G C LOBAL

MECB / MECT
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Business Plan
2008 - 20011
MSc in E-Commerce
Dublin City University
Practicum Report
By
Eoin Higgins
Barry Maher
Danielle Greene
Declaration:
We the undersigned declare that the project material, which we now submit, is our
own work. Any assistance received by way of borrowing from the work of others has
been cited and acknowledged within the work. We make this declaration in the
knowledge that a breach of the rules pertaining to project submission may carry
serious consequences.
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to pay special thanks to everyone who assisted us throughout the project. In
particular, we would like to thank our supervisor Dr. Theo Lynn who gave up so much of his
time to assist in every way imaginable. We would also like to thank Prof. Alan Smeaton our
technical supervisor.
We would also like to acknowledge everyone in ASU and Cambridge University Press for
their assistance throughout.
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Contents
ACKNOLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................... 2
Contents........................................................................................................... 3
1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .............................................................................. 7
1.1 Introduction............................................................................................. 7
1.2 Product and Services ............................................................................. 7
1.3 The Market ............................................................................................. 8
1.4 Global Crosswalk Strategy ..................................................................... 8
1.5 Staffing ................................................................................................... 9
1.6. Indicative Financial Illustrations ............................................................. 9
1.7 Funding Requirements ........................................................................... 9
2 CORPORATE BACKGROUND ................................................................... 10
2.1 Background .......................................................................................... 10
2.2 Corporate Structure .............................................................................. 11
2.3 Directors and Employees ..................................................................... 11
2.4 Funding ................................................................................................ 12
2.5 Realising Shareholder Value ................................................................ 12
3 EXTRACTION, TRANSFORMATION AND LOADING TECHNOLOGIES .. 13
3.1 Introduction........................................................................................... 13
3.2 Digital Assets........................................................................................ 13
3.3 Metadata .............................................................................................. 14
3.3.1 Generic Metadata – Dublin Core.................................................... 14
3.3.2 Industry Metadata – ONIX for Publishers....................................... 17
3.3.3Segment Specific Metadata – IEEE LOM ....................................... 17
3.4 Global Crosswalk Metadata Standards ................................................ 19
3.5 Other Relevant Standards .................................................................... 20
3.5.1 Language ....................................................................................... 20
3.5.2 Word Stemming ............................................................................. 21
3.5.3 Error Correction ............................................................................. 21
3.6 Achievement Standards ....................................................................... 22
3.7 K-12 Education Standards.................................................................... 22
3.8 Global Crosswalk Advantages.............................................................. 23
3.9 ETL Process ......................................................................................... 24
3.9.1 Extraction ....................................................................................... 24
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3.9.2 Transformation ............................................................................... 24
3.9.3 Load ............................................................................................... 24
3.10 Education Metadata Users ................................................................. 25
4. MARKET OVERVIEW ................................................................................ 26
4.1 Introduction........................................................................................... 26
4.2 K-12 Enterprise Software and Technology Services ............................ 26
4.3 K-12 Education Market Overview ......................................................... 27
4.3.1 United Kingdom ............................................................................. 27
4.3.1.1 Prospective Customers ........................................................... 28
4.3.1.2 Key Players in the UK K-12 Publishing Market........................ 29
4.3.2 United States ................................................................................. 31
4.3.2.1 Prospective Customers ........................................................... 35
4.3.2.2 Key Players in the US K-12 Publishing Market........................ 36
4.4 K-12 Education Publishers ................................................................... 38
5. BUSINESS DESCRIPTION ....................................................................... 40
5.1 Vision.................................................................................................... 40
5.2 Product and Service Overview ............................................................. 41
5.2.1 Global Crosswalk Conceptual Diagram and Functions by User ..... 41
5.2.2 Global Crosswalk High Level Architecture ..................................... 43
5.2.3 Global Crosswalk ETL TOOL ......................................................... 44
5.2.4 Global Crosswalk Datasets ............................................................ 44
5.2.5 Implementation Services................................................................ 44
5.3 Revenue Model .................................................................................... 45
5.4 Business Strategy................................................................................. 45
5.5 Customer Relationships ....................................................................... 46
5.6 Strategic Relationships ......................................................................... 46
5.7 Sales and Marketing ............................................................................. 46
5.8 Research and Development ................................................................. 47
5.9 Competition .......................................................................................... 48
5.9.1 Direct Competitors ......................................................................... 48
5.9.2 Indirect Competitors ....................................................................... 53
6 ORGANISATION ........................................................................................ 54
6.1 Board of Directors................................................................................. 54
6.2 Project Team ........................................................................................ 55
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6.3 Organisation ......................................................................................... 55
7 FINANCIAL OVERVIEW ............................................................................. 56
7.1 Disclaimer............................................................................................. 56
7.2 Profit and Loss Account........................................................................ 57
7.3 Balance Sheet ...................................................................................... 58
7.4 Cashflow Statement ............................................................................. 59
7.5 Summary of Major Assumptions ........................................................... 60
7.5.1 Revenues....................................................................................... 60
7.5.2 Cost of Sales.................................................................................. 60
7.5.3 Gross Margin ................................................................................. 60
7.5.4 Salaries (incl. Employers PRSI) ..................................................... 60
7.5.5 Rent, Rate, Insurance and Other Office Costs ............................... 61
7.5.6 Professional Fees .......................................................................... 61
7.5.7 Marketing ....................................................................................... 61
7.5.8 Fixed Assets and Depreciation ...................................................... 61
7.5.9 Bank Interest and Charges ............................................................ 61
7.5.10 Currency ...................................................................................... 61
8 APPENDICES ............................................................................................. 62
Appendix A – IEEE LOM Metadata Elements ............................................ 62
Appendix B – ONIX for Books Metadata Elements .................................... 63
Appendix C – People / Organisations Contacted ....................................... 66
Appendix D – Arizona Department of Education Meeting 7th July .............. 67
Appendix E – Projected Profit and Losses by Month .................................. 68
Appendix F – Projected Cash Flows by Month ........................................... 71
Appendix G – Projected Balance Sheets by Month .................................... 74
Appendix H – Projected Sales by Month .................................................... 77
Appendix I – Projected Cost of Sales by Month ......................................... 80
Appendix J – Projected Salary Assumptions by Month .............................. 81
Appendix K – Projected Rent, Rates and Insurance by Month ................... 84
Appendix L – Other Office Costs by Month ................................................ 85
Appendix M – Projected Professional Fees ................................................ 86
Appendix N – Projected Marketing Costs by Month ................................... 87
Appendix O – Projected Customers by Month ............................................ 88
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Technical Report ............................................................................................ 89
1. OVERVIEW ................................................................................................ 90
1.1 Scope ....................................................................................................... 90
2. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE ....................................................................... 91
2.1 High Level Architecture ........................................................................ 91
2.2 Sequence Diagrams ............................................................................. 92
2.2.1 Upload a File.................................................................................. 92
2.2.2 Correlate............................................................................................ 95
3. DEVELOPMENT DESCRIPTION .............................................................. 97
3.1 Technologies Used ............................................................................... 97
3.1.1 Benefits .......................................................................................... 97
3.2 Issues Faced and Solutions ................................................................. 97
3.2.1 Understanding the Concept ........................................................... 97
3.2.2 Strip the Metadata.......................................................................... 98
3.2.3 Correlation of Assets...................................................................... 98
3.2.4 How to Crosswalk .......................................................................... 98
3.2.5 Learning JSP ................................................................................. 98
4. APPENDICES .......................................................................................... 100
Appendix A - List of Online Tutorials and Websites Used for Research ... 100
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1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.1 Introduction
Global Crosswalk was conceived as a support system for the Global Grid for Learning project.
Global Grid for Learning is a Cambridge University Press initiative to establish a digital
content supply network for education worldwide. Its goal is to connect one billion resources
to education in the next ten years. Global Crosswalk is a project that was established in
March 2008 by Cambridge University Press, LiNK and alt^I to design, develop and
commercialise the metadata tools and datasets being developed within the Global Grid for
Learning project.
Global Crosswalk’s core competency is its breadth and depth of experience and expertise in
all aspects of the global education publishing sector including (a) electronic publishing (b)
the use of digital content and ICT in the education sector, and (c) global sales and marketing
to the education sector.
1.2 Product and Services
Global Crosswalks revenues are generated through licensing of the Global Crosswalk ETL tool
and datasets to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and to the Master Distributor
(Cambridge University Press).
 Global Crosswalk ETL Tool
The Global Crosswalk ETL Tool is a solution designed to assist users in the process of
extracting, transforming and loading metadata of digital assets, enabling customers to
better manage their publishable digital content. The Global Crosswalk ETL Tool unifies
and integrates appropriate technologies necessary to provide customers with a system
and workflow process for extracting, transforming and loading publishable digital
content. Its design will enable rapid integration with existing systems, which will prove
vital when integrating with OEM providers in the future. The Global Crosswalk ETL Tool
has been designed to generate each digital object record in accordance with an
international standard for metadata. It is designed to make the process of creating
metadata and outputting each digital object as easy and intuitive as possible.
 Global Crosswalk Datasets
The Global Crosswalk dataset will comprise of a managed and global repository
consisting of ministries of educational achievement standards. The Global Crosswalk
dataset will initially consist of the US K-12 educational standards. These standards will be
fully normalised and all similar standards across state educational boundaries will be
aligned, thus, increasing the interoperability of educational standards. The Global
Crosswalk datasets will assist standard setters to manage, update and crosswalk
educational standards. The datasets will also be of benefit to educators who are
required to demonstrate how they meet these educational standards. It is envisaged
that Global Crosswalk will provide comprehensive mapped repository of educational
standards can be used to reduce issues relating to semantic interoperability and
language.
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1.3 The Market
The K-12 education market can be divided into nine distinct areas that span the range of
products and services provided by third parties to schools, government and sub government
agencies, state department of education and local education agencies.
The enterprise software and technology services market is composed of software
applications and technology services provided to public schools and educational agencies to
public schools and other education agencies for the purposes of administrative and
instructional.
The enterprise software and technology services market can be broken into four distinct
subsections:

Business Management Systems- to manage school, district and state level
information and perform analysis of administrative transactional data.

Student Data Management Systems- to support student information management;
collecting, managing, reporting and analysing data.

Technology Services- design, installation, maintenance and integration of systems
and provision of technology consultancy.

Instructional Management Systems- provide technology platforms to support
learning through communication, access to instructional tools for the classroom and
access to information.
It is in the instructional management systems segment of the enterprise software and
technology market that Global Crosswalk competes. This segment of the K-12 market is
currently valued at €1,865 billion (FY2007), and has seen a steady growth rate in recent
years.
1.4 Global Crosswalk Strategy
Global Crosswalk believes that existing ETL solutions in the global education market were
cost-prohibitive, entailed a high element of manual tagging and were too US-focused. At the
core of Global Crosswalk's strategy are distinct phases:

Introduce solutions that will address the current needs of content distributors and in
the process of extracting, transforming and loading metadata of their digital assets,
assist standard setters to manage, update and crosswalk educational standards and
to benefit educators who are required to demonstrate how they have met
educational standards.

While a foothold has been gained in the initial target markets, Global Crosswalk will
have begun a product improvement cycle with the goal of crosswalking new
curricula standards to the existing database, opening up new markets in which to
compete. In addition Global Crosswalk will work closely with Cambridge University
Press to develop datasets and ETL tools that will serve the market of academic
journals
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To deliver this strategy, Global Crosswalk must offer solutions that are simpler, more
convenient to implement and less costly than existing solutions provided by market
participants.
Global Crosswalk believes it can offer a differentiated product and service offering, both on a
technical and on a business ROI basis which will contribute to the generation of predictable
revenues and low operational costs for Global Crosswalk and provide customers with a high
ROI.
1.5 Staffing
The Company intends to grow from 4 to 8 employees over the next three years.
1.6. Indicative Financial Illustrations
The table below is extracted from Section 7 of the Business Plan and should be read strictly
in conjunction with it. In particular, it should be noted that the following illustrations do not
constitute estimates or projections of future financial performance but represent one
possible scenario, should all underlying assumptions be achieved.
Global Crosswalk Summary of Indicative Financial Illustrations
Revenues
Gross Profit
Gross Margin
Net Profit/(Loss)
Net Cashflow Before Financing
Net Assets
Year 1
€
180,000
175,250
97%
(2,037)
(26,566)
(2,037)
Year 2
€
446,667
432,083
97%
138,643
62,476
136,606
Year 3
€
666,667
641,083
96%
213,816
243,620
350,422
Under these indicative financial illustrations, the Company will be profitable from Month 21.
The peak cash flow requirement is €42,826 in Month 13.
1.7 Funding Requirements
The short-term funding requirement will be secured by a non-refundable cross-collateralised
advance on sales payable by Cambridge University Press. In addition, it is anticipated that a
portion of this funding will be matched by Enterprise Ireland as part of the High Potential
Start-Up programme. The company should be self funding by Month 21.
.
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2 CORPORATE BACKGROUND
2.1 Background
Global Crosswalk was conceived as a support system for the Global Grid for Learning project.
Global Grid for Learning is a Cambridge University Press initiative to establish a digital
content supply network for education worldwide. Its goal is to connect one billion resources
to education in the next ten years.
At the heart of Global Grid for Learning is a platform and a library of resources from
publishers of all sizes, types and geographies including Reuters, Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Bridgeman Art Library, Cambridge-Hitachi, Scran and Corbis. This platform and library is
designed as a federated brokerage system which makes it easy for educators to search and
download education resources in a variety of formats from thousands of content sources
worldwide through common software applications such as those provided by Microsoft,
SMART Technologies and Google.
Global Grid for Learning comprises a commercial service managed by Cambridge University
Press and a service for free and open content managed by Dublin City University’s Learning,
Innovation and Knowledge Research Centre (LiNK) and Arizona State University’s Applied
Learning Technologies Institute (alt^I).
Due to the variety of publishers and content from both professional and amateur
developers, their software systems and metadata standards vary widely. Furthermore,
publishers of educational content are required and in some cases, mandated, to correlate
content to specific education standards by Departments of Education to qualify for funding
(see US No Child Left Behind Act or UK eLearning Credits programme) or to meet discovery
and usability expectations.
This can be a costly exercise e.g:

In some markets, there are different national, regional and local standards i.e. in the
US; there are federal, state and district standards which must each be met.

Different terminology exists in different markets causing semantic interoperability
issues e.g. Key Stage 2 in the UK

Different languages are used in different markets

Where content is disaggregated, each discrete object must be correlated i.e. instead
of a CD-ROM of 100,000 images having one correlation, 100,000 are required.

Each object may be correlated to multiple standards in one curriculum i.e. an image
of global warming could be correlated to a science standard, a geography standard
and a civic studies standard.

Standards change regularly.

Content is replaced and/or upgraded regularly requiring new correlations.
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
Content may not be appropriate to certain cultures e.g. Arab world.
Research by Cambridge University Press, alt^I and LiNK discovered that existing solutions
were either very US-focused, cost-prohibitive or entailed a high element of manual tagging.
Global Crosswalk is a project that was established in March 2008 by Cambridge University
Press, LiNK and alt^I to design, develop and commercialise the metadata tools and datasets
being developed within the Global Grid for Learning project.
2.2 Corporate Structure
Global Crosswalk is currently unincorporated. It is proposed that Global Crosswalk be
incorporated as an Irish limited company and located within Dublin City University. The
company will be initially funded by a minimum revenue commitment by Cambridge
University Press of €50,000 per annum and additional funding from other agencies including
Enterprise Ireland.
The proposed share structure is:
Shareholder
Cambridge University Press
Arizona State University
Dublin City University
Danielle Greene*
Barry Maher*
Eoin Higgins*
%Shareholding
30%
30%
30%
3.3%
3.3%
3.3%
*The shareholding for each of the executive shareholders will be held by the company subject to a threeyear commitment by each executive shareholder.
2.3 Directors and Employees
It is proposed that Cambridge University Press, ASU and DCU may each appoint one Director
to the Board of Directors in addition to two executive directors sourced from the project
team. Cambridge University Press shall retain the right to nominate the Chairperson. ASU or
DCU retain the right to nominate an operational decision-maker to liaise with project team
on a day-to-day basis.
The proposed initial directors are:

John Tuttle, Executive Director, New Directions Group, Cambridge
Press

Dr. Theo Lynn, Deputy Director, LiNK, Dublin City University

Dr. Sam DiGangi, Executive Director, alt^I, Arizona State University

Danielle Greene, Business Development Manager, Global Crosswalk
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
Eoin Higgins, Technical Manager, Global Crosswalk
The following table sets out the anticipate number of employees by category as assumed by
the project team for the purposes of the financial illustrations contained in this
memorandum. It is anticipated that these figures will be supplemented by additional PhD
candidates registered and funded with alt^I and LiNK.
Employees by Function
Sales and marketing
Research and Development
General and Administration
Total
2008
1
3
4
2009
1
4
1
6
2010
1
6
1
7
2.4 Funding
The short-term funding requirement will be secured by a non-refundable cross-collateralised
advance on sales payable by Cambridge University Press. In addition, it is anticipated that a
portion of this funding will be matched by Enterprise Ireland as part of the High Potential
Start-Up programme. The company should be self funding by Month 21.
2.5 Realising Shareholder Value
It is critical that the Directors and the project team maintain an attractive business profile for
the Company from a technology and commercial perspective to maximise the value of the
Company and reduce the risks associated with the project. The project team will be focussed
on short-term profitability. It is not anticipated that the shareholders will realise
shareholder, other than through dividend distribution, within the first five years. Cambridge
University Press retains the right to acquire all shareholdings at an independent valuation.
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3 EXTRACTION, TRANSFORMATION AND LOADING
TECHNOLOGIES
3.1 Introduction
Content Providers producing large amounts of digital content face difficulties ensuring the
content they are creating can be discovered by end users when it is needed. Content
Providers create metadata associated with their digital content in order to describe,
discover, preserve, manage and provide access to these electronic resources and digital
objects. As Content providers use this discovery as a means of generating ongoing royalties
and revenue streams, it is vitally important they ensure this can happen with ease and
undue delay. This is accomplished using three types of metadata, namely:

Descriptive metadata that describes the intellectual content of the object.

