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>>>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>>>> for grade level.
>>>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>>>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>>>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>>>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>>>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>>>> become interesting.
>>>> *Proposal:*
>>>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a
>>>> lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>>>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>>>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>>>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>>>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and
>>>> the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from
>>>> the example above.
>>>> *Custodianship:*
>>>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>>>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed
>>>> to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>>>> gains a modicum of traction).
>>>> The URLs are, of course, different.
>>>> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
>>>> from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
>>>> they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
>>>> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
>>>> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
-- Stuart A. Sutton,
CEO and Managing Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Associate Professor Emeritus, The Information School
University of Washington
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
> To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to
> represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also
> to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2
> URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
> Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be
> an intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as
> a whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original
> proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org"
> which I think is a weakness.
> The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put
> into this:
> Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of
> "PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high
> school choices they made.
> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level framework
>> as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this might be
>> helpful.
>> Thanks
>> Simon
>> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com> wrote:
>>> Hey Brandt,
>>> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions
>>> rooted someplace on the web as you describe.
>>> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you
>>> add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to
>>> add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
>>> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
>>> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
>>> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong
>>> with solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived
>>> URL, why wouldn't we all just use that?
>>> Best,
>>> Steve
>>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>>>> Hi All:
>>>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>>>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish
>>>> conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards
>>>> process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>>>> *Background:*
>>>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>>>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>>>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>>>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>>>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>>>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>>>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>>>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>>>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>>>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how
>>>> to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>>>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>>>> for grade level.
>>>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>>>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>>>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>>>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>>>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>>>> become interesting.
>>>> *Proposal:*
>>>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a
>>>> lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>>>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>>>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>>>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>>>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and
>>>> the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from
>>>> the example above.
>>>> *Custodianship:*
>>>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>>>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed
>>>> to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>>>> gains a modicum of traction).
>>>> The URLs are, of course, different.
>>>> ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one
>>>> from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and
>>>> they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that
>>>> level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into
>>>> lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
-- Stuart A. Sutton,
CEO and Managing Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Associate Professor Emeritus, The Information School
University of Washington
I downloaded the ASN levels in skos format
encoded in SKOS format here
and tried to look at it in my editor but there seem to be a few problems and it raises a few questions for me.
Postsecondary has only one narrower concept (Higher Education). Does this make it redundant or should it also include narrower concepts of Professional education and Vocational education?
Both Life-long learning and Vocational education, and possibly Professional Education, seem to be more to do with the context of learning rather than the level at which the learning is intended to take place.
Is the intention to allow use of all the concepts that have preLabels in targetUrls and targetNames? It might be better to only include the most granular ones, preferably only those that are mutually exclusive and deal with the, often very contextualised, relationships to other concepts elsewhere.
Presumably Middle school, for example, implies all of grades 6,7and 8 are covered by a resource. Perhaps better to just give the levels 6,7 and 8 to avoid confusion and possible contradictions, eg what does Middle school and 8 mean?
Cheers
Mike 7:-D
-----------
Mike Collett, Schemeta
+44 7798 728 747
------------
www.schemeta.com email: m...@schemeta.com
twitter: @schemeta
skype: mikecollett
people are the network
On 6 Nov 2012, at 20:16, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6 November 2012 19:40, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
> To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2 URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
> Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be an intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as a whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org" which I think is a weakness.
> The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put into this:
> Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of "PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high school choices they made.
> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level framework as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this might be helpful.
> Thanks
> Simon
> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com> wrote:
> Hey Brandt,
> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions rooted someplace on the web as you describe.
> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong with solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived URL, why wouldn't we all just use that?
> Best,
> Steve
> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
> Hi All:
> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can establish conventions for things like this without the need for a formal standards process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
> Background:
> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from Kindergarten to 12th grade.
> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on how to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy for grade level.
> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates become interesting.
> Proposal:
> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another – what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from the example above.
> Custodianship:
> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that domain to ensure it's available. SETDA has agreed to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention gains a modicum of traction).
> Alternative:
> After the SLC, AEP, Agilix and I came up with the above framework I learned that the Achievement Standards Network has already developed a similar taxonomy here. And it's encoded in SKOS format here.
> Under the ASN framework the above example looks like this:
> The URLs are, of course, different. > ASN doesn't have a value for educationalFramework so I retained the one from my original proposal. ASN uses "Kindergarten" instead of "Grade K" and they include "Pre-Kindergarten" where my proposal doesn't include that level. They also have values for postsecondary education dividing that into lower-division, upper-division and graduate levels.
