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It’s that time of year again…
Foreword by Steve Smith, Executive Director
It’s that time of year again; students, educators, administrators and staff all returning to school, along with caregivers all excited with anticipation about the new school year. For some they will experience new teachers, a new classroom, a new school building, and some will be returning to the same environment, but for all the excitement and anticipation for what lies ahead is palatable.
Similarly, the energy and anticipation of what lies ahead for the A4L Community & SDPC is generating a lot of excitement. There is a great deal of positive news to share about the work that you all are doing. It is the community of passionate and active members that makes the A4L Community so effective and successful.
Here are just a few highlights of the great work going on;
• Unity adoption is growing with multiple states beginning to transition from SIF 2.* to Unity as well as three new states implementing Unity,
• GESS V2.0 has launched with a free self assessment for vendors,
• the Registry 2.0 project is making great strides and remains on time,
• a new member management solution has been selected and will be rolled out over the coming months, and
• overall project team and committee participation by Community members is up! Not to mention that A4L membership continues to grow.
You will find more details about most of these accomplishments in this newsletter, but I wanted to stress how proud I am of this Community, the commitment of you all and the great work that you are all doing to improve the education ecosystem for all learners!
Global Community News:
Welcome new members!; Scheduled Maintenance; The Rise of JSON-LD in Data Standards: A Collaborative Approach; The Community Needs YOU!; A4L Community project to upgrade existing membership collaboration tools; Announcing the Formation of the A4L Artificial Intelligence Project Team; and Community Project Team updates.
NA Community News:
Streamlining Educational Data Reporting: Aligning SIF Unity with EDFacts through CEDS; and, Iowa Department of Education PK-12 State education system.
Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) News:
Global Education Security Standard (GESS) and Self-Assessment released; Registry 2.0 update; and an update on the Global Education Security Standard (GESS)