Structural metadata that ties each object together to make up logical units.

Administrative metadata that manages the object or controls access to it.
Some of the specific challenges faced by Content Providers trying to achieve this include:

Metadata creation is too expensive and time consuming.

Metadata is too complicated.

Metadata is subjective and depends on context.

Lack of formal workflow processes.
3.2 Digital Assets
Digital Assets are units of work that exist in digital form. They include media (content and
format), related information known as metadata and have a commercial value. Digital Assets
may consist of multiple types of media in a single work that are possibly interrelated or
interlinked.
A digital asset may take the shape of many objects such as photographs, artwork,
illustrations, 3-D, software source objects, audio, video, and text files. These files may exist
in a wide variety of formats and require specialist viewers. They can be further classified by
application or use type.
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3.3 Metadata
Metadata is the information that describes a digital object. Metadata, which is literally “data
about data, facilitates categorisation thereby permitting quick accurate searching and
extensive reuse. Metadata typically include keywords, numerical values, taxonomy
selections, dates and time periods. Metadata typically describe a particular digital files
origins, production status, history, appropriate use and rights required for use. It can be
further described as a set of structured descriptions that are publicly available to assist in the
identification discovery, assessment and management of described entities.1 The metadata
may meet generic standards such as Dublin Core, industry specific standards such as ONIX
for publishers or segment specific standards such as IEEE LOM for learning objects.
Figure 1 Metadata Example
3.3.1 Generic Metadata – Dublin Core
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set is a vocabulary of fifteen properties for use in
resource description.2 The name "Dublin" is due to its origin at a 1995 invitational workshop
in Dublin, Ohio; "core" because its elements are broad, generic and usable for describing a
wide range of resources. The fifteen elements described in this standard is part of a larger
set of metadata vocabularies and technical specifications maintained by the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative (DCMI).
Dublin Core can also be viewed as a "small language for making a particular class of
statements about resources".3 The Dublin Core element set includes the following elements:
Label 1: Title
Element Description: The name given to the resource. Typically, a Title will be a name by
which the resource is formally known.
Label 2: Subject and Keywords
Element Description: The topic of the content of the resource. Typically, a Subject will be
expressed as keywords or key phrases or classification codes that describe the topic of the
1
American Library Association Task Force on Metadata Summary Report, June 1999
http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/
3
http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/
2
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GLOBAL CROSSWALK
resource. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary or
formal classification scheme.
Label 3: Description
Element Description: An account of the content of the resource. Description may include
but is not limited to: an abstract, table of contents, reference to a graphical representation
of content or a free-text account of the content.
Label 4: Resource Type
Element Description: The nature or genre of the content of the resource. Type includes
terms describing general categories, functions, genres, or aggregation levels for content.
Label 5: Source
Element Description: A Reference to a resource from which the present resource is derived.
The present resource may be derived from the Source resource in whole or part.
Recommended best practice is to reference the resource by means of a string or number
conforming to a formal identification system.
Label 6: Relation
Element Description: A reference to a related resource. Recommended best practice is to
reference the resource by means of a string or number conforming to a formal identification
system.
Label 7: Coverage
Element Description: The extent or scope of the content of the resource. Coverage will
typically include spatial location (a place name or geographic co-ordinates), temporal period
(a period label, date, or date range) or jurisdiction (such as a named administrative entity
Label 8: Creator
Element Description: An entity primarily responsible for making the content of the resource.
Examples of a Creator include a person, an organization, or a service. Typically the name of
the Creator should be used to indicate the entity.
Label 9: Publisher
Element Description: The entity responsible for making the resource available. Examples of
a Publisher include a person, an organization, or a service. Typically, the name of a Publisher
should be used to indicate the entity.
Label 10: Contributor
Element Description: An entity responsible for making contributions to the content of the
resource. Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization or a service. Typically,
the name of a Contributor should be used to indicate the entity.
Label 11: Rights Management
Element Description: Information about rights held in and over the resource. Typically a
Rights element will contain a rights management statement for the resource, or reference a
service providing such information. Rights information often encompasses Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR), Copyright, and various Property Rights. If the rights element is absent,
no assumptions can be made about the status of these and other rights with respect to the
resource.
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Label 12: Date
Element Description: A date associated with an event in the life cycle of the resource.
Typically, Date will be associated with the creation or availability of the resource.
Label 13: Format
Element Description: The physical or digital manifestation of the resource. Typically, Format
may include the media-type or dimensions of the resource. Examples of dimensions include
size and duration. Format may be used to determine the software, hardware or other
equipment needed to display or operate the resource.
Label 14: Resource Identifier
Element Description: An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context.
Label 15: Language
Element Description: A language of the intellectual content of the resource.
The main advantages associated with Dublin Core include:4
4

Simplicity of creation and maintenance – meaning the element set has been kept as
small and simple as possible to allow a non-specialist to create simple descriptive
records for resources easily and inexpensively, while facilitating effective retrieval of
those resources.

Commonly understood semantics - Dublin Core can help a non-specialist searcher in
their search queries by providing a common set of elements, the semantics of which
are universally understood and supported and are appropriate to one field of study
to the next.

International scope - Dublin Core Element Set was originally developed in English but
other versions are being created in a variety of other languages.

Extensibility - While balancing the needs for simplicity in describing digital resources
with the need for precise retrieval, Dublin Core have recognized the importance of
providing a mechanism for extending the element set for additional resource
discovery needs. It is expected that other communities of metadata experts will
create and administer additional metadata sets, specialized to the needs of their
communities. Metadata elements from these sets could be used in conjunction with
Dublin Core metadata to meet the need for interoperability.
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
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3.3.2 Industry Metadata – ONIX for Publishers
ONIX is developed and maintained by EDItEUR jointly with Book Industry Communication
(UK) and the Book Industry Study Group (US), and with user groups in Australia, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the Republic of Korea.
The name stands for ONline Information eXchange, by standardising the means by which
information about the product was delivered and processed. ONIX is both a data dictionary
of the elements which go to make up a product record and a standard means by which
product data can be transmitted electronically by publishers to data aggregators,
wholesalers, booksellers and anyone else involved in the sale of their publications.5 ONIX
was originally devised to simplify the delivery of product information to online retailers.
The ONIX standard defines a list of data fields about a publication. ONIX specifies and
defines the data elements so that everyone can be sure they're referring to the same thing.
Publishers can use as many or as few of the data elements they wish to record. A detailed
list of all ONIX data elements is contained in latest release 2.1 is contained in Appendix B.
3.3.3Segment Specific Metadata – IEEE LOM
The IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata is an internationally-recognised open
standard published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards
Association. IEEE LOM is a multi part standard used to describe leaning objects and similar
digital resources used to support learning. The purpose of learning object metadata is to
support the reusability of learning objects, to aid their discovery and to facilitate their
interoperability. For this standard, a learning object is defined as any entity, digital or nondigital, that may be used for learning, education or training.6 LOM facilitates in achieving the
following:7

Creation of well structured descriptions of learning resources, which should help
facilitate the discovery, location, evaluation and acquisition of learning resources by
students, teachers or automated software processes.

Sharing of descriptions of learning resources between resource discovery systems,
which should lead to a reduction in the cost of providing services based on high
quality resource descriptions.

Tailoring of the resource descriptions to suit the specialised needs of a community,
which may include choosing suitable controlled vocabularies for classification,
reducing the number of elements that are described or adding new ones from other
resource description schemas.
Creators and publishers may use the LOM along with other specifications to tag
learning resources with a description that can be associated with the resource,
providing information in a standard format.
LOM is the recognised metadata standard used by many K-12 Education Portals, including:

5
www.eiditeur.org
Draft Standard for Learning Object Metadata - IEEE 1484.12.1-2002
7
IMS Global Learning Consortium Learning resource meta-data specification
6
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
Curriculum Online

European Schoolnet

Global Grid for Learning

GLOBE
The LOM data elements used to describe the learning objects are grouped into the following
nine categories:8

The General category groups the general information that describes the learning
object as a whole.

The Lifecycle category groups the features related to the history and current state of
this learning object and those who have affected this learning object during its
evolution.

The Meta-Metadata category groups information about the metadata instance itself
(rather than the learning object that the metadata instance describes).

The Technical category groups the technical requirements and technical
characteristics of the learning object.

The Educational category groups the educational and pedagogic characteristics of
the learning object.

The Rights category groups the intellectual property rights and conditions of use for
the learning object.

The Relation category groups features that define the relationship between the
learning object and other related learning objects.

The Annotation category provides comments on the educational use of the learning
object and provides information on when and by whom the comments were
created.

The Classification category describes this learning object in relation to a particular
classification system.
A further breakdown data elements contained in these nine categories can be found in
Appendix A.
8
Draft Standard for Learning Object Metadata - IEEE 1484.12.1-2002
18
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
3.4 Global Crosswalk Metadata Standards
Global Crosswalk aims to correlate all varying metadata structures and aligns all similarities
among structures. This process is represented in the following figure.
Figure 2 Metadata Structure
19
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
3.5 Other Relevant Standards
3.5.1 Language
A learning object may be created in one or more languages and described by metadata in
one or more languages, thus resulting in one or more of the following semantic
interoperability problems arising:

The user may not discover it.

The user may not understand the metadata or only partially understand it.

The user may not be able to use it because of language issues, although s/he was
able to discover it.

The user may not be able to adapt it to their own language and cultural environment
Figure 3 Semantic Interoperability Example
20
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
European Schoolnet work on and maintain a multilingual thesaurus to facilitate and support
the multilinguality within the context of classifying learning resources. It is known as the
European Treasury Browser (ETB) thesaurus.
The ETB thesaurus was first created 2000. It has been used to index multilingual learning
objects, as well as continuously being used in European Schoolnet's services. Multilingual
controlled vocabularies can help to automate part of the translation work for learning
resources that have been indexed in one language.9
The Thesaurus is now available in 14 languages. Arabic is the latest language to be added.
The other languages are Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian,
Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, and Greek.
The scope of the ETB thesaurus is:

Content of multimedia educational materials.

Content of teaching, guidance, evaluation, and administration supporting materials.
3.5.2 Word Stemming
Stemming is the process for reducing inflected words to their stem or root form.10 The
Porter stemming algorithm developed by Martin Porter is the most widely used stemming
algorithm used for English stemming. The algorithm is freely available for use. Word
stemming consists of taking the stem of a word and generating common variants of the
word. As an example, if the search text is throws then the word stem is ‘throw’ and common
variants of this stem include ‘thrower’, ‘throwers’ and ‘throwing’. Global Crosswalk uses a
vocabulary of word stems in order to reduce semantic interoperability issues.
3.5.3 Error Correction
A detailed vocabulary of common search errors such as spelling mistakes associated with a
term can be used to reduce semantic interoperability issues. By offering suggested
corrections of mistakes data integrity is increased.
9
http://etb.eun.org
http://www.cs.uccs.edu/~kalita/promo/publications/SharmaCINC2003.pdf
10
21
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
3.6 Achievement Standards
Achievement Standards are statements of what learners should know and be able to do.
They may be promulgated by state departments of education, national content groups,
professional organizations, labour or skill boards, and certification bodies, both in the public
and private sectors.11 They are often referred to as learning standards, academic standards,
content standards, skill standards, competency standards and performance standards, or by
other terms. Many include specific granular statements of achievement levels or
proficiencies in the form of benchmarks or rubrics.
Global Crosswalk will initially comprise of four K-12 achievement standard datasets (Texas,
California, New York and Arizona). These datasets will be fully normalised and with
similarities between all state departments of education referenced and indexed. It is
believed stakeholders will achieve the following benefits from having access to these
datasets:12

Educators will find it easier to discover and use learning content that addresses the
needs of their students; it will also be easier to maximise re-use of content and
minimise costs associated with repurposing of materials.

Students will benefit from having access to the highest-quality learning resources
available, making a significant impact on learning outcomes and the quality of their
learning experience.

Content providers will be able to advertise their products by making them easily
identifiable, discoverable and usable.

System vendors will have a defined set of specifications to support in order to make
their systems compliant with major federations of learning resources.

Federation builders will secure their investment by developing infrastructures based
on standard specifications.
3.7 K-12 Education Standards
The US K-12 achievement standards are basically statements about what students are
expected to know or be able to do. In the US the No Child Left Behind act requires states to
abide by rigorous standards and test students in core subjects (English, Maths, Science and
Social Studies) from grades K-12. As a result there is extreme pressure on states to teach to
these standards and educators are required to demonstrate how they meet these state
standards. In order to achieve this educators are required to find educational resources
correlated to state standards.
There are approximately 75,000 learning standards among all states that fall under core
subjects. This number does not include other subjects such as Fine Arts, Technology etc. The
number of learning standards is continuously increasing as state departments of education
continue to develop new standards to meet accountability and testing requirements.
11
12
ASPECT: Adopting Standards and Specifications for Educational Content, 2008
ASPECT: Adopting Standards and Specifications for Educational Content, 2008
22
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Keeping up to date with these changes is therefore very challenging and expensive. States
do not currently provide standards in database-friendly formats.
3.8 Global Crosswalk Advantages
The European Schoolnet has identified three key pillars in the development of a European
market for learning resources:13

Creating the technical architecture and making it easier to federate learning content
repositories

Developing new approaches to metadata creation and applying these to a critical
mass of open educational content

Implementing existing standards and specifications on a critical mass of usergenerated and professionally developed content, including commercially distributed
resources
Global Crosswalk assists content providers, whether commercial or otherwise, to achieve
two of these requirements, by providing tools and datasets to apply standards-based
metadata to large repositories of content quickly and transpose metadata to new datasets
on an ongoing basis.
13
http://www.eun.org/portal/index.htm
23
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
3.9 ETL Process
The Global Crosswalk ETL process involves reading metadata from its source, cleaning it up
and formatting it uniformly, and then writing it to database to be exploited.
3.9.1 Extraction
The first part of the ETL process is to extract the metadata from the source object. Most
content providers/aggregators consolidate metadata from different sources. Each separate
object may also use a different metadata standard/format. Extraction converts the metadata
into a format for transformation processing.
An important part of the extraction stage a check performed to see if the metadata meets an
expected pattern or structure. If not, the metadata is rejected.
3.9.2 Transformation
The transform stage applies a series of rules to the extracted metadata from the source
object to derive the data to be loaded to the database. Some metadata sources will require
very little or even no manipulation. In other cases, one or more of the following
transformation types may be required to meet the technical requirements of the end target:

Selecting only certain columns to load.

Translating coded values. An example of this is if the source object metadata stores
language description as ‘English’ but the database stores it as a three character
string ‘ENG’. This is known as automated data cleansing.

Deriving a new calculated value.

Joining together data from multiple sources such as combining two metadata
element fields.

Summarizing multiple rows of data.

Splitting a column into multiple columns, such as separating metadata into two
separate element fields.

