Access 4 Learning Releases New Interoperability Solutions: SIF xPress API

WASHINGTON - May 21, 2015 - PRLog -- The new Access 4 Learning Community (A4L) is continuing and extending the SIF Association’s original charge to address issues around the identification, management and movement of educational data. A4L’s new focus is on enabling parents, practitioners, developers and learners to easily, practically and securely put education data to work.

The A4L Community, “powered” by SIF Specifications, is proud to release real-world solutions driven by the needs of users, education institutions and application developers. Today marks the release of SIF xPress, a suite of APIs that are designed to provide a standard template for interoperability for in-demand data sharing use cases in PK-12 education. xPress API’s are built on top of the SIF Infrastructure Implementation Specification (Global) 3.1 and SIF Data Model Implementation Specification (North America) 3.3. The first two offerings in the suite are SIF xPress Roster and SIF xPress Student Record Exchange (SRE).

“The Regional Information Centers in New York State have worked with school districts and their data for decades. RicOne is a statewide, comprehensive interoperability service that uses SIF xPress Roster as its featured data API. RicOne will provide vendors with the convenience of an open, standard API for rostering while ensuring districts remain in complete control of their data. The RicOne team values its collaboration with the Access 4 Learning Community and will continue to contribute to the xPress initiative. We look forward to the results xPress will bring to education agencies, states, vendors. The implementation of this important work will help teachers and their students by providing secure, community-driven solutions to educators,” states Joseph Fitzgerald, Assistant Director at the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center.

"SIF xPress Roster is West Virginia's strategy to provide a modern, secure API to the more than 100 application providers accessing statewide SIS information" states Sterling Beane, Chief Technology Officer, West Virginia Department of Education. "The great work of the Access 4 Learning Community focuses on harmonizing the needs of schools, states and developers. This is clearly visible in how xPress Roster is designed. It’s arriving in the marketplace at the right time to address a large and growing need for an open education API standard that delivers simple and secure roster sharing for a variety of needs".

“The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington State recognizes the importance of a quick registration process for transfer students.  SIF Student Record Exchange (SRE) has made it easy for us to move student records from one district to another” touts Peter Tamayo, CIO.  “The specification is flexible, yet robust enough to handle all our districts’ needs.  Washington has provided a “push” style student record exchange system for several pilot districts and is working with others to build a “pull” version that can be integrated into student information systems.  We are excited to see how xPress SRE capabilities will help students transition during a critical time in their lives.”

For additional information on SIF xPress and its potential impacts on education, visit www.A4L.org. There you’ll also find usage examples along with a webinar schedule for more detailed information.

About the Access 4 Learning Community

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of over 3,200 schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively define the rules and regulations for educational software data interoperability. The Community collaborates to be “powered by the SIF Specifications” that enable diverse applications to interact and share learning information simply, securely, and in a scalable, standard way regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The Access 4 Learning Community has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit http://www.A4L.org.