On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Mike Collett <m...@schemeta.com> wrote:
> Hi all
> I downloaded the ASN levels in skos format
> encoded in SKOS format here<http://s3.amazonaws.com/jestatic/purl/scheme/ASNEducationLevel#>
> and tried to look at it in my editor but there seem to be a few problems
> and it raises a few questions for me.
> Postsecondary has only one narrower concept (Higher Education). Does this
> make it redundant or should it also include narrower concepts of
> Professional education and Vocational education?
> Both Life-long learning and Vocational education, and possibly
> Professional Education, seem to be more to do with the context of learning
> rather than the level at which the learning is intended to take place.
> Is the intention to allow use of all the concepts that have preLabels
> in targetUrls and targetNames? It might be better to only include the most
> granular ones, preferably only those that are mutually exclusive and deal
> with the, often very contextualised, relationships to other concepts
> elsewhere.
> Presumably Middle school, for example, implies all of grades 6,7and 8 are
> covered by a resource. Perhaps better to just give the levels 6,7 and 8 to
> avoid confusion and possible contradictions, eg what does Middle school and
> 8 mean?
> On 6 November 2012 19:40, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>> To Steve's question: I included both options partly because I wanted to
>> represent the work that went into #1 before I found out about #2 and also
>> to see whether there's concern about the ASN branding embedded in the #2
>> URLs (do we prefer something simpler and generic).
>> Simon's question relates to Steve's comment that perhaps there should be
>> an intermedia folder. Using Steve's proposal, the URL for the framework as
>> a whole would be "http://usk12.org/EducationLevel". Using my original
>> proposal it would have to be just the bare domain "http://usk12.org"
>> which I think is a weakness.
>> The ASN framework offers some richness which reflects the effort they put
>> into this:
>> Perhaps Stuart can enlighten us whether they debated the merits of
>> "PrimarySchool" and "SecondarySchool" vs. the elementary, middle and high
>> school choices they made.
>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Simon Grant <asim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In each case, what would be the correct URL for the grade level
>>> framework as a whole? There may be several reasons why clarity about this
>>> might be helpful.
>>> Thanks
>>> Simon
>>> On 6 November 2012 00:33, Steve Midgley <steve.midg...@mixrun.com>wrote:
>>>> Hey Brandt,
>>>> I like the idea of having some semi-custom (localized) definitions
>>>> rooted someplace on the web as you describe.
>>>> My first piece of feedback is that if you go for solution #1, that you
>>>> add some folders into your path for target URL to give us some ability to
>>>> add more stuff to that domain. Eg:
>>>> Or something like that - not sure what folders would be key just
>>>> indicating what you're defining in front of the actual key seems helpful..
>>>> My feedback on deciding between 1 and 2, would be just "what's wrong
>>>> with solution #2?" If ASN already has this stuff defined with a long lived
>>>> URL, why wouldn't we all just use that?
>>>> Best,
>>>> Steve
>>>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:
>>>>> Hi All:
>>>>> I'm proposing a convention for encoding US grade levels in LRMI. In
>>>>> general and in the spirit of Schema.org, I think that we can
>>>>> establish conventions for things like this without the need for a formal
>>>>> standards process. I'm asserting this one as a test case.
>>>>> *Background:*
>>>>> An early draft of LRMI had a property for “Grade Level.” It’s a useful
>>>>> feature because it’s valuable to indicate the grade level that educational
>>>>> content is targeted at. However, LRMI is an international standard and the
>>>>> K-12 Grade system is a US convention. Instead, the EducationalAlignment
>>>>> property was designated for handling grade levels (along with everything
>>>>> else it does). This makes sense because EducationalAlignment is used for
>>>>> alignment with any kind of taxonomy. The CCSS is a taxonomy; so are Lexiles
>>>>> and other text complexity measures; and so are the 13 levels from
>>>>> Kindergarten to 12th grade.
>>>>> The trouble is that the LRMI TWG didn’t publish a recommendation on
>>>>> how to encode US grade levels into EducationalAlignment and the people
>>>>> developing tagging tools have in some cases used TypicalAgeRange as a proxy
>>>>> for grade level.
>>>>> TypicalAgeRange is intended to capture subject interests and
>>>>> appropriateness, not levels of educational attainment. It’s a concept that
>>>>> publishers call “Interest Level” and is typically coded as an age. For
>>>>> example kindergarteners tend to be attracted to bright colors and simple
>>>>> concepts while you need to be in teens or twenties before political debates
>>>>> become interesting.