Apply data validation rules.
3.9.3 Load
The load phase loads the transformed metadata into the database. As the load phase
interacts with the database, the constraints defined in the database schema apply (e.g.
integrity and mandatory fields), which also contribute to the overall data quality
performance of the ETL process. Complex systems can maintain a history and audit trail of all
changes to the metadata loaded in the database.
24
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
3.10 Education Metadata Users
Stakeholder
Description
Example
OER Creator
Individual or organisation creating
content for open source or free
distribution
Individual or small publisher (less
than 1,000 resources)
Curriki
SM Creator
Publisher
Medium to large publishers (1000+
resources)
Content Aggregator
Aggregates content from multiple
creators and publishers
Open Source
Software
Manufacturer
Develops/Manufactures open
source
DAM/CMS/LCMS/VLE/Authoring
software
Develops/Manufactures
DAM/CMS/LCMS/VLE/Authoring
software for commercial sale
Proprietary
Software
Manufacturer
Independent
Software Vendor
Portals and
Resellers
Government
Sub-Government
Professional
Organisations
Resells and customises third party
software
Resells third party software
Sets and maintains national
standards
Sets and maintains state standards
Sets and maintains standards
25
Dunhelm
Learning, Core
Learning
Cambridge
University Press,
Encyclopaedia
Britanica
Bridgeman Art
Library, Corbis,
Reuters, Scran
D-Space, Moodle,
Saki
Microsoft,
Fronter,
Uniservity,
Intrallect, Artesia
LP+, Core-ECS,
Getty
SMART Learning
Marketplace
US Department
of Education
Arizona
Department of
Education
National
Endowment for
the Arts
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
4. MARKET OVERVIEW
4.1 Introduction
Global Crosswalk operates in the K-12 education market. The primary geographical markets
are the United Kingdom and the United States.
The core target market consists of publishers and developers of educational content,
curriculum standard setting agencies and organisations providing solutions to each of these
market segments.
4.2 K-12 Enterprise Software and Technology Services
The K-12 education market can be divided into nine distinct areas that span the range of
products and services provided by third parties to schools, government and sub government
agencies, state department of education and local education agencies.14
The enterprise software and technology services market is composed of software
applications and technology services provided to public schools and educational agencies to
public schools and other education agencies for the purposes of administrative and
instructional.
The enterprise software and technology services market can be broken into four distinct
subsections:15

Business Management Systems- to manage school, district and state level
information and perform analysis of administrative transactional data.

Student Data Management Systems- to support student information management;
collecting, managing, reporting and analysing data.

Technology Services- design, installation, maintenance and integration of systems
and provision of technology consultancy.

Instructional Management Systems- provide technology platforms to support
learning through communication, access to instructional tools for the classroom and
access to information.
It is in the instructional management systems segment of the enterprise software and
technology market that Global Crosswalk competes. This segment of the K-12 market is
currently valued at €1,865 billion (FY2007), and has seen a steady growth rate in recent
years.16
14
Market Intelligence Service: Market Report -K-12 Education Market 2007: Key Trends and
Dynamics, Volume 2, April 17, 2008, Outsell Inc.
15
Market Intelligence Service: Market Report -K-12 Education Market 2007: Key Trends and
Dynamics, Volume 2, April 17, 2008, Outsell Inc.
16
Market Intelligence Service: Market Size, Share and Forecast Reporting- K-12 2007: Final Market
Size and Share Report, Volume 2, July 23, 2008
26
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Spending on enterprise software has increased in recent years as a result of the focus of No
Child Left Behind Act is placed on the assessment and reporting of student achievement
levels.
In order to comply with mandates, schools are seeking integrated systems that will aid them
in effectively utilising student achievement data to guide and enhance learning. The
increased focus on incorporating formative instruction with the accountability system is
supporting the growth of instructional management systems.
With limited levels of in-house resources and expertise, schools are struggling to provide
students with sophisticated technology solutions. Given the pressure on implementing
systems that meet requirements and improve data communication to students, schools are
turning to outside services to aid them in achieving their technology goals.17
4.3 K-12 Education Market Overview
4.3.1 United Kingdom
The UK education market is large with primary and secondary level schools making up the
majority. Spending on ICT in schools has become a priority for the UK Government, with
initiatives such as Curriculum Online driving this spending.
ICT expenditure in primary and secondary state schools has increased by 4.8% to £281.1m in
2007. Spending on curriculum software and content in UK state schools in 2007 was £88m in
primary schools and £64m in secondary schools. Of these total figures, £32m was allocated
in eLC’s to primary schools for purchase of conent and software and £20m to secondary
schools.18
In 2002 the Government launched Curriculum Online with funds that were set aside
exclusively for the purchase of curriculum software from registered suppliers. Curriculum
online is designed to give teachers access to a diverse range of digital learning materials,
which they can use to enhance their teaching of curriculum material. These materials form a
comprehensive educational service for teachers to find, compare select and share digital
resources appropriate to their lessons. The aim of this initative is to make lesson planning
easier and faster for teachers by making it easier to tailor their lessons to the needs of
individual pupils.19 Curriculum online was launched in 2002 with £50 million in the form of
eLC’s, and funds are distributed to LEA’s who then decide how to distribute the money
among local schools.
17
Market Intelligence Service: Market Report -K-12 Education Market 2007: Key Trends and
Dynamics, Volume 2, April 17, 2008, Outsell Inc
18
Information & Communication Technology in UK State Schools, BESA Summary Report,
November 2007
19
http://www.ict.oxon-lea.gov.uk/ICT_docs/Guidance%20to%20Schools.doc as accessed 10/07/2008
27
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
There is a high percentage of use of digital content in primary and secondary schools in the
UK. The greatest increases in usage of content in schools between 2003 and 2006 were that
of email, presentation software and digital cameras. CD-ROM usage is beginning to
decrease.20 Statistics state:21

91% of teachers in primary schools and 92% in secondary schools use search engines
to source digital content to compile lesson plans.

50% primary and 45% secondary teachers take advantage of educational websites
subscribed to by their school.

Approximately 40% of teachers in both primary and secondary schools use
Curriculum Online to source new digital resources for planning lessons.

30% of teachers are reported to use learning platforms such as VLE and Grid for
Learning.

It is estimated that educators in the UK save as much as £50million annually in time
through the use of learning objects sourced from online resources.
Monthly spending on teaching resources is estimated to be between £11 and £50, with the
majority of teachers reporting that they regularly spend their own money on teaching
resources. In fact findings from the Becta survey show that only 8% of primary teachers and
19% of secondary teachers never spending their own money on resources.
Findings from this survey conducted by Becta show that in the coming years learning
platform ownership is expected to be at a high 79% for secondary schools and 49% of
primary schools as teachers and students are seeking the use of multiple learning platforms
that will cater to their diverse needs.
4.3.1.1 Prospective Customers
In the short-term the customers to be targeted:
20
21

Local Educational Authorities; regional and local grids for learning- content coordinators, subject advisors, ICT support staff.

Publishers of educational resources for primary and secondary school.
Harnessing Technology in Schools Survey, Becta 2007, October 2007
Harnessing Technology in Schools Survey, Becta 2007, October 2007
28
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
4.3.1.2 Key Players in the UK K-12 Publishing Market
The following publishers have been identified as key players in the educational market in the
United Kingdom. Each of these publishers provides educational content and resources to
both primary and secondary school teachers and students to facilitate the enhancement of
teacher’s instruction and students learning.
Harcourt Education
Harcourt Education serves students and teachers from preschool to higher education, by
offering instructional programs, data solutions, easy to use technology products and
professional development tools and services that respond to the needs of students and
educators.
Harcourt Education are leaders in learning solutions, both print and digital. Harcourt
Companies include familiar and trusted names; Harcourt School Publishers, Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Saxon, Rigby, Steck-Vaughn, Greenwood, Heinemann, Harcourt Trade
Publishers,
DataDirector,
Classroom
Connect,
and
eSchool
Online.
Nelson Thornes
Nelson Thornes is one of the leading educational publishers in the UK, providing engaging
and creative blended learning resources to support teachers and motivate students of all
abilities in primary, secondary and higher education. Nelson Thornes offer a wide range of
curriculum resources specifically designed to enhance and enrich the teaching and learning
experience.
Nelson Thornes are endorsed by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA). Through
their partnership with AQA, they offer blended resources to support teachers through new
specifications.
As part of Infinitas Learning, one of the largest multimedia educational publishers in Europe,
Nelson is committed to raising standards of education across Europe through R&D.
29
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge Learning is and initiative from Cambridge University Press, and is dedicated to
the development of resources for a changing educational environment.
Products and services are offered from the three main areas of expertise, namely English
Language Teaching, Education and electronic products developed by Cambridge-Hitachi.
As one the leading educational publisher in the UK, Cambridge University Press publishes
high-quality curriculum-based books and software for schools in the UK and internationally.
By working with authors who have extensive knowledge of the educational market and
curriculum developments, Cambridge University Press can ensure they provide expertise and
support to teachers and students. All material is tested and trialled prior to publication in
order to ensure that it meets with schools needs and curriculum standards.
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is a division of the University of Oxford. They publish a wide range of
books, journals and electronic products for use across a diverse range of subjects, and
operate in various markets.
For the primary and secondary school market, Oxford Primary and Oxford Secondary offer a
range of resources suited to the needs of students and teachers.
Products offered include resources to aid the instruction of key stage maths, reading and
phonics for the primary market and assessment and instructional tools for the preparation
of GCSE and A-Levels in the secondary market.
In addition, Oxford University Press offer support services to guide teachers and parents
through the impending curriculum changes due to occur to key-stages in the coming
months.
30
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Pearson
Pearson education is a global leader in online publishing, offering 2,000 textbook companion
websites and a wealth of other innovative technology led resources for course management
and learning.
Longman publishing is an imprint of Pearson Education. Longman is an educational publisher
of books and digital resources for both the primary school markets and secondary schools.
Recognised and trusted by teachers across the UK, they are also approved content providers
and retailers for Curriculum Online.
Included in Pearson Longmans resources are; Literacy Land for primary schools which is
specially designed to deliver the National Literacy Strategy and Knowledgebox a new digital
learning system.
For secondary schools resources include Exploring Science and People in Science, and
Lessons series an interactive teacher-led instruction for 11-16 year olds of all abilities.
4.3.2 United States
The K-12 education market in the United States is reported to be valued at $23.7 billion in
2007, at a forecasted CAGR of 4.4%, which will result in revenues generated by suppliers
reaching $27 billion by the year 2010. Spending on enterprise software and technology
services was driven by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).22
The NCLB Act was introduced by the US Federal Government in 2001 and has reauthorized a
number of federal programs aiming to improve the performance of the US primary and
secondary schools. This is done by increasing the standards of accountability for states,
school districts and schools as well as providing parents with more flexibility in choosing a
school for their children.
The Act has brought and increased focus on students reading skills and has reauthorized the
Elementary and Secondary Schools Act of 1965.
NCLB enacts theories of standards-based education reform, which was formerly known as
outcome-based education, which is based on the belief that by setting high expectations and
establishing measurable goals individual’s educational outcomes can be improved. The act
requires each state to develop a set of assessments in basic skills to be given to all students
in certain grades, if those states are to receive federal funding for schools. NCLB does not set
national standards of achievement; standards are set by each individual state.
The annual spend on public elementary and secondary education in the US is $500 billion.
The average spent on each individual is $8,700, although this figure varies greatly among
22
Market Intelligence Service: Market Size, Share and Forecast Reporting- K-12 2007: Final Market
Size and Share Report, Volume 2, July 23, 2008
31
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
state, school districts and individual schools.23 All three levels of government – federal, state,
and local - contribute to education funding.
Federal funding for educational technology under NCLB has significantly decreased since
2002, and is currently about 9% of total funding, raising questions about who will provide
the future funding and national vision for technology in education.
The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) produces and annual report
which documents how NCLB educational dollars are spent and highlights innovations in the
classroom. The data in this survey was collected from the state technology director who
represented the state educational agency for each of the 50 states.24
State funding is based on the following categories: educational technology infrastructure,
end-user technology, professional development and data warehousing.
Figure 4 Direct State Funding Dollars by Category
Source: SETDA State Funding Report 2007
23
24
http://www.newamerica.net/programs/education_policy/federal_education_budget_project/finance
SETDA State Funding report 2007 http://www.setda.org/web/guest/nationaltrendsreport
32
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Focus is placed on ICT for schools and educational institutions in the US. This focus is driven
from the President down and is based on the Four Pillars of Technology Literacy Challenge.
The four pillars are:

Every student will have access to modern computers.

Classrooms will be connected to one another and to the world outside.

Educational software will be and integral part of the curriculum.

Teachers will be ready to use and conduct lessons using technology.
Findings from a 2007 study carried out by Quality Education Data Inc. show the importance
of schools across America making a commitment to providing access to up-to-date, relevant
technology for both students and teachers. Teachers recognize digital content as an
important instructional and motivational tool, and an essential part of the modern
classroom.25
Key findings include:26

86% of teachers have desktop computers available in their classrooms; 67% of
teachers have access to laptops for their students if they need them; and only 5% of
teachers have no access to computers of any kind.

9% of teachers spend more than 50% of instructional time using technology, while
16% of report no use of technology during classroom time.

85% of teachers report not having enough computers in their classroom as a barrier
to using digital content, 23% always and 63% sometimes.

95% of teachers use technologies to search for free content for use in their
classrooms; 36% report that they do so at least three to four times a week.

17% of teachers participate in online social networking. 19% of teachers participate
in an online professional community.

The K-12 Educational market can be divided into nine principle areas that span the range of
products and services provided by third-parties to schools, government and sub-government
agencies, state departments of education and local educational agencies.
The K-12 Educational market can be divided into nine principle areas that span the range of
products and services provided by third-parties to schools, government and sub-government
agencies, state departments of education and local educational agencies.27
25
26
http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/news/press_05212008_RT.htm as accessed 7/07/2008
http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/news/press_05212008_RT.htm as accessed 7/07/2008
27
Market Intelligence Service- Market Report- K-12 Education Market 2007:Key Trends and
Dynamics, Outsell
33
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Instructional Materials
Basal Content
Supplemental Content
Reference Content
Assessment Content
Technology Infrastructure
Computing Hardware
Enterprise
Software
Technology Services
Revenues generated from sales of core materials, print and
digital, to state departments of education, districts and
schools. Expected demand for digital resource to improve
curricular instruction beyond the limitations of textbooks.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 5.3%
Value: $4,905m
Revenues generated from sales of resources augment
traditional learning tools, instructional software, digital
video products etc. Digital content and web-based
products expected to gain market share due to improved
district technology infrastructure facilitating usage in the
classroom.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 4.3%
Value: $3,880m
Print and non-instructional digital resources, databases,
dictionaries etc to K-12 school districts, schools, libraries
etc. Driver of growth continuing evolution of demand for
digital reference products. Products must be stringently
aligned with achievement standards.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 2.5%
Value: $1,229m
Stand-alone and commercial products and services
delivered to national and state customers. Main growth
driver forecast is science assessment materials.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 9.3%
Value: $2,855m
PCs, printing and imaging equipment, interactive classroom
devices- whiteboards etc. Largest portion of educational
spending in the US. Model for 1:1 computing devices
expected to proliferate as a teaching tool.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 2.5%
Value: $4,875
and Sales of computer software applications and technology
services to public schools and educational agencies for
administrative and instructional functions.
Schools are increasingly seeking integrated systems that
will help them to easily comply with mandates and to
effectively utilise student achievement data to guide
instruction.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 5%
Value: $2,153m
34
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Education Services
Outsourced Public School
Administration Services
Includes educational management companies that provide
school-reform assistance with curriculum or administration
to increase student academic achievement. OPSAS
companies operate on behalf of state and local education
agencies in areas such as managers of K-12 public schools
under reform initiatives.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 1%
Value: $1,875
Professional
Development Services offered by third-party providers for workshops,
Services
curriculum training programs, conferences and courses and
materials that help teachers and administrators improve
their skills through new approached to academic content.
Online applications are expected to gain traction, as the
model for anytime anywhere learning fosters a network
among teachers.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 4%
Value: $4,061
Tutoring and Test Preparation Tutoring and test preparations are professional services
Services
offered by third-party providers selling supplemental
services to schools and educational agencies to help
students improve their knowledge of a certain subject and
prepare them for standardised testing.
Forecast Revenue Growth 2010: 4.8 %
Value: $1,137
4.3.2.1 Prospective Customers
In the short-term the customers to be targeted:

State Departments of Educations; Department of Education in the states of Arizona,
California, New York and Texas.

