Flickr:A Trying Youth

Google “photosynthesis” and you’ll see a long list of links to everything from Wikipedia to PBS to the University of Illinois, with plenty of YouTube videos thrown into the mix.

To streamline this somewhat random page of results for both educators and learners, a group of education content providers is teaming up to create a better defined framework for education-related searches online.

In a move that brings together for the first time traditional content companies and free, open content sites, the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and Creative Commons (CC) are partnering to improve search results online the through the creation of a metadata framework specifically for learning resources. That means teachers looking for content — much of it aligned to Common Core standards — will be able to more easily find information they need. At least that’s the hope.

“Easy access to high-quality learning resources is the end goal of this project,” said Charlene Gaynor, CEO of Association of Education Publishers at the Context in Content conference today.

Many of the big-hitters on both sides of the spectrum are involved, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), Curriki, McGraw-Hill Education, Monterey Institute for Technology in Education (MITE), Pearson, Promethean, Scholastic Inc., and SMART Technologies, BetterLesson.

“Educators and students miss out on education resources available online because it is takes too long or is too hard to find appropriate content,” said Catherine Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons in a press release. “A common metadata schema will make this search more efficient and effective so educators can quickly discover the educational resources they want, including those they can reuse under Creative Commons licenses.”

Today’s announcement follows on the heels of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Schema.org, a collaboration between the three major search engines that’s billed as a “major step forward in the evolution of search.”

Likewise, this collaboration is meant to “create a learning explosion,” said Shep Ranbom of ISKME. “This can do for students what Dewey did for readers 150 years ago when he created standardized card cataloging.”

The partners are hoping to have the function up and running in between six months to a year.

Lenny Gonzalez

Eighth grade students at Presidio Middle School share an iPad while working on a lesson.

There’s no argument that Silicon Valley startups have influenced how businesses operate. The fact that most companies now count social media strategy as a crucial part of their operation is a testament to the Internet culture infiltrating far beyond the Internet-only based businesses.

The same phenomenon is happening in education. Here are five ways tech-based startups in Silicon Valley have influenced education.

1. Social media

Not long ago, social media and education had absolutely nothing to do with one another. These days, it has become enmeshed in school policy and practice. Schools are figuring out guidelines for using Facebook. Teachers are using Twitter to engage and gauge student interaction. They’re using blogs and wikis to communicate and to teach. Parents are friending teachers and schools. “If you’re not on Facebook, it’s hard to communicate with us,” said Eric Sheninger, principal of New Milford High School in Bergen County, New Jersey. “Our new hub of real time information is Facebook. When I post things about kids’ accomplishments, and when students and parents comment, as a principal I’m proud.”

2. Grassroots growth

As with Mashable and Yelp, the use of Web 2.0 tools in education is proliferating from the ground up. Educators are finding each other online, teaming up, and sharing smart tactics on how best to inventively use tech to engage their students and keep up with the quickly changing world outside school walls. They meet and confer online with weekly Twitter meetups on #Edchat, and spread the word about best practices through Twitter and Facebook and their own blog, even if it means circumventing school rules.

3. User-generated content

Like Huffington Post, Flickr, Yelp, and the mother of all UGC sites, Wikipedia, forward-thinking educators are incorporating student-created media, feedback, essays, and blogs as part of the curriculum they teach in class. Rather than feeding their students information, they’re giving value and recognition to their students’ ideas and encouraging them to think for themselves.

4. Open-source education

As with Linux and Mozilla (creator of your Firefox browser), progressive educators are throwing open their classroom doors and sharing their knowledge with each other and with the world. They’re using content sites like Open Education Resources and CK12 to create and customize their own curriculum, and allowing others to access all of it.

5. Venture capital

There may come a day when schools can “go public,” so to speak, (as in have stockholders), but until then schools are finding ways to fund new initiatives through private investments. Organizations like NewSchool Venture Fund are fueling the growth of charter schools like Rocketship, Green Dot, and Aspire — and their progress is worth following.

Read more about trends in education.

• 6 Ways Social Media is Changing Education
• How Learning Environments are Changing
• Three Trends That Define the Future of Teaching and Learning
• Trends That Will Shape the Future of Curriculum