>>>>> *Proposal:*
>>>>> So, we need a convention for encoding grade level in LRMI. There is a
>>>>> lot of wiggle room and no one approach is necessarily better than another –
>>>>> what’s important is that everyone uses the same convention. Here’s an
>>>>> example convention based on input from the SLC, AEP and Agilix. (Agilix is
>>>>> building a tagging tool for the SLC that is being used by the AEP):
>>>>> Under this convention, Kindergarten would have the name “Grade K” and
>>>>> the URL “http://usk12.org/GradeK”. The rest are simple to derive from
>>>>> the example above.
>>>>> *Custodianship:*
>>>>> You'll notice the "usk12.org" domain in the proposal. I grabbed that
>>>>> domain to ensure it's available. SETDA <http://setda.org/> has agreed
>>>>> to be the custodian and I'll hand it off shortly (assuming this convention
>>>>> gains a modicum of traction).
CEDS intentionally avoid labels like "elementary", "middle" except for limited use cases. There is too much variability in the way schools are configured and in the way these terms are applied in practice. State education agencies and school districts do not agree with the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) definitions (or any definitions which limits an entire school level by what the low and high grades are). Better to stick with a list of grades than try to label groups of grades.
As I think about this more... it is worth recognizing that grade levels are a poor proxy for developmental levels unless there is universal acceptance of common grade-level expectations. Better to link resources to standards and let standards define common grade level expectations. If by promoting the convention for grade levels to LRMI some publishers choose to tag using educationalAlignment for grade levels *instead of* to competency-based standards, that could be a step backward.
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 6:06 AM, Jim Goodell <james.donald.good...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> CEDS intentionally avoid labels like "elementary", "middle" except for
> limited use cases. There is too much variability in the way schools are
> configured and in the way these terms are applied in practice. State
> education agencies and school districts do not agree with the National
> Science Digital Library (NSDL) definitions (or any definitions which limits
> an entire school level by what the low and high grades are). Better to
> stick with a list of grades than try to label groups of grades.
Jim, absolutely no classification scheme will garner universal agreement
that it is the "right" way to slice and dice up a particular corner of the
universe. I don't have to agree with Getty's world view of art and
architecture to use concepts effectively from its *Art & Architecture
Thesaurus*. The ASN uses a thesaural structure for US education levels
concept scheme and nevertheless assigns specific grade levels (and groups
of specific grade URI) that are relevant to a specific ASN competency and
does not assign URI of the aggregate levels. Others might make a
different decision of best practice. The thesaural structure operates in
the background should someone (some system) want to use that structure for
other purposes (aggregating, structuring views etc.). If we had to have
universal agreement on how to slice and dice aspects of the world before
creating such knowledge organization systems, we'd have no classification
schemes, no thesauri, etc... Ask librarians whether they "agree" with how
the Dewey Decimal Classification sees the world or how the Library of
Congress sees it in its classification scheme :-)
> As I think about this more... it is worth recognizing that grade levels
> are a poor proxy for developmental levels unless there is universal
> acceptance of common grade-level expectations. Better to link resources to
> standards and let standards define common grade level expectations. If by
> promoting the convention for grade levels to LRMI some publishers choose to
> tag using educationalAlignment for grade levels *instead of* to
> competency-based standards, that could be a step backward.
Jim, I agree with you as to what is perhaps "better"; but, I think we
simply cannot second guess every use case and have to leave the options
open:
-- Stuart A. Sutton,
CEO and Managing Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Associate Professor Emeritus, The Information School
University of Washington
For what it's worth, +1 on the suggestion that the standard linkages define
grade level expectations.
At Academic Benchmarks (AB) we have more than 2.8M standards collected from
hundreds of authorities world wide. With each authority curated into our
collection, we endeavor to faithfully represent the grade/age level
intended by the author, along with the local labels (e.g.,. for a time,
Arizona referred to Kindergarten by the label "Readiness"). We do the same
with subject area, strands, and several other vocabulary-controllable
pieces of metadata. In addition, we maintain maps between our internal
codification to our clients (i.e. private codifications) as well as to the
ever-growing litany of public representations of the same, such as those
mentioned/proposed in this thread.
Our use cases include answering questions like "what is the min/max/median
grade/age level in which this concept is taught at this cognitive level".
Or, "for this concept, what cognitive level and grade level is asserted
locally for this authority (i.e. when should it be taught and to what
degree?)" And, ultimately, to emit from our collection such data points
using the representation adopted by our clients.
Even on the arguably banal topic of grade and subject codification (which
barely touches on the complexity of the conceptual matter mentioned in
education standards), there is a lot of industry fracture and alternative
representations. To wit, on quick check, to date we have encountered more
than 80 different permutations of grade ranges on non-course-based leveling
(K-2, preK-2, K-3, 5-6, 6-8, 5-8, etc). The number jumps an order of
magnitude (or several) when considering permutations of high school
courses, the interminable local labels, and alternate grade range
associations between and among them.