Publishers of educational resources for K-12 market.
35
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
4.3.2.2 Key Players in the US K-12 Publishing Market
The following publishers operate in the K-12 market and have been identified as key market
players. These publishers provide instructional and assessment materials to support teacher
and students to meet achievement standards set by state departments of education.
Plato Learning
Plato Learning is one of the United States leading providers of computer-based and elearning instruction for all levels of education from kindergarten to adult education.
Online educational software is marketed to K-12 schools and colleges, and in addition the
company sell training programs and solutions to correctional institutions, military education
and corporations.
Products cover a broad range of teaching and learning needs, from innovative and teacher
facilitated solutions for traditional classroom instruction to trend forward distance learning
options. Plato delivers just-in-time online assessments that are tied to standards, integrating
them with educator’s instructional resources and provide professional development services
tailored to the needs of the teacher.28
Plato’s focus on education administration is wide-ranging, and includes curriculum planning
and management that ensures that schools are performing to state and federally mandated
standards.29
Riverdeep
Riverdeep is one of the fastest growing education software companies in the United States
since its establishment in 1995, with a range of products that are used in 45,000 schools in
20 countries around the globe. After its acquisition of Houghton Mifflin Holding Company,
HM Rivergroup PLC was formed.
Riverdeep offers a rich interactive curriculum providing educators with the tools they need
to help students of all learning abilities achieve learning success. Destination Success is the
flagship product of the company, a rich online learning experience that included
mathematics, science, language arts, critical thinking and social studies.
In addition to the Destination products, Riverdeep have added The Learning Company,
Broderbund and Edmark products. 30
28
Plato Learning Company Factsheet, 2008
http://www.plato.com/District-Solutions.aspx as accessed 20/07/2008
30
http://web.riverdeep.net/portal/page as accessed 12/07/2007
29
36
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Pearson
Pearson is a leader in educational publishing, assessment, information and services. Effective
and innovative curriculum products are provided from students from pre-kindergarten
through to Grade 12. Pearson provides educational assessment and measurement for
students and teachers, student information systems and teacher professional development
and certification programs. The extensive ranges of products help inform instruction so that
success is within reach of every student. Brands include Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, AGS,
PowerSchool, SuccessMaker, TeacherVision.
Pearson’s products and services are organised into distinct content areas, providing
resources for all stakeholders in education from teachers, parents, students, school
superintendents and care givers. The five categories are; Curriculum, Assessment, Student
Information, Educator Learning, Family Learning.31
McGraw-Hill
McGraw-Hill Education addresses all aspect of the education market from, pre-kindergarten
to professional learning. McGraw-Hill use traditional materials, online learning and
multimedia tools to empower the growth of educators and students from all ages and
learning abilities. A broad range of products include e-books, online tutoring and customised
course websites and subscription services.
Customised Course websites: CTB/McGraw-Hill, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, The Grow
Network/McGraw-Hill, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, McGraw-Hill Contemporary, McGraw-Hill
Digital Learning.32
Renaissance Learning
Renaissance provides computer-based assessment technology for K-12 schools. Renaissance
tools have been adopted by 73,000 schools in the United States. These tools provide daily
assessment and periodic progress monitoring technology to enhance the curriculum,
support differentiated instruction and personalise practice in reading, writing and
mathematics.
Educators can make the practice component of their lessons more effective by providing
tools to personalise practice and plan and manage activities for students of all learning
31
32
http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZ19o as accessed 12/07/2008
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/edu/default.shtml as accessed 20/07/2008
37
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
abilities. Renaissance learning products accelerate learning and aid the achievement of high
test scores on state and national tests.33
Products offered include Star Reading tools that are designed to determine the reading level
of each student, measure individual and class progress and forecast results on standardised
testing with assessments that can be complete by students in a short space of time.
Renaissance products, such as Accelerated Math qualify for No Child Left Behind Title I
funding and other state, local and private funding opportunities.34
4.4 K-12 Education Publishers
Its is generally agreed among publishing executives that digital content is the future of the
market and it was found that the most extensive digital product offerings were provided by
the larger publishers. Delivery of content curriculum and education resources is moving
towards a fully unified web environment, like that of Pearsons eCollege and Houghton
Mifflin Learning Village. There is an anticipated shift in business models, in view of recent
consolidations and exits in education publishing.
Factors that are perceived to be barriers to the digital content include issues surrounding:

Technology – As technology and the management of digital assets are not core
competencies of publishers, publishing executives are expressing a desire to enter
into a partnership with technology service providers. Digital Rights as it stands is still
a requirement that remains unmet, and is a point of concern for content providers
wishing to protect their assets.

Business Models – The proliferation of Open Access initiatives is giving way to
increasing concern from education publishing houses. Pricing models for digital
assets are becoming a point of confusion for executives in relation to digital assets.
In this light, traditional “tried and tested” business models are holding publishers
back from change.

Market readiness – Technology in the K-12 market is not designed for the use of
digital content and educators struggle to effectively integrate digital into practice.
In the US the K-12 e-learning market can be divided into two specific segments,
comprehensive products and supplemental products.
Comprehensive products are products that address the full scope and sequence of the
relevant curriculum guidelines and learning objectives. These products are sold to school
district authorities and individual schools. Products are sold in the form of licenses and
online subscriptions. Main players in the comprehensive products segment include: Pearson,
Compass Learning, Plato Learning.
33
34
http://www.renlearn.com/aboutus/ as accessed 18/07/2008
http://www.renlearn.com/am/funding.aspx 18/07/2008
38
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Supplemental products are products that are sold to the institutional school market and
individual consumers to support core curriculum. Main players in this market include:
Renaissance Learning, Riverdeep, McGraw-Hill and Plato Learning.
39
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5. BUSINESS DESCRIPTION
5.1 Vision
“To become the leading provider of global education metadata extraction, transformation
and loading (ETL) solutions.”
The following objectives were agreed by the Project Team with Cambridge University Press,
LiNK and alt^I:

To develop a comprehensive software development kit for the extraction,
transformation and loading of education datasets for all organisations operating in
the education sector

Starting with the K-12 market, to develop a comprehensive dataset of correlated
global education standards for license to organisations worldwide

To establish a global distribution channel to the K-12 and higher education sector

To maximise shareholder value though profitable growth and contribution to the
Global Grid for Learning project.
Global Crosswalk’s core competency is its breadth and depth of experience and expertise in
all aspects of the global education publishing sector including (a) electronic publishing (b)
the use of digital content and ICT in the education sector, and (c) global sales and marketing
to the education sector.
Global Crosswalk has agreed outline distribution terms with Cambridge University Press and
will offer its first services to the market in September 2008.
40
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5.2 Product and Service Overview
5.2.1 Global Crosswalk Conceptual Diagram and Functions by User
Figure 5 Conceptual Architecture
Standard Setting
Extraction
Achievement
Correlation
Marketing
Indexing
Asset Management
Indexing
Transformation
Extraction
Correlation
Transformation
Digital Rights
Management
Loading
Correlation
Digital Rights
Management
Loading
41
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Global Crosswalk will include the following features and functions:
Phase 1
 Extraction Function – extracts metadata into a format for transformation processing,
which includes a parsing of the metadata resulting in a check to see if the metadata
meets the expected structure, if not the metadata is rejected.

Transformation Function – predefined rules are applied in order to derive the
metadata and populate target schemas.

Correlation Function – correlates the metadata between schemas.

Loading Function – stores transformed metadata in database.
Phase 2
 Digital Rights Management Function – structures are enforced that describe and
enforce the contractual usage rights to indexes and datasets.

Expose
Function
–
expose
42
database
as
tsv
file.
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5.2.2 Global Crosswalk High Level Architecture
The following figure displays the high level design view of Global Crosswalk from asset
ingestion to expose.
Figure 6 High Level Architecture
Content
Object
Images, Video, Audio,
SCORM, Document
Ingestion
No
Generic
metadata
available?
Yes
Apply
Generic
Metadata
Yes
Metadata
Available
Metadata
Extraction
No
Stemming
Dictionary
Add
metadat
a
Industry Metadata
Multi-Lingual
Thesaurus
DUBLIN CORE
Global Crossalk
Error
Correction
K-12 Dataset
Language
Dataset
Higher
Education
Other Datasets
Can you store
revised
metadata in/
with object?
Save to
database
Expose
43
Segment Specific
Metadata
Save
metadata in/
with Object
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5.2.3 Global Crosswalk ETL TOOL
The Global Crosswalk ETL TOOL is a solution designed to assist users in the process of
extracting, transforming and loading metadata of digital assets, enabling customers to better
manage their publishable digital content. The Global Crosswalk ETL TOOL unifies and
integrates appropriate technologies necessary to provide customers with a system and
workflow process for extracting, transforming and loading publishable digital content. Its
design will enable rapid integration with existing systems, which will prove vital when
integrating with OEM providers in the future. The Global Crosswalk ETL TOOL has been
designed to generate each digital object record in accordance with an international standard
for metadata. It is designed to make the process of creating metadata and outputting each
digital object as easy and intuitive as possible.
5.2.4 Global Crosswalk Datasets
The Global Crosswalk dataset will comprise of a managed and global repository consisting of
ministries of educational achievement standards. The Global Crosswalk dataset will initially
consist of the US K-12 educational standards. These standards will be fully normalised and all
similar standards across state educational boundaries will be aligned, thus, increasing the
interoperability of educational standards. The Global Crosswalk datasets will assist standard
setters to manage, update and crosswalk educational standards. The datasets will also be of
benefit to educators who are required to demonstrate how they meet these educational
standards. It is envisaged that Global Crosswalk will provide comprehensive mapped
repository of educational standards can be used to reduce issues relating to semantic
interoperability and language.
5.2.5 Implementation Services
Global Crosswalk will offer an implementation service to its customers ensuring easy
integration with existing platforms and systems. A typical Global Crosswalk implementation
process includes:

Review and analysis of current systems.

Recommendation of best practices in order to ensure successful integration of
solutions.

Only minimal training will be required, however, training will be available where
required.

Free ongoing customer support will be available to deal with customer queries.
Additional support options will be available to meet growing business needs.
44
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5.3 Revenue Model
Global Crosswalks revenue model is a combination of license revenues and professional fees:

Licences revenues, which are comprised of fees from the licensing of Global
Crosswalk ETL TOOL and datasets to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and
to the Master Distributor, and

Revenues from professional services and implementation services provided by
Global Crosswalk.
5.4 Business Strategy
Research carried out by Cambridge University Press, alt^I and LiNK have shown that existing
ETL solutions in the global education market were cost-prohibitive, entailed a high element
of manual tagging and were too US-focused. At the core of Global Crosswalk's strategy are
distinct phases:

Introduce solutions that will address the current needs of content distributors and in
the process of extracting, transforming and loading metadata of their digital assets,
assist standard setters to manage, update and crosswalk educational standards and
to benefit educators who are required to demonstrate how they have met
educational standards.

While a foothold has been gained in the initial target markets, Global Crosswalk will
have begun a product improvement cycle with the goal of crosswalking new
curricula standards to the existing database, opening up new markets in which to
compete. In addition Global Crosswalk will work closely with Cambridge University
Press to develop datasets and ETL TOOLs that will serve the market of academic
journals
To deliver this strategy, Global Crosswalk must offer solutions that are simpler, more
convenient to implement and less costly than existing solutions provided by market
participants.
Global Crosswalk believes it can offer a differentiated product and service offering, both on a
technical and on a business ROI basis which will contribute to the generation of predictable
revenues and low operational costs for Global Crosswalk and provide customers with a high
ROI.
45
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5.5 Customer Relationships
Global Crosswalk aims to assist their customers to maximise their return on investment, and
will facilitate this by offering a solid customer support infrastructure.
Focusing on maintaining business relationships with existing customers will improve
customer satisfaction and secure loyal customers. Activities central to the development of
customer relationships include:

Identifying key customer issues and obstacles to usage of Global Crosswalk products,
and reporting, correcting, documenting and monitoring these issues as a strategic
key performance indicator.

Enhancing and expanding implementation services on offer to customers.

Providing a comprehensive business consultancy service, and offering training and
support programmes for users of software.
5.6 Strategic Relationships
Global Crosswalk will focus on maintaining relationships with its strategic partners,
Cambridge University Press, alt^I and LiNK, in order to accelerate the rate of adoption of our
products and services. Through these strategic partners, Global Crosswalk will be gain
exposure to markets where partners have established relationships and therefore be in a
position to expand our customer base. Strategic activities will consist of leveraging alliances
with key partners in order to:

Operate an indirect channel sales strategy with the Master Distributor, releasing
sales and marketing costs and associated activities onto them.

Through our partner’s entry into new markets, gain exposure to new customer bases
and access to newly sourced educational standards in order to support crosswalking
new curricula to Global Crosswalks existing databases.
5.7 Sales and Marketing
Global Crosswalk will rely on its strategic partners for sales and marketing to target specific
segments of the market where Strategic Partners have existing relationships in order to build
business cases and a customer base for reference purposes. Global Crosswalk will operate an
indirect channel sales strategy with Cambridge University Press acting as a Master
Distributor. As such, the bulk of sales and marketing activity and associated cost will be the
responsibility of Cambridge University Press.
Notwithstanding this, it is critical that Global Crosswalk develop and maintains a brand
independent of the Master Distributor to insulate itself from risk. As such, the company will
undertake general high-level marketing specifically targeting:
(a)
Publishers of K-12 content.
46
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
(b)
Qualifications and education standards agencies.
(c)
ICT companies providing solutions to (a – b) above.
These efforts will focus on creating brand awareness and visibility and supporting the Master
Distributor by generating marketing and sales leads. To support these efforts, the following
activities will be undertaken:

Online web presence.

Search engine optimisation.

Seminars and workshops (in conjunction with partners).

Publication of research articles and white papers.

Participation in industry groups e.g. ELIG, EEP.

Attendance at fairs and exhibitions in Strategic Partner booths e.g. BETT, MEC, ISTE,
Frankfurt Book Fair, London Book Fair.
30
200000
180000
160000
140000
120000
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
Customers
25
20
15
10
5
Customers
Revenues
Q
1
Q
2
Q
3
Q
4
Q
5
Q
6
Q
7
Q
8
Q
9
Q
10
Q
11
Q
12
0
Revenues
Figure 7 Forecast Quarterly Growth of Customers and Revenues Year 1 to Year 3.
Quater
5.8 Research and Development
For each new market Global Grid for Learning enters, Global Crosswalk will be able to
leverage newly sourced education standard datasets and local relationships with national
standard setting agencies to support the crosswalking of new curricula to Global Crosswalk
datasets. This will also serve to expose local publishers to the Global Crosswalk brand,
products and services and provide an opportunity for added value services to existing
publishers without a presence in these new markets.
47
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
In addition, Global Crosswalk will work with Cambridge University Press to develop specific
datasets and ETL TOOL enhancements for the academic segment and specifically the market
for academic journals. Cambridge University Press currently publishes over 250 academic
journals and provides services to over 12,000 higher education institutions worldwide.
Global Crosswalk will be able to analyse and design datasets for subject domains based on
existing taxonomies or with Cambridge University Press develop new standards for those
subject domains based on text mining and data visualisation techniques. These datasets can
be tested through Cambridge Journals Online and through adoption may become standards
in a specific domain and therefore provide opportunities for licensing to other journals
publishers.
5.9 Competition
5.9.1 Direct Competitors
The following companies have been identified as direct competitors to Global Crosswalk.
These companies, Academic Benchmarks, EdGate and Jes&Co, operate in the K-12 education
market, and their solutions are aimed primarily at the US market.
Academic Benchmarks provides K-12 standards,
alignment tools, and integration services to
education service providers, curriculum publishers,
software developers, and educators.
Products and Services:

Database of Standards: custom delivery of
standards in core and non-core subjects in
all states organised in a consistent and
flexible format maintaining the integrity of
the original document. All state standards
including Grade Level Expectations and
Power Standards are maintained to ensure
compliance with NCLB requirements.
Datasets are provided for Canada,
Australia and the UK. State Standard
Databases include the following core
attributes: terminology, numbering,
hierarchy, mitigation and customisation.

Standards Migration: Turnaround times are
less than two weeks for most collections
and are accurate and time tested. These
service benefits customers who may have
standards collected the cost and effort to
maintain their collection is too high, or
standards are not up-to-date.
48
GLOBAL CROSSWALK

Web-Based Alignment System: Fast
becoming an industry standard. Can be
used by customer themselves or service
carried out by Academic Benchmark to
allow the most granular and specific
alignment of educational content within
any medium.

Alignment Migration: process is quick, easy
and cost effective.

Alignment Services: education specialists
work closely with educational
technologists, in large or small volume, to
deliver alignments quickly and efficiently.
As standards change, alignments will be
automatically updated
Clients:

Publishers from all forms of K-12 content
development as their clients, from basal
content developers to curriculum mapping
and reporting. Included in their clients are:
McGraw Hill, Pearson Education, Houghton
Mifflin Company, K-12 Inc, Leapfrog
Enterprises and Summit Interactive.
Partners:

49
In June 2008, SirsiDynix, a global leader in
strategic technology solutions for libraries
and provider of the SchoolRooms K-12
learning portal, formed and partnership
with Academic Benchmark.
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
EdGate offer a suite of learning solutions
that are aligned to teaching standards. Their
solutions aim to help educators improve
student performance and meet the standard
requirements set by No Child Left Behind.
This is achieved by providing instructional
content, assessment resources, test data
analytics and a widely used parent-teacherstudent communication tool.
Products and Services:

EdGate Correlations Services’ core
commitment is to deliver high
quality service and data product to
content providers.

