March 2008 — Features
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Mix Master
Fruth says that the push for interoperability doesn't come easily to a school system in which things are done in isolation. "Education tends to be made up of a lot of islands, generally. At the classroom level, a teacher never really has to interact with an adult. They close their doors and they're on an island. Those teachers go on to become administrators, and those administrators move on to the state department, and eventually, they get hired by the Fed. So it's a model that everyone is used to, and it has become endemic across education."
"With the increased accountability and expectations in schools today, linking accurate, interoperable educational data to the right learning resources for individuals is the holy grail for using technology for real and measured improvements in learning."-Larry Fruth, Schools Interoperability Framework Association
Keep in mind that SIFA produces no products itself, but rather coordinates member contributions to an open specification, which software vendors use to guide them in the development of their commercial offerings. SIFA supports and promotes the specification, certifies products, hosts a website, and provides training and tools.
The first official SIF specification, version 1.1, was unveiled in February 2003. Since then, SIFA has approved three upgrades. The latest upgrade, version 2.1, was released last September.
"The two big changes in the 2.1 version are in the student records exchange, and teaching and learning, all under this umbrella of greater out-of-the-box interoperability," Fruth explains. "Out-of-the-box interoperability is our overarching goal with this release. It's one of those goals we're all shooting for in high tech, but one we rarely get to. But some of the features and functionality in this release get us a lot closer."
In February of this year, SIFA unveiled the Zone Integration Server 2.0r1 product standard, which makes it possible-for the first time-for vendors to test the mandatory features of a Zone Integration Server as defined in the SIF Implementation Specification, and to document support for any optional/ conditional features in the associated conformance statement. The new standard will contribute to greater out-of-the-box interoperability in SIF implementations, says Mark Reichert, SIFA's chief technology officer.
One of the reasons SIF has survived and thrived for so long is that it holds the support of an active and involved community, or ecosystem. It's one of the keys to the success of any open specification. The SIF ecosystem consists of individuals and organizations investing time and resources to refine and improve the spec-essentially, the SIFA membership. In its roughly 10-year stewardship of the SIF spec, SIFA has overseen the development of an expanding set of technologies and services, including among others a vendor registry, a group of online tools, a readiness assessment program, and certification services for SIF-based products. There are currently more than 86 SIF-certified products on the market.