Simply, +1 on Jim's recommendations.
kelly
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Jim Goodell <james.donald.good...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> CEDS intentionally avoid labels like "elementary", "middle" except for
> limited use cases. There is too much variability in the way schools are
> configured and in the way these terms are applied in practice. State
> education agencies and school districts do not agree with the National
> Science Digital Library (NSDL) definitions (or any definitions which limits
> an entire school level by what the low and high grades are). Better to
> stick with a list of grades than try to label groups of grades.
> As I think about this more... it is worth recognizing that grade levels
> are a poor proxy for developmental levels unless there is universal
> acceptance of common grade-level expectations. Better to link resources to
> standards and let standards define common grade level expectations. If by
> promoting the convention for grade levels to LRMI some publishers choose to
> tag using educationalAlignment for grade levels *instead of* to
> competency-based standards, that could be a step backward.
Long-time lurker on the list, first time poster. By way of introduction, my
name is Doug Levin and I the executive director of the State Educational
Technology Directors Association. This puts me squarely in the U.S. K-12
arena for my perspective.
Jim, I concur re: CEDS approach to avoid ES, MS, HS labels as there is a
great deal of variability in how those are defined across the U.S., to say
nothing of beyond our borders.
With respect to your second point, I think that both federal education
policy - which dictates annual grade-based testing for accountability
purposes - and many content standards statements themselves (such as those
contained in the Common Core) are explicitly based on a grade-level
determination. I concur with your observation that grade-level is a poor
proxy for developmental level, but I do not see harm in a grade-based tag
and some significant downsides to omitting it from my perspective (even if
imperfect).
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Jim Goodell <james.donald.good...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> CEDS intentionally avoid labels like "elementary", "middle" except for
> limited use cases. There is too much variability in the way schools are
> configured and in the way these terms are applied in practice. State
> education agencies and school districts do not agree with the National
> Science Digital Library (NSDL) definitions (or any definitions which limits
> an entire school level by what the low and high grades are). Better to
> stick with a list of grades than try to label groups of grades.
> As I think about this more... it is worth recognizing that grade levels
> are a poor proxy for developmental levels unless there is universal
> acceptance of common grade-level expectations. Better to link resources to
> standards and let standards define common grade level expectations. If by
> promoting the convention for grade levels to LRMI some publishers choose to
> tag using educationalAlignment for grade levels *instead of* to
> competency-based standards, that could be a step backward.
80 permutations of US K-12 grade levels says it all. I am going to re-join
the baby here and say everyone on this topic is right. I do agree that
artificial leveling hinders natural learning progression. In that I favor
Jim's proposal to use the framework to define the level of materials.
However, Kelly is also correct that the primary use case is finding stuff at
the level the end user is interested in, and the way they define it. So from
a LRMI tagging perspective, Stewart is correct, we need both a leveling
alignments and topical (Framework) alignments to make the search use case at
the heart of LRMI work well. The latter (Standards frameworks) can, but does
not necessarily include grade level expectations (GLEs to some). If the
standards does then the GLE can and should be mapped to a specific grade
level as a LRMI tag. But from a tagging perspective both should exist simply
because having grade level be implied by the standard alignment makes the
search by level only use case fail. So this make Doug right too (Welcome to
the party Doug!)
Now for a best practice, even though Curriki uses grade ranges presently, it
would be best when creating LRMI tags to innumerate each grade level that is
aligned rather than a rage or a proxy for a range like "Upper Elementary",
"Middle School", etc. But again, the dominant community of use is the one
that defined these levels and their terms to reference them (Making Stewart
right again).
Harmony achieved.
Joshua Marks
CTO
Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
From: lrmi@googlegroups.com [mailto:lrmi@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Kelly Peet
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 8:02 AM
To: lrmi@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Convention for Encoding Grade Level in LRMI
For what it's worth, +1 on the suggestion that the standard linkages define
grade level expectations.
At Academic Benchmarks (AB) we have more than 2.8M standards collected from
hundreds of authorities world wide. With each authority curated into our
collection, we endeavor to faithfully represent the grade/age level intended
by the author, along with the local labels (e.g.,. for a time, Arizona
referred to Kindergarten by the label "Readiness"). We do the same with
subject area, strands, and several other vocabulary-controllable pieces of
metadata. In addition, we maintain maps between our internal codification
to our clients (i.e. private codifications) as well as to the ever-growing
litany of public representations of the same, such as those
mentioned/proposed in this thread.
Our use cases include answering questions like "what is the min/max/median
grade/age level in which this concept is taught at this cognitive level".
Or, "for this concept, what cognitive level and grade level is asserted
locally for this authority (i.e. when should it be taught and to what
degree?)" And, ultimately, to emit from our collection such data points
using the representation adopted by our clients.
