Minutes: K12-JTF call of Wed 18-April-2012

Attending

Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (Chair)
Jim Siegel, Fairfax County
Mark Scheible, MCNC
Steve Thorpe, MCNC
David Bantz, University of Alaska
John Mohahan, University of Alaska
Rodney Peterson, Educause
Emily Eisbruch, Internet2 (scribe)

Action Items

[AI] (SteveO) will set up a wiki for this group and send info to the list about access. The wiki will eventually include:
links to existing roadmaps
links to business case documents from 2001
a list of what tools a K12 district could use that support SAML (e.g. VoiceThread)

[AI] (Jim) send to the list a link to the story on Fairfax and a potential virtual high school

[AI] (Jim) send to the list his document regarding what Fairfax is doing around IdM

[AI] (Jim) share textbook contact wording around single sign in

[AI] (Jim) get a volunteer with an instructional hat to read the primer and provide feedback. http://www.cosn.org/Portals/7/docs/Publications/CoSNK-12ID5-15.pdf

DISCUSSION

Creative Commons License

The Creative Commons License will be the IPR framework for these working group calls. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Proprietary information should not be shared on the calls.

Setting Up a Wiki for this Working Group

• SteveO plans to set up a wiki for this working group.
• It was agreed that for now this working group's wiki will be hosted on the Internet2 spaces wiki
• It will be world-viewable and any authenticated user will be able to edit.
• It's simple to set a "watch" in order to get notifications when changes are made to the wiki
• Jim is pulling together some resources that he would like to add to the wiki

[AI] (SteveO) will set up a wiki for this group and send info to the list about access. The wiki will eventually include:
links to existing roadmaps
links to business case documents from 2001
a list of what tools a K12 district could use that support SAML (e.g. VoiceThread)
minutes from the calls

Virtual Public School and IdM Implications

A potential virtual public school in Fairfax County was recently in the news.http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/fairfax-county-considers-creating-virtual-high-school/2012/04/12/gIQAJ7ksDT_story.html

Q: What are the IdM implications?

A: Jim noted that there are already virtual schools, but all students come from within the district.
There is no solution yet on how to handle online access control and identity proofing for situations where students are enrolled from outside the district.

• Virtual schools present an interesting use case, and Jim will share relevant info as it becomes available

Development of a K-12 Federated Identity Management Roadmap

• Good starting points are (and will link to these from the wiki):

the Enterprise Authentication Implementation Roadmap and Enterprise Directory Implementation Roadmap linked from https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/CAMPJune2010/Exploring+InCommon+Track+resources

COSN K--12 Federated Identity Resources page: http://www.cosn.org/FederatedIdentity
The Federation Resource Book: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/download/attachments/22151217/CAMP-booklet-v3.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1277214236045

Mark: some things have changed, but much of the general approach in the existing roadmaps is still valid

Audience for Primer or Roadmap

Q : Who is the audience in K12 for the primer and the planned roadmaps?

A: Could have multiple audiences:
CIOs (it was noted that not all districts have a CIO)
technical (IT) people
instructional people

• The primer http://www.cosn.org/Portals/7/docs/Publications/CoSNK-12ID5-15.pdf may be too technical for certain target audiences, such as principals

• A document on "how to explain federation to your high school Principal" could be very helpful

• The experience is that when talking to a school board or principal or superintendent about federation, we must talk in terms of making curriculum resources and access available to students, as opposed to explaining the IT benefits. Even talking security and budget is less compelling.

• Rodney noted that EDUCAUSE also struggles with audience issues and has documents such as "what Presidents need to know about topic X" and "The 7 things you should know about X"

[AI] (Jim) get a volunteer with an instructional hat to read the primer and provide feedback.http://www.cosn.org/Portals/7/docs/Publications/CoSNK-12ID5-15.pd

• If people have not read the K12 primer on single sign on, please read it as a prerequisite to moving forward with the roadmap, so we should see where the gaps are

• the idea is that the primer is more of a high level approach and the roadmaps will dig deeper
• we need feedback and constructive criticism
• the roadmap and primer should dovetail nicely, and we may also want a simpler document as well.
• Good approach is to compare Federation to toll road EasyPass

Use Cases and Benefits to Emphasize

Could break out the use cases:
financial use cases
business use cases
technical use cases

To explain the business use case for Federated identity, there are very old business case guidance docs from 2000 or 2001 that SteveO will find and provide links to

Important benefits:

• for the user, the single sign in approach (which the primer focuses on) is a big plus in terms of ease of access
• for the administration, single sign in reduces the need for so many password resets
• for the user and the administration: a benefit of Federation is collaboration with people from all over the country

• include the real life successes as well as failures
• biggest question is "what can I gain access to"
• To a certain extent there is a chicken and egg situation.
• We should start a list of what tools you can get access to in the federation
• Wiki should include what tools a K12 district could use that support SAML (e.g. VoiceThread)

Jim has been working, for another project, on a summary of IdM in Fairfax County
[AI] (Jim) send to the list his document regarding what Fairfax is doing around IdM

eTextbooks as a Driver for Federated Identity

When textbook companies get on board with K12 Federation, this will greatly add to the benefits for the schools.

• Jim is on the textbook committee for Fairfax County.
• They are planning to go all digital and are putting single sign language into contacts.

[AI] (Jim) share textbook contact wording around single sign in

• Jim: in talking with the big publishers, it seems that the LTI approach is recently gaining traction.
  Learning Tools Interoperability http://www.imsglobal.org/toolsinteroperability2.cfm

• SAML and LTI people are talking about how to collaborate going forward, there is interest from both sides

Survey

• Last call there was discussion of an electronic survey version of the IdM maturity model benchmarking,
  the self assessment tool.

http://www.cosn.org/Portals/7/docs/Publications/K-12_IAM_Self-Assessment_Tool_v2.pdf

• Should we use SurveyMonkey?
• Jim may know of a better tool, with better analytics.
• Also COSN has some resources for surveys
• MarkS has been working on ensuring the survey will be focused on K12, referencing school districts or state Depts of Ed rather than campuses or universities
• Need to further define the audience and goals for the survey

• The primer mentions that a lot depends on what's going on at state level (examples were Colorado and NC)
• is it worth a more targeted survey to the state depts of education?
• If we want to target state Depts of Education then Steve Midgley could help with a list.

Next Call: Wed., 16-May-2012 at 3pm ET