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LTTA Session - DETECT PROJECT

Exploring Critical DIgital Literacy Dimensions:

DATA LITERACY

The relevance of Data Literacy in our society

📝 The term "data" is probably becoming a sort of buzzword. What do we mean by "data"? How do you feel about the word "data"? And why should we need to be "data literate"?

You might also come across "Big Data", "Open Data" ,"Data Science", Datafication" and "Datafied" as words. And overall, some of these words have positive connotations, while others have very negative implications for our lives. Clearly, we deal with a problem with many facets. As educators, we need to explore them to understand which message we want to convey to our students.

Overall, "data" refers to the digital data collected through our interaction with digital spaces, apps, and smart technologies, including the Internet of Things. And while this data might be part of open, public knowledge and could be mined to produce new human activities, like Artificial Intelligence, there are many connected problems. Not only the form in which data are collected, without the consent of the people from whom such data are extracted, could be a concern. Also, surveillance, end users' manipulation through nudges and recommendations, or the misrepresentation of collectives are emerging issues connected to all the practises around data.

In the two videos that follow, we try to strike a balance, introducing the concept of "data cultures": the contextualised use of data, within education institutions, that allow the users to learn and to embrace balanced perspectives on data, to learn to live well with the above mentioned technological change.

📌Through the videos, we introduce the perspective we will work through in this session! [5+7 min watch]

Part I

Let's explore some challenges posed by the massive generation of digital data in the society. Which is the role of educators? [4:56 min]

Part II

Let's consider some conceptual lens to organise the field and start working as educators to cultivate the literacies to build "fair data cultures". [7:14 min]

💭 More Food for Educators' Though

Are we losing the battle of data literacy? [6 min read] and What is critical data studies? [3 minutes read]

Data Literacy within the DETECT project

Data Literacy has received great attention over the last few years in relation to school practices and has been identified as one of the dimensions of the DETECT Critical Digital LIteracies framework. Although the issue of Data Protection is usually addressed by relevant policies at institutional level (mainly in relation to GDPR compliance) less attention has been paid to raising educators as well as students' awareness regarding the various aspects and sub-dimensions of data literacy. Within the DETECT project the aim is to develop educators' understandings of the multifacet issue of data literacy and also support them with enhancing their students' practices in relation to data protection and safety, the use of open data and data justice.

🚀This workshop is organized in two simple phases:

1- Three possible pathways: select your own [ASYNCHRONOUS ACTIVITY, 5 min read]

We introduce three perspectives about data, as a complex problem, and invite you to select one to start learning.

Data Protection and Safety - Combining a reactive data "mindset" and the need to protect personal data, we'll explore the role of educators in supporting their own and ther students' awareness, security and safety while going through digital spaces.
Open Data to develop critical citizens' data literacy - Combining a proactive data "mindset" and the possibility to access to public, open data, we'll explore how open data can be used for civic education, also cultivating data visualization and data storytelling.
Data Justice: exploring the dark side of data - Combining a reactive data "mindset" and the need to access and generate fair public, open data, we'll explore the role of educators in promoting data justice.

2- A “hands-on” moment [ASYNCHRONOUS ACTIVITY, 40 min interactions with resources] + [ SYNCHRONOUS ACTIVITY, 90 min workgroup and 60 min plenary session]

The participants will engage with resources connected to the perspective chosen, and will debate around possible and future pedagogical practices.

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