Even on the arguably banal topic of grade and subject codification (which
barely touches on the complexity of the conceptual matter mentioned in
education standards), there is a lot of industry fracture and alternative
representations. To wit, on quick check, to date we have encountered more
than 80 different permutations of grade ranges on non-course-based leveling
(K-2, preK-2, K-3, 5-6, 6-8, 5-8, etc). The number jumps an order of
magnitude (or several) when considering permutations of high school courses,
the interminable local labels, and alternate grade range associations
between and among them.
CEDS intentionally avoid labels like "elementary", "middle" except for
limited use cases. There is too much variability in the way schools are
configured and in the way these terms are applied in practice. State
education agencies and school districts do not agree with the National
Science Digital Library (NSDL) definitions (or any definitions which limits
an entire school level by what the low and high grades are). Better to stick
with a list of grades than try to label groups of grades.
As I think about this more... it is worth recognizing that grade levels are
a poor proxy for developmental levels unless there is universal acceptance
of common grade-level expectations. Better to link resources to standards
and let standards define common grade level expectations. If by promoting
the convention for grade levels to LRMI some publishers choose to tag using
educationalAlignment for grade levels instead of to competency-based
standards, that could be a step backward.
Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best for LRMI.
...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that their resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
> wrote:
> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to
> have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best
> for LRMI.
> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that their
> resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each
> applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a
> grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged
> with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular
> micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best
> discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment
> to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be
> part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
A slight tangent to the point, more of a question to the original thinkers
of LRMI's design, regarding Jim's point #2 as it relates to scalability:
Presuming a piece of content being tagged is applicable to many authorities
(for argument sake, let's stay with 50 states for now), it would seem
necessary to cite 50 URIs to assert and meet the requirement of "all
applicable learning standard items". My mind runs in a variety of
directions:
- what about content that applies to more than one learning standard per
authority (or to a portion of a learning standard)?
- what is the ultimate size of the payload making such assertions?
- did i read earlier that hidden-only markup may not be considered by
search engines, so all these assertions must appear on the page?
- i hear Common Core pointed as one possible antidote to 50 states, but
wonder about subjects besides Math and Language Arts, as well as the
numerous varieties of state-specific Common Core standards (possibly making
the presumptive 50 more like 100).
I completely understand if this line of questioning is quelled on this
thread. Just thinking one step down the road how to support LRMI while
also being keenly attuned to the volume and scalability issues and how to
address them. We have a couple million content items tagged tightly to
hundreds of authorities, more than 400M assertions across 10 subject
areas. Looking for pearls of wisdom.
kelly
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Goodell <james.donald.good...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to
> have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best
> for LRMI.
> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that their
> resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each
> applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a
> grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged
> with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular
> micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best
> discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment
> to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be
> part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
Hi Kelly
And these often change when a curriculum changes, for example new concepts, deprecated items or new structures.
Also there are multilinguality requirements that mean that translations can come online frequently.
A question is: where are mappings and such changes managed?
To put all this in the metadata is asking for trouble and, as you imply, gives rise to massive legacy issues.
Our experience is that you try to keep the metadata to a minimum (unique ids plus perhaps one preferred label) and deal with the mappings, translations, navigation structures and change control via a separate service.
Cheers
Mike 7:-D
-----------
Mike Collett, Schemeta
+44 7798 728 747
------------
www.schemeta.com email: m...@schemeta.com
twitter: @schemeta
skype: mikecollett
people are the network
On 14 Nov 2012, at 14:47, Kelly Peet <ke...@academicbenchmarks.com> wrote:
> A slight tangent to the point, more of a question to the original thinkers of LRMI's design, regarding Jim's point #2 as it relates to scalability:
> Presuming a piece of content being tagged is applicable to many authorities (for argument sake, let's stay with 50 states for now), it would seem necessary to cite 50 URIs to assert and meet the requirement of "all applicable learning standard items". My mind runs in a variety of directions:
> - what about content that applies to more than one learning standard per authority (or to a portion of a learning standard)?
> - what is the ultimate size of the payload making such assertions?
> - did i read earlier that hidden-only markup may not be considered by search engines, so all these assertions must appear on the page?
> - i hear Common Core pointed as one possible antidote to 50 states, but wonder about subjects besides Math and Language Arts, as well as the numerous varieties of state-specific Common Core standards (possibly making the presumptive 50 more like 100).
> I completely understand if this line of questioning is quelled on this thread. Just thinking one step down the road how to support LRMI while also being keenly attuned to the volume and scalability issues and how to address them. We have a couple million content items tagged tightly to hundreds of authorities, more than 400M assertions across 10 subject areas. Looking for pearls of wisdom.