ECS was established by educators for
educators, who realised the power
of the Internet as learning and
teaching tool.

The Curriculum Matrix was
developed which is a standards
based technology and process of
alignment.

ECS offer publishers the opportunity
to align their content to the ECS
Repository of Educational Standards
and allows them to ensure that they
are meeting the accountability
demands of the No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act.

ECS utilise their knowledge of
educational standards and
technology in order to produce high
quality alignments with a short
turnaround time.
Clients:

Apex Learning; Discovery Education;
Heinmann Raintree Publishing;
Library of Congress; Smart
technologies;
Partners:

50
MetaMetrics, Language Learning
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Solutions
51

Jes&Co co-founded the Partnership
for 21st Century Skills, which brought
together participants from all areas
of the educational sector. Large
corporations such as AOL, Microsoft,
SAP, Apple, Cisco and Dell are
working in conjunction with public
sector organisations such as SETDA
and ISTE to develop a dialogue that
is a vision of what 21st century
education needs to be.

After taking over administration of
Gateway to Educational Materials
(GEM) in 2005, Jes&Co transformed
this once US Department of
Education funded organisation into
The Gateway for 21st Century Skills.
It now has a consortium of over 700
organisations and universities with
and estimated 50.000 K-12 teaching
and learning resources. The Gateway
is sponsored by the National
Education Association (NEA) and
serves 3.2 million teachers
nationwide and provides a free
service to all users.

The transfer of GEM to JES & Co.,
formed The GEM Exchange. The goal
of the Exchange is to further develop
and promote the use of vocabularies
and cataloguing tools. Through this
joint effort GEM continues to be the
internationally accepted standard
from describing learning resources in
such a way that facilitates their
discovery and use, using terms that
are meaningful to educators.

The National Science Foundation
granted funds for Jes&Co. to take
the GEM vocabularies one step
further with the development of the
Achievement Standards Network.

Jes&Co have developed the
Achievement Standards Network
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
(ASN) that is comprised of four
distinct but related projects that
when fully developed work together
to form a framework for the aligning
and retrieving educational resources
defined by learning standards.
52

The ASN is a digitized, authoritative
collection of academic standards for
all fifty of the United States in a
machine and human readable
format. Globally Unique Identifiers
(GUId) enable content creators to
describe the objective of learning
and teaching resources in terms
required by each state.

These standards are devised by state
departments of education, national
content groups, professional
organisations, labour and skills
boards and certification bodies both
in the public and the private sectors.

The Achievement Content Standards
Repository (ACSR) includes K-12
learning standards that are devised
by departments of education in each
of the individual state in the US and
standards from other nationally
recognised content groups and other
national and international
achievement standards. The ACRS is
offered free for non-commercial use
under a common license agreement
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
5.9.2 Indirect Competitors
The following organisations offer related products and services:

Professional Organisations - These include BAPLA- British Association of Picture
Librariesand Agencies, AAP- American Association of Publishers that allow members
access to archieve materials on a search and retrieval basis.

Content Aggregators - such as ZP publishing and Renaissance Learning, who provide
images and video files to schools online via a search and retrieval basis.

Government and sub government agencies or projects that may design or develop
and make available digital assets - SETDA- State Education Technology Directors
Association and GISC- Gestalt International Study Centre.

Digital Asset Management systems vendor - such as Ramesys,Microsoft etc.
53
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
6 ORGANISATION
6.1 Board of Directors
Global Crosswalk is a consortium of three organisations – (i) Cambridge University Press, (ii)
Dublin City University Learning Innovation and Knowledge Research Centre, and (iii) Arizona
State University Applied Learning Technologies Institute.
Each consortium member may appoint one Director to the Board of Directors in addition to
two executive directors sourced from the project team. The initial directors are:

John Tuttle, Executive Director, New Directions Group, Cambridge University Press
John Tuttle is the Executive Director of the New Directions Group in Cambridge
University Press. During the last 12 years he has instigated and brought to fruition a
variety of E-Learning initiatives including the formation of Nelson Multimedia, YITM
(Yorkshire International Thomson Multimedia), Cambridge-Hitachi and Global Grid
for Learning. He has worked at Cambridge University Press for the last ten years
running the Education Publishing Group. Prior to this he enjoyed a number of senior
positions with Thomson, including Vice-President Marketing, and Corporate
Development, MD ELT Division and Group Marketing Director. He is the former Chair
of the Education Publisher’s Council and a member of the International Group of
Education Publishers.

Dr. Theo Lynn, Deputy Director, LiNK, Dublin City University
Dr. Theo Lynn is a lecturer in Management in the Dublin City University Business
School where he teaches at postgraduate levels on Strategic Management. He is a
session lecturer in the Law Faculty, University College Dublin where he teaches at
postgraduate level in Corporate Finance Law. His areas of research interest include
Corporate Governance and Leadership, Institutional Investors and Corporate
Behaviour, and Applied Learning Technologies. He is Deputy Director of the applied
learning technologies strand of the Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Research
Centre at Dublin City University. He is an Independent Senior Advisor on Technology
Strategy to Cambridge University Press and the Principal Investigator on the Global
Grid for Learning project with Dr. DiGangi. He has established and sold a number of
technology companies.

Dr. Sam DiGangi, Executive Director, alt^I, Arizona State University
Dr. Samuel DiGangi is Associate Vice President, University Technology and Associate
Professor of Education, specializing in technology integration; he is Executive
Director of ASU's Applied Learning Technologies Institute. His research activities
focus on infusing effective components of instructional design with emerging
technology in education. In addition to extensive use of computer-mediated
instruction in his teacher preparation courses, He directs several sponsored research
projects examining implementation of high technology, telecommunications and
international networking in the classroom. He manages the Arizona Department of
Education online platform for education, IDEAL, and is the Principal Investigator on
the Global Grid for Learning project with Dr. Lynn.
54
GLOBAL CROSSWALK

Danielle Greene, Business Development Manager, Global Crosswalk

Eoin Higgins, Technical Manager, Global Crosswalk
6.2 Project Team
Danielle Greene BBS – Business Development Manager

Danielle Greene holds a BBS in Business Studies from Dublin City University Business
School, where she specialised in Marketing. She also holds an MSC in E-Commerce
also from Dublin City University.
Eoin Higgins, BSc – Technical Manager

Eoin Higgins holds a BSc in Computer Applications from Dublin City University
Business School, where he specialised in Information Systems. He also holds an MSC
in E-Commerce also from Dublin City University.
Barry Maher, BSc – Senior Software Engineer

Barry Maher holds a BSc in Computer Applications from Dublin City University
Business School, where he specialised in Software Engineering. He also holds an MSC
in E-Commerce also from Dublin City University.
6.3 Organisation
The following table sets out the anticipate number of employees by category as assumed by
the project team for the purposes of the financial illustrations contained in this
memorandum. It is anticipated that these figures will be supplemented by additional PhD
candidates registered and funded with alt^I and LiNK.
Employees by Function
Sales and marketing
Research and Development
General and Administration
Total
2008
1
3
4
2009
1
4
1
6
2010
1
6
1
8
In 2008, Ms. Greene will be responsible for administrative support to Cambridge University
Press, the master distributor. Accounting functions will be outsourced however an
Administrative Assistant will be employed from 2009 onwards, initially in a part-time
capacity, to support Ms. Greene. Messrs. Higgins and Maher will be responsible for systems
design and development under guidance from the Board. They will be supported by a K-12
taxonomist from 2008 onwards and a localisation specialist and higher education taxonomist
from 2009. A quality control assistant will be employed in 2010.
55
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
7 FINANCIAL OVERVIEW
7.1 Disclaimer
The indicative financial illustrations prepared by the Directors summarised in this Section 7
and attached in Appendix do not constitute a profit forecast or a prediction or estimate of
future performance. The financial illustrations are included for illustrative purposes only. The
financial illustrations seek to give an indication of one possible outcome if all the
assumptions are attained.
56
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
7.2 Profit and Loss Account
Profit and Loss Account for year ending 31st
December
Year 1
Revenues
OEM Licenses
SDE Licenses
Implementation Services
Professional Services
Grants and Research Funding
Cost of Sales
Gross Profit
Gross Margin
Expenditure
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates and Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Depreciation
Bank Interest and Charges
Total
Year 2
Year 3
70,833
24,167
15,000
20,000
50,000
208,333
83,333
25,000
70,000
60,000
358,333
153,333
25,000
70,000
60,000
180,000
446,667
666,667
4,750
4,750
14,583
14,583
25,583
25,583
175,250
97%
432,083
97%
641,083
96%
96,000
29,520
125,520
144,000
44,280
188,280
229,680
70,627
300,307
4,140
9,600
20,000
17,600
281
146
177,287
4,830
14,520
33,000
51,000
109
1,702
293,440
5,520
23,232
50,000
54,000
371
(6,162)
427,267
Net Profit/(Loss)
(2,037)
138,643
213,816
Cumulative Profit/(Loss
(2,037)
136,606
350,422
57
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
7.3 Balance Sheet
Balance Sheet as at 31st December
Year 1
Fixed Assets
- Hardware and Software
- Office Equipment
- Accum. Depreciation
- Net Book Value
Year 2
Year 3
2,810
281
2,529
6,520
390
6,130
10,230
761
9,469
22,000
22,000
68,000
68,000
97,333
97,333
26,566
26,566
(62,476)
(62,476)
(243,620)
(243,620)
Net Current Assets/(Liabilities)
(4,566)
130,476
340,953
Total Assets
(2,037)
136,606
350,422
Total Net Assets/(Liabilities)
(2,037)
136,606
350,422
Capital Reserves
- Share Capital
- Profit and Loss A/C
(2,037)
136,606
350,422
(2,037)
136,606
350,422
Current Assets
- Debtors
- Cash at Bank
Creditors (Due within 1 yr.)
- Creditors
- Bank Overdraft
Creditors (Due after 1 yr.)
Loan Capital
Trade Creditors
58
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
7.4 Cashflow Statement
Year 1
Cash Flow Statement for the year ending
31st December
Year 2
Year3
Inflows
Debtors
30 Days
60 Days
Total
65,000
93,000
158,000
165,667
235,000
400,667
259,333
378,000
637,333
Outflows
Fixed Assets
Data Transfer, Licensing Fees and Commissions
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates & Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Bank Interest and Charges
Total
2,810
4,750
96,000
29,520
4,140
9,600
20,000
17,600
146
184,566
3,710
14,583
144,000
44,280
4,830
14,520
33,000
51,000
1,702
311,625
3,710
25,583
229,680
70,627
5,520
23,232
50,000
54,000
(6,162)
456,190
Period Inflow/(Outflow)
(26,566)
89,042
181,144
Cumulative Inflow/(Outflow)
(26,566)
62,476
243,620
59
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
7.5 Summary of Major Assumptions
7.5.1 Revenues
The Company will derive its revenues from two sources: (1) licensing revenues, which are
comprised of fees from the licensing of Global Crosswalk ETL TOOL and datasets to Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and to the Master Distributor; (2) revenues from related
professional services and implementation services.
Licensing revenues will be recognised on a monthly basis over the terms of the contracts.
Professional services and other revenues, when sold with licences, are accounted for
separately when these services have value to the customer on a standalone basis. The
Company’s arrangements will not contain general rights of return.
Assumed revenue growth is based on research by the Directors. The Company will generate
sales primarily through marketing activities of the Master Distributor (Cambridge University
Press), its business development team, indirect channels and from associated professional
services.
The financial illustrations suggest that revenues will grow from €180,000 in Year1 to
€666,667 in Year 3. Customer acquisition will be primarily driven by strategic partners
(Cambridge University Press, alt^I and LiNK). The Company will gain exposure to markets
where partners have established relationships and therefore be in a position to expand our
customer base.
7.5.2 Cost of Sales
Cost of sales will consist of licensing fees in associated with both OEM and SDE licenses. The
Company will be using an external web hosting facility however all server infrastructure and
storage will be owned by strategic partners at no cost to the Company.
7.5.3 Gross Margin
The gross margin ranges from 95% to 100% depending on the product mix at any given time
and specifically the level of professional services and implementation services at a given
time. As these items do not attract licensing fees, they contribute positively to gross margin.
On an annual basis gross margin is consistently at 96% to 97%.
7.5.4 Salaries (incl. Employers PRSI)
The salaries represent the total compensation figure for each anticipated employee and an
allowance of 10.75% for Employers PRSI. Growth in salaries is driven primarily by the
development of a core R&D team. A 10% p.a. increase has been factored in to reflect ontarget performance and changes in market rates.
60
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
7.5.5 Rent, Rate, Insurance and Other Office Costs
The Company anticipates using incubator space in Dublin City University and serviced virtual
offices in the UK with Regus. Other office costs are driven by headcount and include
telecommunications, printing and stationary and other sundry expenses.
7.5.6 Professional Fees
Professional fees include accounting, audit, payroll and legal fees, increasing from €20,000 in
year 1 to €50,000 in year 3.
7.5.7 Marketing
Marketing consists primarily of exhibition costs, travel and accommodation associated with
sales and marketing and other costs including subscriptions to industry organisations,
publications and other miscellaneous marketing expenditure. All advertising and associated
costs will be the responsibility of Cambridge University Press.
7.5.8 Fixed Assets and Depreciation
Fixed assets are made up of office equipment. There will be no associated costs in relation to
hardware and software as this cost will be the responsibility of Cambridge University Press.
Office equipment includes furniture, fixtures and fittings and is driven by headcount.
Office equipment is depreciated at a rate of 10% p.a. on a straight line basis.
7.5.9 Bank Interest and Charges
This is driven by cumulative cash outflow and assumes bank interest s and charges of 10%
p.a.
7.5.10 Currency
The currency is Euros.
61
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
8 APPENDICES
Appendix A – IEEE LOM Metadata Elements
62
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix B – ONIX for Books Metadata Elements
AbbreviatedLength
AddresseeIdentifier
AddresseeIDType
Affiliation
AgentIdentifier
AgentIDType
AgentName
AgentRole
AlternativeFormatEAN13
AlternativeFormatISBN
AlternativeProductEAN13
AlternativeProductISBN
Annotation
AnnouncementDate
Audience
AudienceCode
AudienceCodeType
AudienceCodeTypeName
AudienceCodeValue
AudienceDescription
AudienceRange
AudienceRangePrecision
AudienceRangeQualifier
AudienceRangeValue
AudienceRestrictionFlag
AudienceRestrictionNote
CurrencyCode
Date
DateFormat
DefaultClassOfTrade
DefaultCurrencyCode
DefaultLanguageOfText
DefaultLinearUnit
DefaultPriceTypeCode
DefaultWeightUnit
DeletionCode
DeletionText
Dimensions
DiscountCode
DiscountCoded
DiscountCodeType
DiscountCodeTypeName
DiscountPercent
DistinctiveTitle
DOI
DownloadCaption
DownloadCopyrightNotice
DownloadCredit
DownloadTerms
EAN13
EAN13OfSet
EditionNumber
LocationName
MainDescription
MainSeriesRecord
MainSubject
MainSubjectSchemeIdentifier
MapScale
MarketCountry
MarketCountryExcluded
MarketDate
MarketDateRole
MarketPublishingStatus
MarketRepresentation
MarketRestrictionDetail
MarketTerritory
Measure
Measurement
MeasureTypeCode
MeasureUnitCode
MediaFile
MediaFileDate
MediaFileFormatCode
MediaFileLink
MediaFileLinkTypeCode
MediaFileTypeCode
MessageNote
MessageNumber
63
Product
ProductAvailability
ProductClassification
ProductClassificationCode
ProductClassificationType
ProductContentType
ProductForm
ProductFormDescription
ProductFormDetail
ProductFormFeature
ProductFormFeatureDescription
ProductFormFeatureType
ProductFormFeatureValue
ProductIdentifier
ProductIDType
ProductPackaging
ProductWebsite
ProductWebsiteDescription
ProductWebsiteLink
ProfessionalAffiliation
ProfessionalPosition
PromotionCampaign
PromotionContact
PublicationDate
Publisher
PublisherName
StockQuantityCoded
StockQuantityCodeType
StockQuantityCodeTypeName
StudyBibleType
Subject
SubjectCode
SubjectHeadingText
SubjectSchemeIdentifier
SubjectSchemeName
SubjectSchemeVersion
SubordinateEntries
SubSeriesRecord
Subtitle
SuffixToKey
SupplierEANLocationNumber
SupplierIdentifier
SupplierIDType
SupplierName
SupplierRole
SupplierSAN
SupplyDetail
SupplyRestrictionDetail
SupplyToCountry
SupplyToCountryExcluded
SupplyToRegion
SupplyToTerritory
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
AvailabilityCode
Barcode
BASICMainSubject
BASICVersion
BatchBonus
BatchQuantity
Bible
BibleContents
BiblePurpose
BibleReferenceLocation
BibleTextFeature
BibleTextOrganization
BibleVersion
BICDiscountGroupCode
BICMainSubject
BICVersion
BiographicalNote
BookClubAdoption
BookFormDetail
CBO
CityOfPublication
ClassOfTrade
Complexity
ComplexityCode
ComplexitySchemeIdentifier
ComponentNumber
ComponentTypeName
Conference
ConferenceAcronym
ConferenceDate
EditionStatement
EditionTypeCode
EditionVersionNumber
EmailAddress
EndDate
EpubFormat
EpubFormatDescription
EpubFormatVersion
EpubSource
EpubSourceDescription
EpubSourceVersion
EpubType
EpubTypeDescription
EpubTypeNote
EpubTypeVersion
ExpectedDate
ExpectedShipDate
Extent
ExtentType
ExtentUnit
ExtentValue
FaxNumber
FirstPageNumber
FormerTitle
FreeQuantity
FromCompany
FromEANNumber
FromEmail
FromPerson
FromSAN
MessageRepeat
MinimumOrderQuantity
Name
NameCodeType
NameCodeTypeName
NameCodeValue
NamesAfterKey
NamesBeforeKey
NewSupplier
NoContributor
NoEdition
NoSeries
NotForSale
NotificationType
Number
NumberOfIllustrations
NumberOfPages
NumberOfPieces
NumberWithinSeries
OnHand
OnOrder
OnOrderDetail
OnSaleDate
OrderTime
OriginalLanguage
OriginalPublisher
OtherText
OutOfPrintDate
PackQuantity
PageRun
64
PublisherProductNo
PublisherSeriesCode
PublishingRole
PublishingStatus
PublishingStatusNote
RecordReference
RecordSourceIdentifier
RecordSourceIdentifierType
RecordSourceName
RecordSourceType
RegionCode
Reissue
ReissueDate
ReissueDescription
RelatedProduct
RelationCode
ReligiousText
ReligiousTextFeature
ReligiousTextFeatureCode
ReligiousTextFeatureDescription
ReligiousTextFeatureType
ReligiousTextID
ReplacedByEAN13
ReplacedByISBN
ReplacesEAN13
ReplacesISBN
ReprintDetail
ReturnsCode
ReturnsCodeType
ReviewQuote
TaxableAmount1
TaxableAmount2
TaxAmount1
TaxAmount2
TaxRateCode1
TaxRateCode2
TaxRatePercent1
TaxRatePercent2
TelephoneNumber
Territory
TerritoryExcluded
Text
TextAuthor
TextCaseFlag
TextFormat
TextItem
TextItemIdentifier
TextItemIDType
TextItemType
TextLink
TextLinkType
TextPublicationDate
TextSourceCorporate
TextSourceTitle
TextTypeCode
TextWithDownload
ThesisPresentedTo
ThesisType
ThesisYear
Thickness
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
ConferenceDescription
ConferenceName
ConferenceNumber
ConferencePlace
ConferenceRole
ConferenceSponsor
ConferenceSponsorIdentifier
ConferenceSponsorIDType
ConferenceTheme
ContainedItem
ContentItem
Contributor
ContributorDescription
ContributorRole
ContributorStatement
CopiesSold
CopublisherName
CopyrightOwner
CopyrightOwnerIdentifier
CopyrightOwnerIDType
CopyrightStatement
CopyrightYear
CorporateBodyAsSubject
CorporateName
CountryCode
CountryExcluded
CountryOfPublication
CoverImageFormatCode
CoverImageLink
CoverImageLinkTypeCode
Header
Height
IDTypeName
IDValue
Illustrations
IllustrationsNote
IllustrationType
IllustrationTypeDescription
ImageResolution
Imprint
ImprintName
InitialPrintRun
InterestAge
IntermediaryAvailabilityCode
ISBN
ISBNOfSet
ISMN
ItemNumberWithinSet
ItemQuantity
KeyNames
Language
LanguageCode
LanguageOfText
LanguageRole
LastDateForReturns
LastPageNumber
LettersAfterNames
LevelSequenceNumber
LocationIdentifier
LocationIDType
PagesArabic
PagesRoman
ParentIdentifier
Percent
PersonAsSubject
PersonDate
PersonDateRole
PersonName
PersonNameIdentifier
PersonNameIDType
PersonNameInverted
PersonNameType
PlaceAsSubject
PrefixToKey
Price
PriceAmount
PriceEffectiveFrom
PriceEffectiveUntil
PricePer
PriceQualifier
PriceStatus
PriceTypeCode
PriceTypeDescription
Prize
PrizeCode
PrizeCountry
PrizeJury
PrizeName
PrizesDescription
PrizeYear
65
RightsCountry
RightsRegion
RightsTerritory
SalesOutlet
SalesOutletIdentifier
SalesOutletIDType
SalesOutletName
SalesRestriction
SalesRestrictionDetail
SalesRestrictionType
SalesRights
SalesRightsType
SenderIdentifier
SenderIDType
SentDate
SequenceNumber
SequenceNumberWithinRole
Series
SeriesIdentifier
SeriesIDType
SeriesISSN
SeriesPartName
Set
SetItemTitle
SetPartNumber
SetPartTitle
SponsorName
StartDate
Stock
StockQuantityCode
Title
TitleOfSeries
TitleOfSet
TitlePrefix
TitlesAfterNames
TitlesBeforeNames
TitleText
TitleType
TitleWithoutPrefix
ToCompany
ToEANNumber
ToPerson
ToSAN
TradeAnnouncementDate
TradeCategory
TranslationOfTitle
UnnamedPersons
UnpricedItemType
UPC
USSchoolGrade
Website
WebsiteDescription
WebsiteLink
WebsiteRole
Weight
Width
WorkIdentifier
WorkIDType
YearFirstPublished
YearOfAnnual
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix C – People / Organisations Contacted
Dale Parcell – Arizona Department of Education
Dale works for Arizona Department of Education and is involved in the K-12 standard setting
process in Arizona. The project team travelled to Arizona and conducted several meetings
with Dale and his colleagues. Dale expressed to the team that the Arizona Department of
Education would be very interested in obtaining the benefits offered by Global Crosswalk.
Mike O’Byrne – National Centre for Technology in Education
Mike works for the NCTE and is based in the Invent Centre in Dublin City University. The
project team discussed issues related to the Irish education system with Mike and were able
to use his recommendations to help shape the direction of the project.
Brian Monks – Global Grid for Learning
Brian works as a taxonomist for GGFL and assisted the project team in understanding the
complexity of the K-12 education system. The project team worked with Brian in normalising
the Texas standards dataset. The project team also worked with Brian in the process of
manually crosswalking similar standards within the datasets. This assisted the project team
in understanding the complexity of this process.
66
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix D – Arizona Department of Education Meeting 7th
July
The following issues were raised in the meeting with Dale Parcel of the Arizona Department
of Education:

The standard tree structure is broken down between strands, concepts and
performance objectives.

Learning standards are primarily created and updated by teachers and university
level people.

There is always one nationally recognised expert involved in the process.

The standard setters meet over a period of days to prepare the standards.

There is a public review of the changes with continuous refinement.

The State Board of Education approves the standards possibly making
recommendations.

The changes can take up to a year to implement.

All States have their standards reviewed at a federal level.

It was suggested that crosswalking the standards as far as the concept level would
sufficient.

The issue of how many times a learning resource needs to be tagged to a learning
standard was raised. It was agreed that a resource tagged to the same standard
twice would be enough to ensure it was relevant to a standard.

The idea of having Department of Education approved correlations was raised.
67
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix E – Projected Profit and Losses by Month
Projected Profit and Loss Account - Year 1
Sales
OEM Licenses
SDE Licenses
Implementation Services
Professional Services
Grant and Research Funding
Notes
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
Total
1
50,000
833
5,000
25,000
833
-
833
-
1,667
-
1,667
-
1,667
10,000
25,000
1,667
-
4,167
1,667
-
4,167
3,333
-
4,167
3,333
-
4,167
3,333
-
4,167
3,333
10,000
-
70,833
24,167
5,000
20,000
50,000
80,833
833
833
4,167
1,667
36,667
1,667
8,333
12,500
7,500
7,500
17,500
180,000
2,542
2,542
42
42
42
42
83
83
83
83
83
83
83
83
292
292
375
375
375
375
375
375
375
375
4,750
4,750
78,292
97%
792
95%
792
95%
4,083
98%
1,583
95%
36,583
100%
1,583
95%
8,042
97%
12,125
97%
7,125
95%
7,125
95%
17,125
98%
175,250
97%
4
5
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
8,000
2,460
10,460
96,000
29,520
125,520
6
7
8
9
10
345
800
1,667
2,000
23
15,295
345
800
1,667
1,000
23
172
14,467
345
800
1,667
1,000
23
23
14,318
345
800
1,667
1,400
23
(264)
14,431
345
800
1,667
1,400
23
(151)
14,545
345
800
1,667
1,400
23
(47)
14,648
345
800
1,667
1,400
23
49
14,744
345
800
1,667
1,600
23
42
14,937
345
800
1,667
1,600
23
(20)
14,875
345
800
1,667
1,600
23
71
14,966
345
800
1,667
1,600
23
115
15,010
345
800
1,667
1,600
23
156
15,051
4,140
9,600
20,000
17,600
281
146
177,287
Period P & L
62,997
(13,675)
(13,527)
(10,347)
(12,961)
21,935
(13,161)
(6,896)
(2,750)
(7,841)
(7,885)
2,074
(2,037)
Cumulative P & L
62,997
49,321
35,795
25,447
12,486
34,421
21,260
14,365
11,615
3,774
(4,111)
(2,037)
(2,037)
Total Sales
Licensing Fees and Commissions
3
Gross Profit
Gross Margin
Expenditure
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates and Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Depreciation
Bank Interest and Charges
68
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Projected Profit and Loss Account - Year 2
Sales
OEM Licenses
SDE Licenses
Implementation Services
Professional Services
Grant and Research Funding
Notes
M13
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
Total
1
Total Sales
Licensing Fees and Commissions
M14
3
Gross Profit
Gross Margin
12,500
4,167
5,000
10,000
20,000
12,500
4,167
-
12,500
4,167
10,000
-
16,667
5,833
7,500
-
16,667
5,833
-
16,667
7,500
5,000
10,000
20,000
16,667
7,500
-
20,833
7,500
2,500
-
20,833
9,167
5,000
20,000
-
20,833
9,167
20,000
20,833
9,167
-
20,833
9,167
20,000
-
208,333
83,333
25,000
70,000
60,000
51,667
16,667
26,667
30,000
22,500
59,167
24,167
30,833
55,000
50,000
30,000
50,000
446,667
833
833
833
833
833
833
1,125
1,125
1,125
1,125
1,208
1,208
1,208
1,208
1,417
1,417
1,500
1,500
1,500
1,500
1,500
1,500
1,500
1,500
14,583
14,583
50,833
98%
15,833
95%
25,833
97%
28,875
96%
21,375
95%
57,958
98%
22,958
95%
29,417
95%
53,500
97%
48,500
97%
28,500
95%
48,500
97%
432,083
97%
4
5
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
12,000
3,690
15,690
144,000
44,280
188,280
6
7
8
9
10
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
54
221
23,271
345
1,210
2,750
8,000
54
357
28,406
345
1,210
2,750
8,000
340
28,335
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
270
23,265
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
301
23,296
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
271
23,266
460
1,210
2,750
8,000
250
28,360
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
186
23,296
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
16
23,126
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
(2)
23,108
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
(135)
22,975
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
(373)
22,737
4,830
14,520
33,000
51,000
109
1,702
293,440
Period P & L
27,563
(12,573)
(2,502)
5,610
(1,921)
34,693
(5,401)
6,120
30,374
25,392
5,525
25,763
138,643
Cumulative P & L
25,526
12,953
10,451
16,061
14,141
48,833
43,432
49,552
79,926
105,319
110,844
136,606
136,606
Expenditure
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates and Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Depreciation
Bank Interest and Charges
69
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Projected Profit and Loss Account - Year 3
Sales
OEM Licenses
SDE Licenses
Implementation Services
Professional Services
Grant and Research Funding
Notes
M25
Rent, Rates and Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Depreciation
Bank Interest and Charges
Period P & L
Cumulative P & L
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
Total
25,000
10,000
5,000
10,000
20,000
25,000
10,000
-
25,000
10,000
10,000
-
29,167
11,667
7,500
-
29,167
11,667
-
29,167
13,333
5,000
10,000
20,000
29,167
13,333
-
33,333
13,333
2,500
-
33,333
15,000
5,000
20,000
-
33,333
15,000
20,000
33,333
15,000
-
33,333
15,000
20,000
-
358,333
153,333
25,000
70,000
60,000
70,000
35,000
45,000
48,333
40,833
77,500
42,500
49,167
73,333
68,333
48,333
68,333
666,667
1,750
1,750
1,750
1,750
1,750
1,750
2,042
2,042
2,042
2,042
2,125
2,125
2,125
2,125
2,333
2,333
2,417
2,417
2,417
2,417
2,417
2,417
2,417
2,417
25,583
25,583
68,250
98%
33,250
95%
43,250
96%
46,292
96%
38,792
95%
75,375
97%
40,375
95%
46,833
95%
70,917
97%
65,917
96%
45,917
95%
65,917
96%
641,083
96%
4
5
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
19,140
5,886
25,026
229,680
70,627
300,307
6
7
8
9
10
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
(521)
34,348
460
1,936
4,167
8,250
31
(506)
39,363
460
1,936
4,167
8,250
31
(647)
39,222
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
(772)
34,097
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
(796)
34,073
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
(882)
33,987
460
1,936
4,167
8,250
31
(959)
38,910
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
(1,080)
33,789
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
34,869
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
34,869
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
34,869
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
31
34,869
5,520
23,232
50,000
54,000
371
(6,162)
427,267
3
Gross Profit
Gross Margin
Expenditure
Salaries
Employers PRSI
M27
1
Total Sales
Licensing Fees and Commissions
M26
33,902
170,508
(6,113)
164,395
4,028
12,195
4,719
41,388
1,465
13,044
36,048
31,048
11,048
31,048
213,816
168,422
180,617
185,336
226,724
228,188
241,232
277,280
308,327
319,375
350,422
350,422
70
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix F – Projected Cash Flows by Month
Cash Flow Projected - Year 1
Inflows
Debtors
30 Days
60 Days
Total
Notes
1
40%
60%
M1
M2
M3
M4
-
32,333
32,333
333
48,500
48,833
2,810
2,542
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
2,000
20,623
42
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,000
172
14,485
42
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,000
23
14,336
Period Inflow/Outflow)
(20,623)
17,848
Cumulative Inflow/(Outflow)
(20,623)
(2,775)
Outflows
Fixed Assets
Licensing Fees and Commissions
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates & Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Bank Interest and Charges
Total
11
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
M5
333
500
833
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
Total
1,667
500
2,167
667
2,500
3,167
14,667
1,000
15,667
667
22,000
22,667
3,333
1,000
4,333
5,000
5,000
10,000
3,000
7,500
10,500
3,000
4,500
7,500
65,000
93,000
158,000
83
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,400
(264)
14,491
83
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,400
(151)
14,604
83
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,400
(47)
14,708
83
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,400
49
14,804
292
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,600
42
15,205
375
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,600
(20)
15,227
375
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,600
71
15,317
375
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,600
115
15,362
375
8,000
2,460
345
800
1,667
1,600
156
15,402
2,810
4,750
96,000
29,520
4,140
9,600
20,000
17,600
146
184,566
34,497
(13,657)
(12,438)
(11,541)
862
7,461
(10,893)
(5,317)
(4,862)
(7,902)
(26,566)
31,722
18,064
5,627
(5,915)
2,409
(8,485)
(13,802)
(18,664)
(26,566)
(26,566)
71
(5,053)
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Cash Flow Projected - Year 2
Inflows
Debtors
30 Days
60 Days
Total
Notes
1
40%
60%
M13
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
Total
7,000
4,500
11,500
20,667
10,500
31,167
6,667
31,000
37,667
10,667
10,000
20,667
12,000
16,000
28,000
9,000
18,000
27,000
23,667
13,500
37,167
9,667
35,500
45,167
12,333
14,500
26,833
22,000
18,500
40,500
20,000
33,000
53,000
12,000
30,000
42,000
165,667
235,000
400,667
3,710
833
12,000
3,690
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
221
27,760
833
12,000
3,690
345
1,210
2,750
8,000
357
29,185
833
12,000
3,690
345
1,210
2,750
8,000
340
29,169
1,125
12,000
3,690
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
270
24,390
1,125
12,000
3,690
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
301
24,421
1,208
12,000
3,690
345
1,210
2,750
3,000
271
24,474
1,208
12,000
3,690
460
1,210
2,750
8,000
250
29,568
1,417
12,000
3,690
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
186
24,713
1,500
12,000
3,690
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
16
24,626
1,500
12,000
3,690
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
(2)
24,608
1,500
12,000
3,690
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
(135)
24,475
1,500
12,000
3,690
460
1,210
2,750
3,000
(373)
24,237
3,710
14,583
144,000
44,280
4,830
14,520
33,000
51,000
1,702
311,625
Period Inflow/Outflow)
(16,260)
1,981
8,498
(3,723)
3,579
2,526
7,599
20,454
2,207
15,892
28,525
17,763
89,042
Cumulative Inflow/(Outflow)
(42,826)
(40,844)
(32,346)
(36,069)
(32,490)
(29,964)
(22,365)
(1,911)
296
16,189
44,713
62,476
62,476
Outflows
Fixed Assets
Licensing Fees and Commissions
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates & Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Bank Interest and Charges
Total
11
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
72
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Cash Flow Projected - 2007
Inflows
Debtors
30 Days
60 Days
Total
Notes
1
40%
60%
M25
M26
M27
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
Total
20,000
18,000
38,000
28,000
30,000
58,000
14,000
42,000
56,000
18,000
21,000
39,000
19,333
27,000
46,333
16,333
29,000
45,333
31,000
24,500
55,500
17,000
46,500
63,500
19,667
25,500
45,167
29,333
29,500
58,833
27,333
44,000
71,333
19,333
41,000
60,333
259,333
378,000
637,333
3,710
1,750
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
(521)
39,778
1,750
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
8,250
(506)
41,082
1,750
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
8,250
(647)
40,941
2,042
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
(772)
36,108
2,042
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
(796)
36,083
2,125
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
(882)
36,081
2,125
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
8,250
(959)
41,004
2,333
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
(1,080)
36,092
2,417
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
37,255
2,417
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
37,255
2,417
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
37,255
2,417
19,140
5,886
460
1,936
4,167
3,250
37,255
3,710
25,583
229,680
70,627
5,520
23,232
50,000
54,000
(6,162)
456,190
Period Inflow/Outflow)
(1,778)
16,918
15,059
2,892
10,250
9,252
14,496
27,408
7,912
21,578
34,078
23,078
181,144
Cumulative Inflow/(Outflow)
60,698
77,616
92,675
95,567
105,817
115,069
129,564
156,973
164,884
186,463
220,541
243,620
243,620
Outflows
Fixed Assets
Licensing Fees and Commissions
Salaries
Employers PRSI
Rent, Rates & Insurance
Other Office Costs
Professional Fees
Marketing
Bank Interest and Charges
Total
11
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
73
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix G – Projected Balance Sheets by Month
Balance Sheet - Year 1
Fixed Assets
- Hardware and Software
- Office Equipment
- Accum. Depreciation
- Net Book Value
Notes
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
Total
11
2,810
23
2,787
2,810
47
2,763
2,810
70
2,740
2,810
94
2,716
2,810
117
2,693
2,810
141
2,670
2,810
164
2,646
2,810
187
2,623
2,810
211
2,599
2,810
234
2,576
2,810
258
2,552
2,810
281
2,529
2,810
281
2,529
80,833
80,833
49,333
49,333
1,333
1,333
4,667
4,667
4,167
4,167
37,667
37,667
23,667
23,667
9,333
9,333
17,500
17,500
15,000
15,000
12,000
12,000
22,000
22,000
22,000
22,000
20,623
20,623
2,775
2,775
(31,722)
(31,722)
(18,064)
(18,064)
(5,627)
(5,627)
5,915
5,915
5,053
5,053
(2,409)
(2,409)
8,485
8,485
13,802
13,802
18,664
18,664
26,566
26,566
26,566
26,566
Net Current Assets
60,210
46,558
33,055
22,731
9,793
31,752
18,614
11,742
9,015
1,198
(6,664)
(4,566)
(4,566)
Total Assets
62,997
49,321
35,795
25,447
12,486
34,421
21,260
14,365
11,615
3,774
(4,111)
(2,037)
(2,037)
62,997
49,321
35,795
25,447
12,486
34,421
21,260
14,365
11,615
3,774
(4,111)
(2,037)
(2,037)
62,997
49,321
35,795
25,447
12,486
34,421
21,260
14,365
11,615
3,774
(4,111)
(2,037)
(2,037)
Current Assets
- Debtors
- Cash at Bank
Creditors (Due within 1 yr.)
- Creditors
- Bank Overdraft
10
Creditors (Due after 1 yr.)
Loan Capital
Trade Creditors
Capital Reserves
- Share Capital
- Profit and Loss A/C
74
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Balance Sheet - Year 2
Fixed Assets
- Hardware and Software
- Office Equipment
- Accum. Depreciation
- Net Book Value
Current Assets
- Debtors
- Cash at Bank
Creditors (Due within 1 yr.)
- Creditors
- Bank Overdraft
Notes
M13
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
Total
11
10
6,520
335
6,185
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
6,520
390
6,130
62,167
62,167
47,667
47,667
36,667
36,667
46,000
46,000
40,500
40,500
72,667
72,667
59,667
59,667
45,333
45,333
73,500
73,500
83,000
83,000
60,000
60,000
68,000
68,000
68,000
68,000
42,826
42,826
40,844
40,844
32,346
32,346
36,069
36,069
32,490
32,490
29,964
29,964
22,365
22,365
1,911
1,911
(16,189)
(16,189)
(44,713)
(44,713)
(62,476)
(62,476)
(62,476)
(62,476)
(296)
(296)
Net Current Assets
19,341
6,823
4,321
9,931
8,010
42,703
37,302
43,422
73,796
99,189
104,713
130,476
130,476
Total Assets
25,526
12,953
10,451
16,061
14,141
48,833
43,432
49,552
79,926
105,319
110,844
136,606
136,606
25,526
12,953
10,451
16,061
14,141
48,833
43,432
49,552
79,926
105,319
110,844
136,606
136,606
25,526
12,953
10,451
16,061
14,141
48,833
43,432
49,552
79,926
105,319
110,844
136,606
136,606
Creditors (Due after 1 yr.)
Loan Capital
Trade Creditors
Capital Reserves
- Share Capital
- Profit and Loss A/C
75
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Balance Sheet - Year 3
Fixed Assets
- Hardware and Software
- Office Equipment
- Accum. Depreciation
- Net Book Value
Notes
M25
M26
M27
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
Total
11
10,230
421
9,809
10,230
452
9,779
10,230
482
9,748
10,230
513
9,717
10,230
544
9,686
10,230
575
9,655
10,230
606
9,624
10,230
637
9,593
10,230
668
9,562
10,230
699
9,531
10,230
730
9,500
10,230
761
9,469
10,230
761
9,469
100,000
100,000
77,000
77,000
66,000
66,000
75,333
75,333
69,833
69,833
102,000
102,000
89,000
89,000
74,667
74,667
102,833
102,833
112,333
112,333
89,333
89,333
97,333
97,333
97,333
97,333
(60,698)
(60,698)
(77,616)
(77,616)
(92,675)
(92,675)
(95,567)
(95,567)
(105,817)
(105,817)
(115,069)
(115,069)
(129,564)
