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...re under development and nearing completion at the CEN level. Consortia of all kinds Beyond Metadata: Other Standardization Work The aforementioned organisations all engage in other standardization activities than LOM. o At this moment, the ISO SC36 has working groups that cover aspects related to: o vocabulary issues, o collaborative technologies, and o learner information. 8 o The IEEE LTSC LOM working group is also working on bindings of the LOM structure into: o XML: both with a Document Type Definition, and with an XML Schema based approach, potentially based on joint Ariadne and IMS work; o ISO 11404: programming language independent data types specification, and o RDF: the overall framework for metadata from the World-Wide Web Consortium. At the same time the IEEE LTSC has groups working on Computer-Managed Instruction (CMI) and learning architectures. There are about a dozen other groups, in various stages of activities and advancement. o The CEN LTWS has some LOM related activities that were already briefly mentioned above. Other focal points of the work by this group include: o metadata and accessibility, o Educational Modeling Languages, o the description of language capabilities, o quality assurance, o taxonomies and vocabularies for learning in Europe, and o educational copyright licenses. CEN also hosts a number of other, related workshops, including one on the topic of cultural diversity. Beyond Standardization: some Other Issues Standardization is surely no simple universal solution to all the problems we face in learning today. In fact, there are a number of specific issues related to the very process of standardization. o First of all, it is clear that there is widespread confusion in the community of developers, decision makers and end users. The role of consortia and accredited standardization bodies is often misunderstood. Application profiles, specifications, “real standards”, etc. are often confused. The status of standards, as well as the time it takes to finalize the process for one piece of the puzzle often is difficult to assess for those who are not directly involved. Expectations are sometimes exaggerated and sometimes people underestimate the potential impact of the standardization efforts. o There is a lack of explicit consensus at this moment on what needs to be standardized, and in what order. Clearly, in the European context, issues around (cultural and other) diversity, as well as privacy, are sometimes perceived differently than elsewhere. There are many socio-political and legal aspects in this area, and a way should be found to guide and control this process better, with due involvement of all interested parties. o Much o...