Services, Semantics, and Standards: Elements of a Learning Grid Infrastructure

There has been considerable political pressure, and much hope invested in, the use of Communication and Information Technologies to provide wider access to education, while improving quality and reducing costs. Unfortunately, many of the responses to the challenge of these aspirations have consisted of simple Web technology-driven products which have failed to progress effective learning. We outline the characteristics and pedagogical goals of a learning paradigm that is used to drive the technical requirements, rather than being constrained by what is easily achieved in XHTML. We identify and explain the key roles played by services, semantics and standards in meeting pedagogical goals of novel learning situations, and illustrate with some scenarios which build bridges between traditional learning contexts and future possibilities and, finally, describe an example of a methodology for the creation of future learning scenarios.