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SALTIS - Overview
Terms of use
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Terms of use
These contents have been obtained from the SALTIS official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the SALTIS official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools
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Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools (SALTIS) is leading the drive to improve interoperability standards for teaching and learning in UK schools.
SALTIS believes that new learning technologies will dramatically raise standards of teaching and learning only when they are given a chance to develop in an unfettered market. A market in which the requirements of end users—teachers and learners—are allowed to drive and reward successful innovation.
SALTIS aims to improve the interoperability of learning technology—thereby improving the effectiveness of ICT as a means of raising standards of teaching and learning in UK schools. |
Activities
SALTIS has identified a number of key areas in which better interoperability standards are required to support e-learning in UK schools.- Improved content interoperability. SALTIS' main priority is to support better standards for content interoperability. In this context, "content" refers not only to static, expositive (information-bearing) text, pictures and video, but also to tools and applications which allow students to interact, create and share their own "product". Theirs is a vision of content which represents (to use a grammatical analogy) verbs as well as nouns.
- Sharable assessment items. From a technical point of view, there are two different approaches to supporting interoperable assessments: scripted and "black box" items. SALTIS believes that there is a long-term requirement for both types of assessment. It will be important, for both technical models, that assessment items can be easily created, selected and manipulated by teachers to suit their particular requirements - while at the same time respecting the IP of commercial publishers, who will otherwise have no incentive to invest in creating quality content.
- Interoperable e-portfolio. It has become apparent that there are widely differing understandings of what constitutes an e-portfolio: an authenticated record of a student's achievement; a student's own presentation of him/herself; a tool to support reflective learning or social interaction; or just a storage space for files. Whichever combination of these models gains currency in schools, they believe it is important that e-Portfolio data can be transferred between different systems and services. SALTIS is therefore tracking a number of initiatives to ensure that, as the market moves to define the requirement more closely, a coherent policy on e-portfolio interoperability will be ready to implement.
- Transferring student records. In order to manage authentication and assignment and to track performance and competency, learning platforms need data about courses, teachers, students and how they are grouped. This data already exists in school MIS systems. What is required is a means of transferring the data between the two systems. The transfer needs to be reliable and automatic so that as soon as any changes are made in a school's MIS, those changes are immediately reflected in the school's learning platform.
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Liaisons
SALTIS is pursuing its objectives in cooperation with BECTA and the Education Schools and Childrens Services Information Standards Board (ESCS ISB). |
Membership
SALTIS has 81 members, from large multi-nationals to small cottage industries, providing every type of learning technology to UK schools, from learning platforms to interactive whiteboards and niche, subject-specific learning software.
SALTIS has 15 partners which do not supply learning technology to schools but who are able to make an important contribution to our discussions. They include government agencies and advisers, representatives of teaching practitioners and technicians, global standards bodies and academics. |
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