澳洲將加入 JES & Co. 的成就標準網絡

華盛頓2009年11月20日電 /美通社亞洲/ —

在由美國國家科學基金會（National Science Foundation 簡稱：NSF）發起的一年一度的美國國家科學分佈學習（National Science Distributed Learning 簡稱 NSDL）會議上，參會者瞭解了澳洲課程機構是如何利用 JES & Co. 的成就標準網絡（Achievement Standards Network，簡稱 ASN）架構來連接起世界範圍內的教育資源數據。Jillian Dellit 是澳洲國家資助的 Le@rning Federation Initiative 計劃的代表，擔任 Le@rning Federation 秘書處主管之職長達9年。ASN 的發起機構 JES & Co. 的執行董事 Diny Golder 已經與 Dellit 女士共事10多年，雙方努力推行一種國際化的學習資源交流方式，可通過學習目標或成就標準進行搜索。ASN 項目的首席科學家 Stuart Sutton 與課程機構的 Steve Sunter 和 Les Kneebone 密切合作，將澳洲豐富的教育詞匯融入了現有的 ASN 屬性。

美國國家科學分佈學習會議展示了 JES & Co. 與 Zepheira 合作開發的 ASN 可配置資源描述編輯器（Resource Description Editor，簡稱 RDE），其配置完全符合澳洲的獨特教育需求。在教育出版界，資源元數據已經成爲衆所周知的概念，但是，豐富地描述學習目標卻是一個相當新穎的概念。ASN 既是一種針對描述和編碼績效標準的開源框架，同時也是一個資源開放的網絡訪問存儲庫，容納了所有歷史的和現行的美國 K-12 標準。起初，美國國家科學基金會通過美國國家科學數字圖書館 (NSDL) 計劃給予 ASN 部分資助。美國 K-12 標準存儲庫設有一些應用程序接口 (API)，可將編目工具連接到存儲庫，從而方便進行搜索、瀏覽和分配各種標識符 (URI)，爲學習資源提供細粒度的成就定論。所有這些經過分配的標識符均可通過網路得到解决，同時生成相關的元數據和經過驗證的成就定論的文本。Dellit 女士向與會者闡釋了目前在澳洲出現的各種相關機遇，以及 ASN 將采用何種方式來利用一些澳洲積累近了10年的數字資源。

引用 Sutton 的話說，「可配置的 RDE 是針對描述實體和實體之間關係的首個完整的 RDF（資源描述框架）編輯器架構，可使用編目程序和元數據生成器通過一種支持 Linked Data（鏈式數據）目標和 Semantic Web（語義網）目標的方式實現，無需人工對 XML 或 RDF 進行理解。」JES & Co. 計劃加强 Linked Data 社區與 CyberLearning（網路學習）領域的重點聯合，CyberLearning 是一種涵蓋了開源標準、數字化工具、服務和資源的網絡化世界。這種國際化合作有助於推動並激勵 CyberLearning 取得成果。

Australia to Join JES & Co.’s Achievement Standards Network
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 /PRNewswire-Asia/ —

At the annual National Science Distributed Learning conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), participants learned how JES & Co.’s Achievement Standards Network (ASN) framework is being used by Australia’s Curriculum Corporation in an effort to link educational resource data globally. Representing Australia’s nationally funded Le@rning Federation Initiative was Jillian Dellit, for 9 years Director of The Le@rning Federation Secretariat. Diny Golder, the executive director of JES & Co., the home of the ASN, has been working with Ms. Dellit for over 10 years in an effort to launch an international exchange of learning resources, discoverable by learning objective or achievement standards. Stuart Sutton, the lead scientist for the ASN project, has worked closely with Curriculum Corporation’s Steve Sunter and Les Kneebone to align Australia’s rich educational vocabularies to existing ASN properties.

Presented to the National Science Distributed Learning community was a demonstration of the ASN configurable Resource Description Editor (RDE) developed in cooperation with Zepheira that has been configured to meet Australia’s unique educational needs. Many in the area of education publishing are familiar with resource metadata, but the notion of richly describing learning goals is fairly new. The ASN is both an open source framework for the description and encoding of achievement standards and an open resource, Web-accessible repository of all historical and current U.S. K-12 standards. The ASN was partially funded at its start by NSF through its National Science Digital Library (NSDL) initiative. The repository of U.S. K-12 standards has APIs that enable cataloging tools to link to the repository in order to search, browse and assign identifiers (URI) for fine-grained achievement assertions to learning resources. All identifiers so assigned are then resolvable over the Web, yielding related metadata and the text of the achievement assertion identified. Ms. Dellit explained to the audience the opportunities in the current Australian context and the ways in which the ASN will leverage some of the Australian digital resource work of the last decade.

To quote Sutton, “The configurable RDE is the first complete RDF editor architecture for the description of entities and the relationships among those entities in a way that supports Linked Data and Semantic Web goals by catalogers and metadata generators without the need for those people to understand XML or RDF.” JES & Co. plans on joining the Linked Data community with a focus on CyberLearning; a networked world of open source standards, digital tools, services and resources. International collaboration is providing a stimulus and an incentive to reap the benefits of CyberLearning.