(129,564)
(156,973)
(156,973)
(164,884)
(164,884)
(186,463)
(186,463)
(220,541)
(220,541)
(243,620)
(243,620)
(243,620)
(243,620)
Net Current Assets
160,698
154,616
158,675
170,900
175,650
217,069
218,564
231,639
267,718
298,796
309,875
340,953
340,953
Total Assets
170,508
164,395
168,422
180,617
185,336
226,724
228,188
241,232
277,280
308,327
319,375
350,422
350,422
170,508
164,395
168,422
180,617
185,336
226,724
228,188
241,232
277,280
308,327
319,375
350,422
350,422
170,508
164,395
168,422
180,617
185,336
226,724
228,188
241,232
277,280
308,327
319,375
350,422
350,422
Current Assets
- Debtors
- Cash at Bank
Creditors (Due within 1 yr.)
- Creditors
- Bank Overdraft
10
Creditors (Due after 1 yr.)
Loan Capital
Trade Creditors
Capital Reserves
- Share Capital
- Profit and Loss A/C
76
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix H – Projected Sales by Month
Note 1 - Sales Year 1
Sales Estimates Year 1
Notes
Unit
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
Total
New OEM
Current OEM
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
New SDE License
Current SDE License
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
4
4
4
4
4
4
Implementation Services
2
-
-
1
-
-
-
1
2
-
-
-
6
Professional Services
-
-
-
-
-
1
-
-
-
-
-
1
2
Grants and Research Funding
1
-
-
-
-
1
-
-
-
-
-
-
2
OEM Licenses
50,000
50,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
4,167
4,167
4,167
4,167
4,167
70,833
SDE Licenses
10,000
833
833
833
1,667
1,667
1,667
1,667
1,667
3,333
3,333
3,333
3,333
24,167
2,500
5,000
-
-
2,500
-
-
-
2,500
5,000
-
-
-
15,000
Professional Services
10,000
-
-
-
-
-
10,000
-
-
-
-
-
10,000
20,000
Grants and Research Funding
25,000
25,000
-
-
-
-
25,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
50,000
80,833
833
833
4,167
1,667
36,667
1,667
8,333
12,500
7,500
7,500
17,500
180,000
Implementation Services
Total
77
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Note 1 - Sales Year 2
Sales Estimates Year 2
Notes
Unit
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
Total
New OEM
Current OEM
1
3
3
3
1
4
4
4
4
1
5
5
5
5
5
3
5
New SDE License
Current SDE License
1
5
5
5
2
7
7
2
9
9
9
2
11
11
11
11
7
11
Implementation Services
2
-
-
3
-
2
-
1
2
-
-
-
10
Professional Services
1
-
1
-
1
-
-
2
-
-
2
7
Grants and Research Funding
1
-
-
-
-
1
-
-
-
1
-
-
3
OEM Licenses
50,000
12,500
12,500
12,500
16,667
16,667
16,667
16,667
20,833
20,833
20,833
20,833
20,833
208,333
SDE Licenses
10,000
4,167
4,167
4,167
5,833
5,833
7,500
7,500
7,500
9,167
9,167
9,167
9,167
83,333
Implementation Services
2,500
5,000
-
-
7,500
-
5,000
-
2,500
5,000
-
-
-
25,000
Professional Services
10,000
10,000
-
10,000
-
-
10,000
-
-
20,000
-
-
20,000
70,000
Grants and Research Funding
20,000
20,000
-
-
-
-
20,000
-
-
-
20,000
-
-
60,000
51,667
16,667
26,667
30,000
22,500
59,167
24,167
30,833
55,000
50,000
30,000
50,000
446,667
Total
78
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Note 1 - Sales Year 3
Sales Estimates Year 3
Notes
Unit
M1
New OEM
Current OEM
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
Total
1
6
6
6
1
7
7
7
7
1
8
8
8
8
8
3
8
1
12
12
12
2
14
14
2
16
16
16
2
18
18
18
18
7
18
Implementation Services
2
-
-
3
-
2
-
1
2
-
-
-
10
Professional Services
1
-
1
-
1
-
-
2
-
-
2
7
Grants and Research Funding
1
-
-
-
-
1
-
-
-
1
-
-
3
New SDE License
Current SDE License
OEM Licenses
50,000
25,000
25,000
25,000
29,167
29,167
29,167
29,167
33,333
33,333
33,333
33,333
33,333
358,333
SDE Licenses
10,000
10,000
10,000
10,000
11,667
11,667
13,333
13,333
13,333
15,000
15,000
15,000
15,000
153,333
Implementation Services
2,500
5,000
-
-
7,500
-
5,000
-
2,500
5,000
-
-
-
25,000
Professional Services
10,000
10,000
-
10,000
-
-
10,000
-
-
20,000
-
-
20,000
70,000
Grants and Research Funding
20,000
20,000
-
-
-
-
20,000
-
-
-
20,000
-
-
60,000
70,000
35,000
45,000
48,333
40,833
77,500
42,500
49,167
73,333
68,333
48,333
68,333
666,667
Total
79
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix I – Projected Cost of Sales by Month
Cost of Sales Year 1
Rate
OEM Licensing Fees
SDE Licensing Fees
Total
5%
5%
Total
Cost of Sales Year 2
Rate
OEM Licensing Fees
SDE Licensing Fees
5%
5%
OEM Licensing Fees
SDE Licensing Fees
Total
Rate
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
2,500
42
42
42
83
83
83
83
208
83
208
167
208
167
208
167
208
167
4,750
2,542
42
42
83
83
83
83
292
375
375
375
375
M13
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
10,417
4,167
625
208
625
208
625
208
833
292
833
292
833
375
833
375
1,042
375
1,042
458
1,042
458
1,042
458
1,042
458
14,583
833
833
833
1,125
1,125
1,208
1,208
1,417
1,500
1,500
1,500
1,500
Total
5%
5%
M2
3,542
1,208
Total
Total
Cost of Sales Year 3
M1
M25
M26
M27
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
17,917
7,667
1,250
500
1,250
500
1,250
500
1,458
583
1,458
583
1,458
667
1,458
667
1,667
667
1,667
750
1,667
750
1,667
750
1,667
750
17,917
1,750
1,750
1,750
2,042
2,042
2,125
2,125
2,333
2,417
2,417
2,417
2,417
80
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix J – Projected Salary Assumptions by Month
Salaries Year 1
Headcount
Director (Managing)
Director (Sales & Marketing)
Director (Financial)
Technical Manager
Assistant to Directors
Business Development Director
Business Development Managers
Marketing Manager
Taxonomy Librarian/Taxonomist
Systems Administrator
Software Engineer
QA Manager
Customer Support/Sales Engineer
Flash Developer/UI Designer
Gross p.a.
24,000
24,000
24,000
24,000
-
Gross p.m.
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
Total Headcount
Salaries 2005
Headcount
Director (Managing)
Director (Sales & Marketing)
Director (Financial)
Director (Technical)
Assistant to Directors
Business Development Director (UK & Ireland)
Business Development Managers
Marketing Manager
Taxonomy Librarian/Taxonomist
Systems Administrator
Software Engineer
QA Manager
Customer Support/Sales Engineer
Flash Developer/UI Designer
Gross p.a.
24,000
24,000
24,000
24,000
-
Gross p.m.
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
Total Costs
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
24,000
24,000
24,000
24,000
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1.0
1
1
1
-
1.0
1
1
1
-
1.0
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
1
1
-
96,000
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
Total Costs
24,000
24,000
24,000
24,000
-
M1
M2
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M3
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M4
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
81
M5
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M6
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M7
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M8
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M9
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M10
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M11
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
M12
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
-
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Salaries Year 2
Headcount
Director (Managing)
Director (Sales & Marketing)
Director (Financial)
Technical Manager
Assistant to Directors
Business Development Director
Business Development Managers
Marketing Manager
Taxonomy Librarian/Taxonomist
Systems Administrator
Software Engineer
QA Manager
Customer Support/Sales Engineer
Flash Developer/UI Designer
Gross p.a.
26,400
24,000
26,400
26,400
26,400
-
Gross p.m.
2,200
2,000
2,200
2,200
2,200
-
Total Headcount
Salaries 2006
Headcount
Director (Managing)
Director (Sales & Marketing)
Director (Financial)
Director (Technical)
Assistant to Directors
Business Development Director (UK & Ireland)
Business Development Managers
Marketing Manager
Taxonomy Librarian/Taxonomist
Systems Administrator
Software Engineer
QA Manager
Customer Support/Sales Engineer
Flash Developer/UI Designer
Total Headcount
Gross p.a.
26,400
24,000
26,400
26,400
26,400
-
Gross p.m.
2,200
2,000
2,200
2,200
2,200
-
Total Costs
M13
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
26,400
12,000
26,400
52,800
26,400
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
1
0.5
1
2
1
-
144,000
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
Total Costs
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
26,400
12,000
26,400
52,800
26,400
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
2,200
1,000
2,200
4,400
2,200
-
144,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
12,000
82
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Salaries Year 3
Headcount
Director (Managing)
Director (Sales & Marketing)
Director (Financial)
Technical Manager
Assistant to Directors
Business Development Director
Business Development Managers
Marketing Manager
Taxonomy Librarian/Taxonomist
Systems Administrator
Software Engineer
QA Manager
Customer Support/Sales Engineer
Flash Developer/UI Designer
Gross p.a.
29,040
26,400
29,040
29,040
29,040
29,040
-
Gross p.m.
2,420
2,200
2,420
2,420
2,420
2,420
-
Total Headcount
Salaries 2006
Headcount
Director (Managing)
Director (Sales & Marketing)
Director (Financial)
Director (Technical)
Assistant to Directors
Business Development Director (UK & Ireland)
Business Development Managers
Marketing Manager
Taxonomy Librarian/Taxonomist
Systems Administrator
Software Engineer
QA Manager
Customer Support/Sales Engineer
Flash Developer/UI Designer
Gross p.a.
29,040
26,400
29,040
29,040
29,040
29,040
-
Gross p.m.
2,420
2,200
2,420
2,420
2,420
2,420
-
Total Costs
M25
M26
M27
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
29,040
26,400
29,040
87,120
29,040
29,040
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
1
1
1
3
1
1
-
229,680
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
Total Costs
29,040
26,400
29,040
87,120
29,040
29,040
-
M25
M26
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M27
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M28
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
83
M29
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M30
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M31
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M32
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M33
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M34
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M35
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
M36
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
2,420
2,200
2,420
7,260
2,420
2,420
-
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix K – Projected Rent, Rates and Insurance by Month
Rent, Rates & Insurance Year 1
Notes
Rent
Virtual Office Rent (kendlebell)
M1
-
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
Rates (as a % of Rent)
15%
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Insurance (as a % of Rent)
10%
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
Total Rent, Rates & Insurance
Rent & Rates & Insurance Year 2
4,140
Notes
Rent
Virtual Office Rent
M13
-
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
345
460
460
460
460
460
460
460
460
460
460
460
460
Rates (as a % of Rent)
15%
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Insurance (as a % of Rent)
10%
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
345
345
345
345
345
345
460
460
460
460
460
460
Total Rent, Rates & Insurance
Rent & Rates & Insurance Year 3
Rent
Virtual Office Rent
4,830
Notes
M25
-
M26
460
460
M27
460
460
M28
460
460
M29
460
460
84
M30
460
460
M31
460
460
M32
460
460
M33
460
460
M34
460
460
M35
460
460
M36
460
460
460
460
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix L – Other Office Costs by Month
Other Office Costs Per Head Year 1
Telephone & Fax
Printing & Stationery
Sundry
Per Month Per
Person
100
75
25
Total
Other Office Costs Per Head Year 2
Telephone & Fax
Printing & Stationery
Sundry
Per Month Per
Person
110
83
28
Total
Other Office Costs Per Head Year 3
Telephone & Fax
Printing & Stationery
Sundry
Total
Per Month Per
Person
121
91
30
Total
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
4,800
3,600
1,200
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
400
300
100
9,600
800
800
800
800
800
800
800
800
800
800
800
800
Total
M13
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
7,260
5,445
1,815
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
605
454
151
14,520
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
1,210
Total
M25
M26
M27
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
11,616
8,712
2,904
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
968
726
242
23,232
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
1,936
85
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix M – Projected Professional Fees
Note 8 - Professional Fees
Professional Fees
Year 1
Professional Fees
20,000
86
Year 2
33,000
Year 3
50,000
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix N – Projected Marketing Costs by Month
Marketing Year 1
Advertising
Exhibitions
Direct Mail
Travel & Accommodation
Other Costs
Notes
Advertising
Exhibitions
Direct Mail
Travel and Accommodation
Other Costs
Notes
1,000
Advertising
Exhibitions
Direct Mail
Travel and Accommodation
Other Costs
Total Marketing Cost
Notes
1,000
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
4,600
2,000
-
1,000
-
1,000
-
1,000
400
1,000
400
1,000
400
1,000
400
1,000
600
1,000
600
1,000
600
1,000
600
1,000
600
4,600
2,000
1,000
1,000
1,400
1,400
1,400
1,400
1,600
1,600
1,600
1,600
1,600
1,000
Total Marketing Cost
Marketing Year 3
M1
-
Total Marketing Cost
Marketing Year 2
Total Cost
Total Cost
M13
M14
M15
M16
M17
M18
M19
M20
M21
M22
M23
M24
15,000
24,000
12,000
2,000
1,000
5,000
2,000
1,000
5,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
5,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
2,000
1,000
51,000
3,000
8,000
8,000
3,000
3,000
3,000
8,000
3,000
3,000
3,000
3,000
3,000
Total Cost
M25
M26
M27
M28
M29
M30
M31
M32
M33
M34
M35
M36
15,000
24,000
15,000
2,000
1,250
5,000
2,000
1,250
5,000
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
5,000
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
2,000
1,250
54,000
3,250
8,250
8,250
3,250
3,250
3,250
8,250
3,250
3,250
3,250
3,250
3,250
87
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Appendix O – Projected Customers by Month
Customers Year 1
Unit
Total
M1
M2
M3
M4
M5
M6
M7
M8
M9
M10
M11
M12
OEM
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
SDE
4
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
4
4
4
4
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
4
6
6
6
6
Total
Customers Year 2
6
Unit
Total
M13
M14
M15
M16
M 17
M18
M19
M 20
M21
M22
M23
M24
OEM
5
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
5
SDE
11
5
5
5
7
7
9
9
9
11
11
11
11
Total
16
8
8
8
11
11
13
13
14
16
16
16
16
Customers Year 3
Rate
Total
M25
M26
M27
M28
M 29
M30
M31
M 32
M33
M34
M35
M36
OEM
8
6
6
6
7
7
7
7
8
8
8
8
8
SDE
18
12
12
12
14
14
16
16
16
18
18
18
18
Total
26
18
18
18
21
21
23
23
24
26
26
26
26
88
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
Technical Report
89
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
1. OVERVIEW
The overall objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive backend software
development kit for the extraction of metadata from educational assets. An educational
asset is any piece of digital content that could be used to teach a student. This metadata will
be edited making it compatible with our systems search functions. Once the assets are
marked-up the assets will be correlated to educational standards. An educational standard is
provided by education standard setters and outlines what a student should know and be
able to do. Once linked users can search an asset based on the educational standard it
meets. The asset, its metadata and the relationship it has to educational standards are
stored in a database which can be transferred to all organisations in the educational sector.
1.1 Scope
As this practicum is a business project and due to time constraints we have reduced the
scope of the project. We have developed a system which ingests metadata associated with
images and learning objects. We use this information to fill the two most popular metadata
schemes for publishers IEEE LOM and Dublin Core. Using machine readable versions of the
California, Texas and New York educational standards we developed a tool which allows
users to correlate assets to these standards. We have used the largest publishers Corbis and
the educational standards that covers the largest population.
Scope
Phase 1
Vision/scope
document
Phase 2
Development
investigation
Objectives
 Articulate the vision statement

