Implementation Planning – Awareness

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Interoperability Standards for Education

Implementation Planning – Awareness Interoperability Standards for Education

Overview

Today, most digital resources and tools are not interoperable. That is, generally, data from one system or software package cannot be shared with others—they are trapped in “data siloes”. 

Over the past decade, K–12 stakeholders have been collaborating to define the underlying and architectural standards necessary for plug-and-play interoperability. These initiatives are producing useful and promising results. Although the process is far from complete, the foundation for interoperability exists today.

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Become familiar with the Nine Key Areas of Interoperability Standards below. Rank the nine key areas from most to least interoperability in your district.  For example, perhaps your district has a great solution for file sharing but is still working out the kinks of rostering, 

Digital content

Digital content interoperability allows seamless access to digital content and software for students and teachers, generally through a student learning platform or learning management system (LMS).

Data Connectivity

Data connectivity is the ability to transfer data into and out of databases in an efficient and cost-effective way.

Data integration

Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of these data. It begins with data connectivity, but goes beyond connecting a system to a database to make the data usable by each application.

Authentication, authorization, and identity management

The infrastructure and processes for creating the digital identities and performing authentication and authorization is referred to as identity management.

Rostering

Rosters are used to enroll large groups of students into software solutions and create their IDs and passwords.

Portals and portlets

The availability of standards-compliant portlets allows districts to take advantage of the abundance of libraries with portlets ready to plug into their portals.

File sharing

A complex process of integrating large amounts of data stored in the files into another system that relies heavily on selecting the right file format, appropriate to the type of data, and data normalization, transformation, and integration processes.

Network infrastructure

Demand on the network infrastructure is increasing. It is important to address some of the critical standards that must be considered when implementing a wireless or wired network to support a high density and mission-critical environment, such as in school districts.

Digital accessibility

It is important for technology to be accessible to all students with diverse abilities. Digital accessibility standards address a host of impairments that include visual, hearing, physical, or learning disabilities.

Explore the different data standards

logo for Ed-fi Alliance

Ed-Fi:The Ed-Fi Data Standard is a set of rules that allow (previously disconnected) educational data systems to connect.

1EdTech: 1EdTech is the world’s leading member-based non-profit community partnership of educational providers, state/national departments of education, and edtech suppliers.

Common Education Data Standards (CEDS): CEDS is an education data management initiative whose purpose is to streamline the understanding of data within and across P-20W institutions and sectors. 

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In your resource folder, read the guide titled “Working Together to Strategically Connect the K–12 Enterprise: Interoperability Standards for Education” to learn more about interoperability solutions and the 9 Key areas of Interoperability Standards. Next, review the  Glossary of K-12 Interoperability Standards below.  Which are you familiar with? Which would most closely align  with your Use Case? 

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