| Open
Knowledge Initiative Announces Developer Support Program
O.K.I. Responds to Developer
Demand by Creating Forums for Community Engagement
October 1, 2002
ATLANTA, Georgia, October 1, 2002—The Open Knowledge Initiative
(O.K.I.) announced today at Educause 2002 the creation of a program
to support developers in integrating O.K.I.’s service architecture.
Until the availability of this program, called the O.K.I. Developers
Network, developer participation was limited to O.K.I.’s founding
partners and collaborators. Through this program, the developer
community can now leverage O.K.I. activity and expertise worldwide
in making local, standards-based, open-source educational application
development more efficient.
Initial components of the O.K.I. Developers Network include access
to the O.K.I. technical experts through an online discussion forum,
and a series of developer workshops. The first of these workshops
will be held on February 3-4, 2003 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"O.K.I.’s core educational partners have engaged with a
growing community of interest over the past two years." said
Jeff Merriman, Project Leader for O.K.I. and Senior Strategist for
Academic Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"We are excited to extend our reach through the O.K.I. Developers
Network. This is just a start, but it is an important step in helping
others to adopt and use the O.K.I. service framework."
"Through the Open Knowledge Initiative we have brought together
some of the best minds in educational technology and enterprise
interoperability in higher education today," said Vijay Kumar,
O.K.I.'s Principal Investigator, Director of Academic Computing, and
Assistant Provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"These individuals are committed to moving O.K.I.'s service specifications
forward, and assuring their ongoing adoption in the marketplace.
Through the Developers Network this expertise and energy will become
more accessible to the broader academic development community."
Participants in the Network can also rest assured that O.K.I. activities
are in alignment with the larger educational specifications community.
"We are working 'hand in glove' with the IMS Global Learning
Consortium," continues Kumar, "which defines and delivers
critical specifications for exchanging learning content."
"The way I look at it,' continues Kumar, "O.K.I. is building
the infrastructure for sustainable educational transformation, and
we are now allowing others to participate in this important effort
through the O.K.I. Developer Support Program."
About the Open Knowledge Initiative
The Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) is defining an open and extensible
architecture for learning technology specifically targeted to the
needs of the higher education community. O.K.I. provides detailed specifications
for interfaces among components of a learning management environment,
to be used both by commercial product vendors and by higher education
product developers. It provides a stable, scalable base that supports
the flexibility needed by higher education as learning technology
is increasingly integrated into the education process. Originally
funded by the Mellon Foundation, the project is led by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in close collaboration with Stanford University,
the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, North Carolina State
University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and the University of Cambridge. More details regarding participation
in the O.K.I. Developer Network will be made available on the O.K.I. web
site: http://web.mit.edu/oki.
To reach O.K.I. representatives at Educause, visit the O.K.I. Information
Suite at the Atlanta Marriott, Room 4014.
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