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Skills-Based Smartcards Website
``` [Forwarded with permission. When I saw this, my first impulse was to send it out with a clever comment such as "why don't they just go for barcode tattoos or ear notching and avoid the problem of lost cards?". But later I figured that real analysis might be more helpful. We focus a lot on standards for information technology, but I think it's better to expand our vision to appreciate how the capabilities of information and communications technologies generate incentives to standardize all sorts of things in the real world. Cronon's celebrated book "Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West" (Norton, 1991) tells the story of the standardization of grain. It took a few tries before farmers and merchants learned how to classify grain into useful, reliable categories. Once they did this, it became possible to intermingle grain from many different farms. More importantly, it became possible to separate the growing and shipping from the buying and selling. Someone in New York could buy and sell grain without seeing it, or indeed without ever having seen any grain at all. The information and communications technologies of that day (the telegraph, for example) amplified the incentives for standardization of agricultural products. The analogous technologies of our own day are likewise creating the incentives for a new golden age of standardization. Take education. As it becomes technologically feasible to take classes at a distance, incentives arise to standardize the degree programs of different universities. As professors labor in blissful ignorance, administrators construct fabulous scenarios that reinterpret education as an industrial commodity that is standardized and packaged and delivered on a just-in-time basis to individuals in their living rooms. According to these scenarios, students no longer get diplomas for four years of education but rather for every microscopic bit of learning. This sort of scheme is probably useful for some things, but it is an atrocity for many others, and we need to have a much fuller discussion before we can find the dividing line. Meanwhile, lots of these dreaming professors (myself included) decide they're going to stir a little bit of "distance education" into their existing classes. This can be fun, but in practice it is much harder than it seems. Just saying a phrase like "distance education" over and over creates the illusion that we know what it means. The more such experiments I hear about, the more I understand that the real leverage from new information and communications technology only comes when you rethink the institutions from the ground up. But whenever institutions are rethought from the ground up, all possible questions of power and control and autonomy are thrown wide open to be fought all over again. The ability of professors to write their own course syllabi, for example, could very easily evaporate over the next ten years. Political enemies of the professoriate openly exult at the possibility of using the new technologies to capture records of lectures and class discussions and publicly abuse those who teach unpopular ideas. People who explore the new technologies and teaching methods, of course, normally do not intend to contribute to such agendas. But the point is deeper than that. An awfully wide variety of different architectures and institutions can emerge from the present ferment, and only some of those architectures and institutions embody the values of a democratic society. The time to start the conversation is now. What is implied about the nature of education when the curriculum is standardized and fragmented in the ways now commonly envisioned? What other visions are possible -- ones that put the new technologies to work for positive ends?]
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Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 16:54:26 -0500
From: michael brown
SMARTCARDS : Web Site
The European Accreditation System: the SMARTCARDS Project
As you probably know, the Tavistock Institute is currently engaged in providing strategic support to the European Commission's White Paper on Education and Training, 'Towards a learning Society'. In relation to Objective 1 of the White Paper, on the initiative of Madame Cresson, Commissioner for research, education training and youth, the Commission is currently looking at ways of creating the 'European Accreditation System'. The rationale behind this system is based on perceptions that most European education systems are not flexible enough to keep pace with technological change, the changing nature of work, and the increasing importance of informal, work-based and self-study learning. In order to address these issues, the European Accreditation System aims to set up permanent and accessible skill accreditation mechanisms that will allow individuals to validate their knowledge however it has been acquired.
Central to this vision is the use of new technologies, such as personal smart cards that will allow citizens to record their training and experience on portable, computer-readable curriculum vitae. Another set of applications involve the use of remote, electronic assessment and testing systems that can allow individuals to obtain qualifications and credentials that in turn can be recorded on their personal skills card, perhaps via existing frameworks such as the European network of chambers of commerce, or even at home.
In support of this initiative, the Institute has been commissioned to undertake a review of state of the art in competence accreditation. This review is aimed primarily at evaluating developments in the USA, which, because vocational training is primarily locally-led and industry-driven, is seen as a useful comparison. Following intensive field work with federal and state representatives, industry, training providers and accreditation agencies, the project will provide policy recommendations to help shape the further development of the European Accreditation System.
As part of the work, we have set up a dedicated web-site and on-line discussion Forum to enable experts and others with an interest in these issues to take part in an ongoing debate, exchange ideas and expertise and help contribute to strategic thinking in this area.
We would very much welcome your participation in the Forum. You can access it as follows:
http://tavinstitute.guinet.com/
Joe. Dr Joe Cullen EDRU Tel: 44 (0)171 417 8310 Ext. 2140 FAX: 44 (0)171 417 0567
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Industry Representative: Texas Skill Standards Board (TSSB) http://skillsnet.org/html/texas.htm
Michael L. Brown Email: mbrown@skillsnet.org SkillsNET Organization Web: http://skillsnet.org P.O. Box 310 voice: 972-923-2950 Waxahachie, Texas 75165 fax: 972-923-2986
"Building the STANDARD.......one SKILL at a time"(tm) ```
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