When was the last time you searched for a worksheet, test question bank, video clip, or an image for that lesson you were planning? Your answer: about two hours ago. Next question. How satisfying was that search? Your answer: not terribly. That is, unless you were searching for STEM resources and you were using Gooru. Well, help may be on the way.
The Creative Commons is facilitating an industry initiative to standardize metadata for tagging resources in education. The Learning Resources Metadata Initiative (LRMI) brings together an impressive team of advisors and a technical working group that might just be able to crack this nut.
The LRMI project website identifies an existing example of a well coordinated metadata effort by the food industry. The resulting google search for potato salad offers you a left column specification option that includes the ability to target recipes and products with specific ingredient and calorie information.
Will this mean that when you search ‘Civil War’ you will have the option of choosing a time period, country, grade level, and resource type? If so, that would be cool. It would be even cooler if it could separate the wheat from the chaff – but maybe that is better left to the curation portals who will make use of this new standard. Go team!
Question Tank 
Sounds great! Is it good for the early years too?
We will see, Michael. The concept is still nascent. Stay tuned. Thanks for the comment.