> kelly
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Goodell <james.donald.good...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best for LRMI.
> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that their resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Mike Collett <m...@schemeta.com> wrote:
> Hi Kelly
> And these often change when a curriculum changes, for example new
> concepts, deprecated items or new structures.
> Also there are multilinguality requirements that mean that translations
> can come online frequently.
good points. in addition to curriculum, academic standards change in
various ways on a variety of schedules.
> A question is: where are mappings and such changes managed?
> To put all this in the metadata is asking for trouble and, as you imply,
> gives rise to massive legacy issues.
put to the industry, i suspect the general answer to your question is some
brand of content management system (CMS). specifically, for Academic
Benchmarks, we interact with a variety of CMS platforms based on our
client's specific choices, while internally keeping track of content by
tagging to a multi-faceted conceptual framework (cognitive, concept,
constraint, limit, etc), which is, in turn, mapped to standards, allowing
us to escape the legacy issues that inevitably arise with onboarding
fleeting metadata, as you suggest. standards alignment is a byproduct of
our technique, and i might suggest a bit of a red herring in the discussion
at hand.
> Our experience is that you try to keep the metadata to a minimum (unique
> ids plus perhaps one preferred label) and deal with the mappings,
> translations, navigation structures and change control via a separate
> service.
exactly our approach. minimum viable description for the intended
audience, robust, real-time resolution services.
> On 14 Nov 2012, at 14:47, Kelly Peet <ke...@academicbenchmarks.com> wrote:
> A slight tangent to the point, more of a question to the original thinkers
> of LRMI's design, regarding Jim's point #2 as it relates to scalability:
> Presuming a piece of content being tagged is applicable to many
> authorities (for argument sake, let's stay with 50 states for now), it
> would seem necessary to cite 50 URIs to assert and meet the requirement of
> "all applicable learning standard items". My mind runs in a variety of
> directions:
> - what about content that applies to more than one learning standard per
> authority (or to a portion of a learning standard)?
> - what is the ultimate size of the payload making such assertions?
> - did i read earlier that hidden-only markup may not be considered by
> search engines, so all these assertions must appear on the page?
> - i hear Common Core pointed as one possible antidote to 50 states, but
> wonder about subjects besides Math and Language Arts, as well as the
> numerous varieties of state-specific Common Core standards (possibly making
> the presumptive 50 more like 100).
> I completely understand if this line of questioning is quelled on this
> thread. Just thinking one step down the road how to support LRMI while
> also being keenly attuned to the volume and scalability issues and how to
> address them. We have a couple million content items tagged tightly to
> hundreds of authorities, more than 400M assertions across 10 subject
> areas. Looking for pearls of wisdom.
> kelly
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Goodell <
> james.donald.good...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to
>> have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best
>> for LRMI.
>> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that
>> their resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each
>> applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a
>> grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged
>> with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular
>> micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best
>> discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment
>> to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be
>> part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
To summarize the main branch (I think Kelly's tangent may need more exploration), I think we've reached a rough consensus as follows:
1. Grade level markup is valuable. We have a preference for standards type alignment but many of our search use cases will still use grade levels (at least until Competency-Based Education becomes the norm).
2. Searchability will be optimized if a resource is tagged with *all *of the relevant grade labels (e.g. Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4) and *not *with ranges (e.g. Grades 2-4). The same argument applies to defined aggregates like "Elementary School" not to mention their inconsistent definitions.
3. The core set of level tags will include the 13 grades from K to 12. There are use cases where PreK and Post12 might also be valuable.
5. The basic application of LRMI markup from my original post holds except for some open questions.
First off, I'm interested in any objections to what seems to be consensus on these points.
Second, we need to address the following open questions:
Q1. What URLs should be used? Since the ASN URLs already exist, I propose using them. Jim mentioned that there is a grade level enumeration for CEDS. I'm curious what the values are and whether they have (or could have) a URL form.
Q2. What should be the textual (non-url) form for Kindergarten? It could be "Grade K" for consistency with the other grades or it could be the word "Kindergarten." This might be dictated by the answer to Q1. ASN uses "Kindergarten."
Q3. Should PreK be included and if so what should the textual form be? Candidates include "Pre-Kindergarten" and "PreK". ASN uses "Pre-Kindergarten".
On Wednesday, November 14, 2012 6:21:20 AM UTC-8, Doug Levin wrote:
> I would endorse that approach.
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Goodell <james.dona...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote:
>> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to >> have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best >> for LRMI.
>> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that >> their resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each >> applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a >> grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged >> with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular >> micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best >> discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment >> to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be >> part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
Good summary. This sounds like what I was trying to promote in earlier discussions... Glad to see that your version is getting traction.
Regarding your questions, esp. Q2 and Q3, an important issue to consider is that teachers may be using different "spellings" for a grade level when they search for products. Ex 1: Grade K, Kindergarten Ex 2: Pre-K, PreK, Pre-Kindergarten, PreKindergarten Ex 3: Grade 1, First grade
So deciding on one "value" for the text of the grade level may not be enough as far as the search engines are concerned... How will the search engines know to include "Grade 1" in a search for "First grade"?
On Thursday, November 15, 2012 12:07:59 PM UTC-8, Brandt Redd wrote:
> To summarize the main branch (I think Kelly's tangent may need more > exploration), I think we've reached a rough consensus as follows:
> 1. Grade level markup is valuable. We have a preference for standards type > alignment but many of our search use cases will still use grade levels (at > least until Competency-Based Education becomes the norm).
> 2. Searchability will be optimized if a resource is tagged with *all *of > the relevant grade labels (e.g. Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4) and *not *with > ranges (e.g. Grades 2-4). The same argument applies to defined aggregates > like "Elementary School" not to mention their inconsistent definitions.
> 3. The core set of level tags will include the 13 grades from K to 12. > There are use cases where PreK and Post12 might also be valuable.
> 5. The basic application of LRMI markup from my original post holds except > for some open questions.
> First off, I'm interested in any objections to what seems to be consensus > on these points.
> Second, we need to address the following open questions:
> Q1. What URLs should be used? Since the ASN URLs already exist, I propose > using them. Jim mentioned that there is a grade level enumeration for CEDS. > I'm curious what the values are and whether they have (or could have) a URL > form.
> Q2. What should be the textual (non-url) form for Kindergarten? It could > be "Grade K" for consistency with the other grades or it could be the word > "Kindergarten." This might be dictated by the answer to Q1. ASN uses > "Kindergarten."
> Q3. Should PreK be included and if so what should the textual form be? > Candidates include "Pre-Kindergarten" and "PreK". ASN uses > "Pre-Kindergarten".
> -Brandt
> On Wednesday, November 14, 2012 6:21:20 AM UTC-8, Doug Levin wrote:
>> I would endorse that approach.
>> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Goodell <james.dona...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to >>> have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best >>> for LRMI.
>>> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that >>> their resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each >>> applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a >>> grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged >>> with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular >>> micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best >>> discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment >>> to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be >>> part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
Hi Brandt
In response to "First off, I'm interested in any objections to what seems to be consensus on these points."
I agree with 1, 2, 3. Not quite so sure about 4 and 5.
Not so much an objection more a comment.
There seems to be a mixing up of identification and resolution and putting lots of assumptions about syntax and semantics in the URL. Sometimes this can be useful sometimes it is constraining and detrimental.
For example, to re-use some level identifiers to increase interoperability, authorities may build their own frameworks by reusing schema.org's, or some other set of, identifiers for levels. This maybe to classify differently, to add levels or granularity or to change or translate the preferred labels, such as in Stuart's SKOS.
It is useful to identify the framework, and hence that set of acceptable levels in context.
In your earlier example:
educationalAlignment:
alignmentType: educationLevel
educationalFramework: US K-12
targetName: Grade 5
targetUrl: http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/5
..it would be beneficial to have a uri for the framework rather than assume it from the target url. In fact it may be better to be able at least to specific this as a URI (eye) rather than URL (ell) even if it is expressed as http.
So if tagged in England this might then become something like
educationalAlignment:
alignmentType: educationLevel
educationalFrameworkUri: http::www.gov.uk/DfE/NationalCurriclulumEngland/Levels (fictitious uri)
educationalFrameworkName: School Levels in England targetName: Level 6 (not really accurate mapping but there to show that a US grade 5 may neither be grade nor 5 universally)
targetUr*i*: http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/5
Or if an organisation in the Nederlands wanted to re-use the schema.org ids:
> Good summary. This sounds like what I was trying to promote in earlier discussions... Glad to see that your version is getting traction.
> Regarding your questions, esp. Q2 and Q3, an important issue to consider is that teachers may be using different "spellings" for a grade level when they search for products.
> Ex 1: Grade K, Kindergarten > Ex 2: Pre-K, PreK, Pre-Kindergarten, PreKindergarten
> Ex 3: Grade 1, First grade
> So deciding on one "value" for the text of the grade level may not be enough as far as the search engines are concerned... How will the search engines know to include "Grade 1" in a search for "First grade"?
