Curriculum

CoSN Offers Interoperability, ID Management Guides

By Ian Quillen — May 25, 2011 1 min read
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The Consortium for School Networking Tuesday released white papers aimed to help educators understand how to combat challenges related to interoperability between data systems and understand the benefits of implementing identity management in K-12 education.

Of course, the first step to understanding how to tackle those issues is to understand just exactly what the heck those issues are. (And no, it is not possible to implement identity management solely via MGMT’s “Electric Feel” method.)

Essentially, the need for interoperability means the need to ensure that pieces of content or data collected via different systems across a district, state, or even nationwide, are able to be related to content or data in other systems. This has been a heightened need in schools of late, thanks to the recent priority placed upon the creation and expansion of data systems by initiatives like the non-profit Data Quality Campaign and the federal Race to the Top grant competition.

Identity management is a subset of interoperability that deals with identifying users within a data or content system, controlling their access to system resources, and maintaining that connection as a user leaves one system and enters another.

The white paper on identity management is available to the public, as is an executive summary of the white paper on interoperability. The full document on interoperability is available to CoSN members.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.