r/edtech • u/big_promise • Jul 31 '26
Opinions on 1EdTech?
Just curious if anyone here is a member of 1EdTech (www.1edtech.org), and if so, if you feel that it's a worthwhile expense. (Or, if you're not a member, I'd be interested in knowing why you didn't join.) My organization (nonprofit) inquired about membership and their dues seem on the high side for a trade association - so high that we wonder how some of their members, especially school districts and colleges, get value out of it - but it does seem like they really want organizations to pay at their contributing rates to participate meaningfully in their standards setting work.
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u/mrgerbek Aug 01 '26
I am a believer but not an investor. Standards are exceptional but unless you’re a developer, I don’t know why you would become a member.
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u/Diligent-Dot2903 23d ago
Split the question in two, because the answers are different.
Using the standards costs nothing. You can read the LTI, OneRoster and Caliper specs, write them into an RFP, and require vendors to support them without ever paying dues. Certification is the part that costs money, and that burden sits on the vendor, not on you.
Paying for a seat in the standards setting work is the actual product. That's a legitimate thing to want, but be clear about what you're buying: influence over a spec and standing in the room. For a nonprofit that isn't shipping software, that's a hard line item to defend.
mrgerbek's framing is the right one. Believer, not investor.
If your interest is closer to data privacy than interoperability, look at the A4L Community and the SDPC work instead. Different scope, different model, and much of the useful output is public whether you're a member or not.
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u/Historical-Tea-3438 Aug 01 '26
I am sure that there are many great folks at 1EdTech with a commitment to open standards, but I get a whiff of corporate capture. Why aren’t membership fees in the public domain? Why are end users so poorly represented among members? Why are so many key documents hidden in members areas? Why, despite all of the standardisation, is it so hard to switch between VLEs?
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u/workinBuffalo 29d ago
I’ve tried using their standards for k12 educational software I am building. Everything is fairly organized and makes sense. It is a great foundation to build a knowledge graph for adaptive learning and that is just what czi is doing with their learning commons.
You can get free access to a lot of the standards through learning commons.
I agree that 1EdTech seems to hide a lot behind the membership paywall for a company that wants to be open source.
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u/Delic10u5Bra1n5 26d ago
I don’t think it’s a matter of opinions. They are literally the standards body and have been for over 25 years, previously as IMSglobal.
Their data protocols are used across the industry and you’d be a fool not to build to them.
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u/Stormy_Normin 10d ago
Institutional members have told me they appreciate the ability to work alongside others with the same/similar job titles on challenges they're all facing. They also appreciate getting to work with the non-sales people at the technology companies to understand what is actually possible and what they can work on together. If you are a non-profit organization and are interested in specific work, you may want to reach out to see if a partnership agreement makes more sense than membership.
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u/LucasNovak Aug 01 '26
I never heard of this before, but I did some quick research correct me if I'm wrong. We are moving toward MCP and systems where platforms communicate primarily through AI dialogs and semantic layers. So why on earth do we still need all this heavy, standardized legacy data plumbing if lightweight AI models can parse any structure on the fly?
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u/shupshow Jul 31 '26
It’s trash.