摘要：I (Terry) first became interested in the semantic web from reading Berners-Lee's original works and following first generation developments of semantic web technologies in information science, e-business and health fields. I then began including the ideas in talks I gave at various conferences and forums in 2003. Naturally, I became curious about what other educators were doing with the semantic web and so Googled the term, "education semantic web". Much to my surprise and disappointment, I found that most of the references were to my own admittedly introductory and visionary comments made in these speeches. Where was the real work, innovation and actual prototype development? Fortunately, we were able to locate this type of work and we believe that most of the leading researchers in the area of the educational semantic web have contributed to this special issue. Of course, if we have missed your work, we welcome comments and URLs in the discussion areas of the special issue.
关键词：semantic web; web technologies; forms of communication; effective learning; change; social costs of education; innovation; research; effects of technology on education; scholarship; information storage and retrieval; agents; communication; challenges to the educational semantic web; educational resources; educational technology; educational institutions; distance education; distance learning; teaching