Identify scope of the project
including
development
and
deployment

Identify approaches to solving the
problem

Create a high level solution
architecture and conceptual design

Identify issues & concerns






Phase 3
Solution development
and deployment




Identify user scenarios
Search & ingest content based on
keywords & metadata
Identify and evaluate ingestion and
search performance issues
Identify and evaluate performance
issues
Identify
and
evaluate
interoperability issues
Develop
development
and
deployment plan
Development of required feature set
& underlying services
Quality assurance
Functional testing
Launch
90
Exit Criteria

Review the document with
stakeholders

Sign-off on the document
content

Sign-off on future phases
including availability of
funds


Signed off by technical
director
Security and functionality
issues have been addressed
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
2. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
2.1 High Level Architecture
Content
Object
Images, Video, Audio,
SCORM, Document
Ingestion
No
Generic
metadata
available?
Yes
Apply
Generic
Metadata
Yes
Metadata
Available
Metadata
Extraction
No
Stemming
Dictionary
Add
metadat
a
Industry Metadata
Multi-Lingual
Thesaurus
DUBLIN CORE
Global Crossalk
Error
Correction
K-12 Dataset
Language
Dataset
Higher
Education
Other Datasets
Can you store
revised
metadata in/
with object?
Save to
database
Expose
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Segment Specific
Metadata
Save
metadata in/
with Object
GLOBAL CROSSWALK
2.2 Sequence Diagrams
2.2.1 Upload a File
Actor
Publisher
Goals/Context
There must be an agreement in place that allows publishers to upload new content to the
system. The system allows publishers to access its database to upload assets. The publisher’s
content must educational content. Once the publisher is finished the repository contains
new content that must be correlated to a certain standard. The publisher’s id will be
associated with every piece of content they upload to ensure accountability for
inappropriate content.
Normal Flow
1. The publisher visits the Global Crosswalk website
2. If the publisher has already registered they must log in.
2. Once logged in the user is presented with an upload asset option.
3. The publisher then uploads their educational content. Firstly the object is uploaded and
given a unique idea. This unique id is combined with the publisher unique id to create an
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upload id which will stored in a table in the database along with the time, date, asset id and
publisher id.
4. The system then attempts to extracts any embedded metadata associated with the object
and places it into a table of metadata associated with the asset through the assets unique id.
The user is then asked to fill any remaining mandatory metadata fields. This will also be
stored in this table. All this information is filtered into common fields in both IEEE LOM and
Dublin Core.
5. A correlation expert must link the object to an educational standard. Once the asset is
associated to one standard it is automatically related to all other standards in the system as
each standard has been cross-walked to a base standard which is linked to all other
standards by cross-walking experts.
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2.2.2 Correlate
Actors
Correlation Expert
Goal Context
These are experts who tag an asset to an educational standard, these maybe the standard
setter themselves. The experts are only needed when there is uncorrelated data in the
database.
Normal Flow
 The user enters their username and password.
 They select standard to correlate to (The one they know best).
 The user is given a list of uncorrelated objects. They click on one. The tool extracts
the keywords and the description from the table of metadata associated with that
object and displays it to the user.
 The system then tries to match these keywords and description with the description
of the standards given in the standard table in the database. They present all the
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GLOBAL CROSSWALK

standards that may possibly correlate with the asset selected. The expert then
selects the correct standard.
Once the selections have been made the correlation can be completed by a
confirmation button.
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GLOBAL CROSSWALK
3. DEVELOPMENT DESCRIPTION
3.1 Technologies Used
We used MySql as the database. We used java to develop the mid-tier. The front-end pages
are written in JSP. We also used the NetBeans IDL to build the project.
3.1.1 Benefits
Cost: We wanted to use open source tools to reduce the cost of development as much as
possible for this reason
Speed: An independent study by Ziff Davis found MySQL to be one of the top performers in a
group that included DB2, Oracle, ASE, and SQL Server 2000.
Cross Platform: One great advantage of using MySQL and Java is its cross-platform
capabilities. You can develop your database application on a Windows laptop and deploy on
Windows Server 2003, a Linux server, an IBM mainframe, or an Apple XServe. This gives you
a lot of versatility.
3.2 Issues Faced and Solutions
This was a difficult process for a number of reasons. There were many unforeseen issues:
3.2.1 Understanding the Concept
It took several weeks to simply understand the problem we were trying to solve. While we
had a good understanding of the high level issues we found it took us a number of weeks to
come up with the use case diagrams. To help us under the complexity of the issues we faced
we manually handled the processes.
This involved:

Normalising the education standards by hand. This gave us an in-depth knowledge of
the size and type of information stored in the datasets. Which helped us develop an
accurate search tool

Manually correlating the assets to the Texas standard this made us aware of some of
the issues for example it became clear that our correlation tool could not rely solely
on string matching. We needed a human in the loop tool because there was
sometimes several results that matched an assets description a human was need to
pick the relevant standard. However we knew that we could dramatically improve
the speed of this process with a automatic filter process.

Manually crosswalking standards. We worked with a Taxonomist from Cambridge
University Press to crosswalk the Texas stand to the California standard. This
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GLOBAL CROSSWALK
highlighted some important rules for consideration. For example it is vital that
subject of similar grades are be mapped to each other otherwise the user may
receive inappropriate search results for their grade and therefore lose confidence.
We had to use several of the assets to really understand what issues we faced. It was also
very daunting dealing with such a large amount of data. We have never programmed with
datasets this big.
3.2.2 Strip the Metadata
Once we had assets we had to research how to strip the metadata. In the case of images the
metadata is encoded into the images itself. We found a library called Sanselan which reads
in the images bytes. Using this API we were able to take the metadata from the images. For
SCORM we found that the metadata was stored in a XML file. Here we simply read this file
and stripped the metadata we need.
3.2.3 Correlation of Assets
Once we had the metadata striped into our database we needed a way to relate it to our
education standards. We eventually decided that we needed to add are own field to the
metadata stored for each asset. We added a grade field which was populated with the
unique id of the standard that assert was correlated to.
3.2.4 How to Crosswalk
The next problem we encountered was the how to crosswalk the standards in our database
i.e. how do we link math in the New York to Maths in California. We decided that we should
use the most detailed standard as a base standard and link all other standards to this. We
chose Texas as the base. We linked all other standards to this. If there was a new learning
objective that was not in the base standard we added to the base. This work very well as all
the standards in the US are based on a national standard.
3.2.5 Learning JSP
The most frustrating aspect of the development process was learning how to use Java Server
Pages in Java NetBeans. We had never developed in JSP before therefore we spend a large
amount of time reading tutorials and tutor books on the functionality available however
once we began to program we found it took us a long time to learn how to implement what
we had learned.
Problems included:
Read from a textbox
We were able to read single strings from textboxes easily using the JSP
request.getOarameter function however when a user entered a space the text box would
only return the first token. We later found that we needed to create a bean and associate it
with a text box. This is a small java class that has get and set methods.
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GLOBAL CROSSWALK
How to create a bean
In visual studio you can drag and drop certain elements should as text fields and all the get
and set methods are instantly available to you however in JSP/NetBeans the user must write
these methods. While this didn’t take long associating them with the text boxes did. The
user must write a small piece of JSP code which located the class. We didn’t know how to do
this and we had to research and read several tutorials before it became clear how to do this.
Pass variable from page to page
We had a problem passing variables from one page. We eventually learned that we should
use a session for this. A session is a piece of code which holds variables allowing you to
access it from page to page using JSP code. We didn’t know how to do this and it took us a
large amount of time to research how to implement this properly
How to create, connect and access a web service
We wanted to execute middle tier operations such as the metadata extractor however we
didn’t know how to access these from the JSP files. We researched this issue and found that
we needed to implement a web service. This is a piece of code that had to be accessed using
WSDL files (these are automatically generated by NetBeans). The webservice was a java
wrapped in xml tags. They had to be written in a separate project to the client application.
This created our three tier architecture. This took us a very long time to research and
implement.
All of these issues required a lot of research time and the use of many different tutorials (See
Appendix A)
How to map metadata standards to each other
Once could strip metadata from the assets we had to transform it to match the most
common metadata standards Dublin Core and IEEE LOM. This meant we had to map the
metadata fields which where the same to each other therefore when a user entered data
into one field it would automatically popular the related field in the other schemes. We did
this by writing individual methods which populated the relevant fields in the different
schemes. The schemes are linked by unique ids we apply to all the metadata fields.
Stop words
There are several methods in the application which uses a search method. We found that
this search brought back irrelevant results sets. We found that stop words such as (the, for, a
etc) where causing matches. We decided that the most efficient way to ensure the accuracy
was to remove all the stop words from the search query rather than remove the stop words
from all database entries. This increased the accuracy of the searches dramatically
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GLOBAL CROSSWALK
4. APPENDICES
Appendix A - List of Online Tutorials and Websites Used for
Research
JSP Tutorials
http://www.roseindia.net/jsp/jspsessions.shtml
http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/
http://www.jsptut.com/Forms.jsp
http://www.geocities.com/srcsinc/java/java_tutorials/jsp_tutorials/jsp_tutorial_6.html
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3471111
http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/JSP/CatalogJSP.htm
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3471111
NetBeans Tutorials
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/web.html
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/web/tutorial-webapps.html
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/web/mysql-webapp.html
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/web/customer-book.html
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/61/web/hibernate-vwp.html
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/61/web/jsf-jpa-crud-wizard.html
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/web/helloweb.html
http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansUserFAQ#section-NetBeansUserFAQ-WebFrameworks
MySql Tutorials
http://www.java2s.com/Code/SQL/CatalogSQL.htm
http://usefulscripts.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/connect-mysql-from-java-jdbc/
Java API’s
http://www.exiv2.org/tags.html
http://bytes.com/forum/thread742154.html
http://3d2f.com/tags/remove/metadata/jpg/
http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/2064/
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/
Metadata Standards
http://projects.ischool.washington.edu/sasutton/IEEE1484.html
http://dublincore.org/
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