Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

19 – Building Communities of Practice
older electronic data interchange (EDI) formats. These
formatting rules are evolving and refining standards as
developers build new features and capabilities into
communication frameworks such as the eXtensible
markup language 52 (XML).
One reason that the XML framework has been enthusiastically
adopted stems from its ability to structure
information in a flexible manner, allowing information
to be grouped into related sub-topics. This grouping is
especially useful when relating complex information
between various computer applications. Unlike hypertext
markup language (which formats data), XML can be
used for situating data within a hierarchal structure.
For example, the data “Jenn Arden Brown” would use
HTML markup syntax ( … Jenn Arden
Brown) to present the data in bold and
italics: Jenn Arden Brown. XML markup would provide
the semantic information (or field name in database
terminology) used for adding context to the data using
the following syntax:
Jenn
Arden
Brown
In this case, the data can be integrated into both internal
and external applications (assuming the data
structures exist). For example, Microsoft Outlook may
recognize XML structured data from a cellular phone
application and automatically offer to store the data
located within the node (and subsequent
, , and nodes) into your list of
personal contacts.
Recording
Referencing locates and describes data for computer
applications. Recording is used to store data between
references. Perhaps the simplest way to record data is
through printing the data onto paper, creating a physical
copy that can be filed away, faxed to outside offices, or
published on information boards. In the age of digital
information, however, the amount of data available
52
“Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple, very
flexible text format derived from SGML (ISO 8879).
Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale
electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly
important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on
the Web and elsewhere.” (W3C, 2005)
makes printing impractical for storing large amounts of
information.
Printing was used historically for the storage of all
data required by physical machines during the infancy
of the computer industry. 53 Printing, as the predominant
form of data storage, became outdated with the ability to
reliably store information onto tape and disk technology.
These three technologies are not completely dissimilar.
Each requires information to be packaged and
stored in a linear format. In fact, linear packaging of
information (or serialization) is still the predominant
method for recording information today. Image files
(such as JPEG, BMP and MPEG), office documents
(such as Word documents) and static HTML web pages
all store information in a linear format. It is the responsibility
of the application (web browser, photo editor,
word processor) to read these files from start to finish,
process the data, and present the information in a manner
that can be understood by the user.
Although at a fundamental level all information
within a computer is stored in a linear format, 54 advances
in computer applications have provided greater
flexibility in the packing and unpacking process. The
ability for applications to process data is determined by
their ability to apply specific rules during this process.
Photo editors, for example, can usually interpret JPEG,
BMP, and GIF images. These file types use standardized
rules for presenting images. These rules can be incorporated
into applications that are designed for the Microsoft,
Linux, or Macintosh operating systems.
Applications such as Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and
GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) read the
files from start to finish, apply rules for interpreting the
data, and display the result to the user. This process
works fine for relatively small packages of data. 55 Read-
53
Machines using a punch card operating system made
their debut in 1965 and stored information as a series of
physical holes in index cards. This technology formed “the
first of three operating systems developed… It controlled
the connected card readers, card punchers and high speed
printers, and supported the classic card applications like
reading, sorting, duplicating as well as the counting of the
cards.” (IBM, 2005)
54
“By combining bits [0s and 1s] into a sequence, we can
form binary representations that are equivalent to other
representations of numbers.” (Hyde, 2004, p. 22)
55
Many photo editors, for example, can only interpret files
that do not exceed 20 MB in an uncompressed format. This
occurs because the program has only allocated 20 MB of
computer memory for storing temporary versions of the
294 Education for a Digital World