A4L Community & PESC join forces to mature JSON usage in open standards

WASHINGTON - Feb. 14, 2018 - PRLog -- The A4L Community is delighted to be working closely with PESC to further the development of JSON usage in their approved open standards and specifications.  This collaborative effort includes education stakeholder members from both organizations and aims to identify rules for creating a programmer friendly JSON from our XML defined data model by maximizing natural access to data in popular programming languages and minimizing carryover of unsupported XML concepts.

Members of PESC and A4L communities participating in the JSON Task Force aim to define the APIs for accessing, validating, and translating all standards. The exchange of information would be defined as accessing a provider's end points to retrieve the needed information. It is anticipated that these API specifications would become the standard over time.

At the last face-to-face meeting, held in January in San Francisco, CA, it was realized that there is enough momentum to start development with real work tools.  To this end, the A4L Community has created a GitHub repository for the group and will facilitate its management on behalf of the Task Force.  The A4L Community is very excited to be taking these next steps to make JSON a first class citizen in our specifications.

The JSON Task Force meets virtually every Monday at 1pm eastern.  The next face-to-face meeting is being held at the A4L Community 2018 Annual Meeting (North America).  Plans are also in progress for a further face-to-face meeting at PESC's Spring Data Summit, DC in May.  Anyone who wants a clean JSON version of any PESC or A4L standard should consider participating.  The group is most in need of JSON expertise.  Please help us bring the many benefits of JSON to our interoperability standards.

Being a joint task force, members of either PESC or the A4L Community are free to participate.  Individuals wanting to participate should contact their member organization.  Ideally they should attend the A4L Community Annual Meeting (March 15, 2018) where they will be brought up to speed on the work to date.

For more information about the 2018 Annual Meeting, please go to http://a4l.site-ym.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1026177&group= (http://a4l.site-ym.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=102617...)

About the Access 4 Learning Community
There is no other global community made up of educational policymakers, marketplace product and service providers and the customers they serve, collaborating daily to address real word learning information and resource issues.

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, previously the SIF Association, is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively address all aspects of learning information management and access to support learning.  The A4L Community is "Powered by SIF" Specifications as its major technical tool to allow for this management and access 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

About PESC
Established in 1997 at the National Center for Higher Education and headquartered in Washington, D.C., PESC is an international, 501 (c)(3) non-profit, community-based, umbrella association of data, software and education technology service providers; schools, districts, colleges and universities; college, university and state systems; local, state/province and federal government agencies; professional, commercial and non-profit organizations; and nonprofit associations & foundations.

Through open and transparent community participation, PESC enables cost-effective connectivity between data systems to accelerate performance and service, to simplify data access and research, and to improve data quality along the Education lifecycle. PESC envisions global interoperability within the Education domain, supported by a trustworthy, inter-connected network built by and between communities of interest in which data flows digitally and seamlessly from one community or system to another and throughout the entire eco-system when and where needed without compatibility barriers but in a safe, secure, reliable, legal, and efficient manner.

While PESC promotes the implementation and usage of data exchange standards, PESC does not set (create or establish) policies related to privacy and security. Organizations and entities using PESC Approved Standards and services should ensure they comply with FERPA and all local, state, federal and international rules on privacy and security as applicable. For more information, see www.PESC.org.