I love taking inventory on how people view this yearly life benchmark.  One of my sons in K12 was so ready to go back and stop his summer job while the other wanted his summer and work to go on forever.  I don’t even need to tell you how my teaching wife was not ready to go back yet!  Being virtual, it means more productive work for me.

It sounds logical and of course critical for successful data stewardship for all learners. However, you can probably count numerous times when a mantra is just lip service OR something you can relate to “vaporware” in software! The A4L Community leadership and staff have been working incredibly hard behind the scenes to make this tag real, tactical and supported by on the ground successful use cases. This Community is delivering big time on interoperability AND privacy!

While I do not EVER contend to be able to predict the future, I can confidently present some of the following “bets” for the Community in 2022.  These are for entertainment purposes only – no betting is encouraged!

“Connecting and Securing Effective Learning Ecosystems®”.  You will be seeing that mantra for the Community a LOT in the coming months.  The SIF Specification Project began in 1997 and became the now official Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community non-profit in 2004…

We hope you can take a minute and take a breath – follow local guidance, if that’s through a mask or not!

“The ultimate measure of a [person] is not where [he/she] stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where [he/she] stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

We have all heard and used this phrase – probably repeatedly – in our numerous holiday season conversations.  I think you would agree that, in reality, this year is NOT our typical holiday “season”!

Being a non-profit organization made up of hundreds of volunteers – both end users and marketplace providers – the “let’s get back to school” focus has provided some interesting informal research data points: We look at educational technology differently,  We look at teachers differently, We look at marketplace providers differently, We look at learning differently.

Albert Einstein famously stated, “In the midst of every difficulty lies opportunity.”  While I am quite sure he did not intend this for a global pandemic, this restricted time has given many individuals, families and even organizations time to review ‘how they work’.  Recently, the North American Management Board of the Association held conversations around how to communicate our collective work more effectively, addressing the realities of interoperability and privacy.

The most important first item to note in this quarter’s newsletter is just that – stay safe!  It is a phrase many of us throw around during our normal meet-and-greets each day, but the current COVID-19 caution messaging and public responses has given the salutation a whole new meaning!