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The Massachusetts Data Hub

Over the last decade, awareness and concerns over student data privacy issues gained attention across the United States. With 2020 came a newly heightened awareness of privacy, as nearly all students were thrown into online learning, and families had greater visibility to the technology tools their children were using.

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Newsletter

A4L Quarterly Newsletter, March 2021

“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.

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Newsletter

A4L Quarterly Newsletter, December 2020

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”!

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Newsletter

A4L Quarterly Newsletter, September 2020

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.

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Press Release

The Latest Unity Specification Release Supports ‘Future-Proofing’ EcoSystems

-The Access 4 Learning ® (A4L) Community, more than 3,000 members strong, is proud to announce the latest release of the new Unity Specification which provides standardization of learning data, ranging from everything from classroom rostering to federal data reporting, while addressing privacy issues throughout the education data continuum.

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Press Release

‘New’ Unity Specification release supports implementation of CEDS and State Reporting

-The Access 4 Learning® (A4L) Community, previously the SIF®  Association, is proud to announce the latest release  of the ‘new’ Unity Specification which provides EDFacts and xPress Roster mappings to address school needs and build towards allowing states and vendors to implement the US Department of Education’s Common Education Data Standards (CEDS).

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Newsletter

A4L Quarterly Newsletter, June 2020

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.

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Press Release

A4L Community delighted to welcome New Zealand and publish the inaugural SIF Specification (NZ)

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community is delighted to announce New Zealand as our newest global community member.  The official recognition of this new Community comes after three years hard work developing the SIF Data Model Implementation Specification (New Zealand) 3.0, by a team of data architects from New Zealand’s government education agencies.

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