This paper presents a reference framework to describe educational material. It introduces the PALO Language as a cognitive based approach to Educational Modeling Languages (EML). In accordance with recent trends for reusability and interoperability in Learning Technologies, EML constitutes an evolution of the current content-centered specifications of learning material, involving the description of learning processes and methods from a pedagogical and instructional perspective. The PALO Language, thus, provides a layer of abstraction for the description of learning material, including the description of learning activities, structure and scheduling. The framework makes use of domain and pedagogical ontologies as a reusable and maintainable way to represent and store instructional content, and to provide a pedagogical level of abstraction in the authoring process. (Contains 2 tables and 8 figures.)