Dan McCreary has been around the block a time or two in his years of working in the technology industry. He’s worked at cutting edge technology companies and started companies of his own. His latest project was building a data dictionary for the Minnesota Dept of Education.

Our conversation centered on metadata and interoperability issues. Many of you are familiar with SIF, probably the most widely known effort to build a standardized framework for communicating about education data. Dan explains a lot of the background information about metadata, XML, OWL, ISO 11179, and other alphabet soup acronyms that, once you understand a bit about them, make SIF more comprehensible. We also discuss how interoperability fits into the future of online learning, student transcripts, and standardized testing. Finally, Dan’s got some tips for school technology leaders as they evaluate vendors who claim that their products interoperate.

This one’s more technical that most of my podcasts, but there’s some good stuff in there. Let your inner greek out for recess and give it a listen.

Download: STP-DanMcCreary (16.2 MB, 35:10)