> best,
> Monty
> On Thursday, November 15, 2012 12:07:59 PM UTC-8, Brandt Redd wrote:
> To summarize the main branch (I think Kelly's tangent may need more exploration), I think we've reached a rough consensus as follows:
> 1. Grade level markup is valuable. We have a preference for standards type alignment but many of our search use cases will still use grade levels (at least until Competency-Based Education becomes the norm).
> 2. Searchability will be optimized if a resource is tagged with all of the relevant grade labels (e.g. Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4) and not with ranges (e.g. Grades 2-4). The same argument applies to defined aggregates like "Elementary School" not to mention their inconsistent definitions.
> 3. The core set of level tags will include the 13 grades from K to 12. There are use cases where PreK and Post12 might also be valuable.
> 5. The basic application of LRMI markup from my original post holds except for some open questions.
> First off, I'm interested in any objections to what seems to be consensus on these points.
> Second, we need to address the following open questions:
> Q1. What URLs should be used? Since the ASN URLs already exist, I propose using them. Jim mentioned that there is a grade level enumeration for CEDS. I'm curious what the values are and whether they have (or could have) a URL form.
> Q2. What should be the textual (non-url) form for Kindergarten? It could be "Grade K" for consistency with the other grades or it could be the word "Kindergarten." This might be dictated by the answer to Q1. ASN uses "Kindergarten."
> Q3. Should PreK be included and if so what should the textual form be? Candidates include "Pre-Kindergarten" and "PreK". ASN uses "Pre-Kindergarten".
> -Brandt
> On Wednesday, November 14, 2012 6:21:20 AM UTC-8, Doug Levin wrote:
> I would endorse that approach.
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Goodell <james.dona...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good mediation Joshua, and good points Stuart, Kelley, and Doug (glad to have you join the discussion). I'll concede that multiple options are best for LRMI.
> ...maybe it is a matter of communications to inform publishers that their resource will be more discoverable if they tag by enumerating each applicable grade level rather than (or in addition to) the proxy for a grade range such as "elementary", and even more discoverable if also tagged with standards, and even more discoverable if aligned with more granular micro standards. ...or maybe simple/concrete messaging: for best discoverability tag with both 1) the list of grade levels AND 2) alignment to all applicable learning standard items. Perhaps this messaging can be part of whatever is published as the convention for grade level alignment.
Mike, I am very uncomfortable with the approach you suggest. Comments
below.
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 3:22 AM, Mike Collett <m...@schemeta.com> wrote:
> In fact it may be better to be able at least to specific this as a URI
> (eye) rather than URL (ell) even if it is expressed as http.
So if tagged in England this might then become something like
> educationalAlignment:
> alignmentType: educationLevel
> educationalFrameworkUri: http::
> www.gov.uk/DfE/NationalCurriclulumEngland/Levels (fictitious uri)
> educationalFrameworkName: School Levels in England
> targetName: Level 6 (not really accurate mapping but there to show
> that a US grade 5 may neither be grade nor 5 universally)
> targetUr*i*: http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/5
> Or if an organisation in the Nederlands wanted to re-use the schema.orgids:
Mike, as a member of the team that created the ASN education level scheme
back in 1995-6 and helped shepherd it through to it's current SKOS/RDF form
for use in linked data, I think I can speak for my colleagues in saying
that this general use of the scheme to denote (from your examples) anything
"5-ish" in terms of global education level expressions is *not *one we
could support. Having such a globally useful scheme would certainly be
nice as some kind of universal "glue"; but, the ASN scheme is *not* that
scheme.
While I know we are talking about LRMI and not ASN, I'd note that as a *
framework* for describing competencies, ASN assumes that education level
vocabularies will be numerous (as many as there are national authorities
and customary national uses), precise and expressive of national
prerogatives. The scheme being discussed here is exactly that, a semantic
expression of U.S. circumstances.
I would much rather see England and The Netherlands *bite the bullet* and
define their own education level schemes identified by URI with concepts
identified by URI *and follow-on with useful mappings between/among the
schemes* or mappings of education level concepts in the many schemes to
some logical, common intermediary vocabulary (perhaps typical age like we
see at [1]). That would certainly make for a very nice project for
foundation/NSF/EU funding since such efforts are nation/international in
scope and involve fundamental data infrastructure!
In addition to the U.S., Australia has already defined it's education
levels [2]-[3] in machine-readable form (among other vocabularies necessary
to its schools sector [4] for use in a linked data environment). ASN-US
has a pending action to formally express the mapping between the
U.S./Australia schemes (and is looking at the utility of a more universal
"intermediary" mapping in that process).
-- Stuart A. Sutton,
CEO and Managing Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Associate Professor Emeritus, The Information School
University of Washington
