Education and the Semantic Web

Recent developments in Web technologies and using AI techniques to support efforts in making the Web more intelligent and provide higher-level services to its users have opened the door to building the Semantic Web. That fact has a number of important implications for Web-based education, since Web-based education has become a very important branch of educational technology. Classroom independence and platform independence of Web-based education, availability of authoring tools for developing Web-based courseware, cheap and efficient storage and distribution of course materials, hyperlinks to suggested readings, digital libraries, and other sources of references relevant for the course are but a few of a number of clear advantages of Web-based education. However, there are several challenges in improving Web-based education, such as providing for more adaptivity and intelligence. Developments in the Semantic Web, while contributing to the solution to these problems, also raise new issues that must be considered if we are to progress. This paper surveys the basics of the Semantic Web and discusses its importance in future Web-based educational applications. Instead of trying to rebuild some aspects of a human brain, we are going to build a brain of and for humankind. D. Fensel and M.A. Musen (Fensel & Musen, 2001)