Het Europese DIRECTORS-project (DIgital data dRiven Education fOR kidS) is opgezet door de Universiteit van Zagreb (Kroatië) en de Technische Universiteit Delft en bedoeld om datageletterdheid in het basisonderwijs te bevorderen door ervaringen te delen en materialen aan te bieden. Het project richt zich op leerlingen van 8-10 jaar en hun leerkrachten. Dit artikel beschrijft de ontwikkelde lesmethoden en de opgedane lessen bij het implementeren ervan op basisscholen in Nederland en Kroatie. ... Read more

Digital literacy skills are paramount today, especially for young people. The Erasmus+ DIRECTORS (DIgital data-dRiven EduCaTion fOR kidS) project aims to promote data literacy in primary education by introducing new teaching methods and materials designed to support curriculum updates. The project targets pupils aged 8−10 and their teachers, focusing on building foundational digital and data skills through hands-on, interactive learning experiences. In 2024, we conducted three workshops of two sessions each in Marija Corica (Croatia) and Delfgauw (the Netherlands): (1) Data in Our Hands (and Mobile Devices), (2) Spatial Data (and Maps) in Our Hands, and (3) Data Sources. The activities encouraged pupils to explore data concepts interactively, using datasets from their immediate environment and transitioning from conceptualizing data in non-digital forms to applying it in digital contexts. The implementation varied between Croatia and the Netherlands, allowing us to compare outcomes due to cultural and infrastructural differences. This paper presents an overview of the workshop design and content, the evaluation results, and the lessons learned. Key takeaways include the necessity of grounding abstract data concepts in tangible, real-world contexts before introducing digital tools. Finally, we discuss future iterations' directions, including better teachers' involvement and addressing technological limitations like device availability and connectivity. ... Read more

The 2019 European Open Data Directive identifies geospatial data as data that could have a major impact on human activities (high-value data, HVD) and advocates its provision as open data (OD), i.e., without barriers to access and re-use. Although Croatia has implemented OD policies to support the provision of open data, many geospatial data are still not available, or if available, their level of openness ranks Croatia lower than Slovenia and Serbia on some ranking lists. Benchmarking tools have proven to be a powerful tool in identifying barriers in OD. This paper, therefore, benchmarks the level of openness and provision of geospatial HVD in Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, using the extended and modified Global Open Data Index methodology (GODI Plus). It is expected that this will provide an answer to the status of OD policies and government engagement in OD in Croatia and identify good OD practices among the three countries analyzed. Furthermore, the results will be a baseline benchmark for future HVD analyses. The results reveal low data openness for Croatia and Serbia, high data openness for Slovenia, and a low level of government engagement in all three proposed countries. ... Read more

Children in the primary educational level learn about fundamental reading, writing and mathematics skills as a basis for future learning. In some European Union countries, they are also taught basic informatics and computer usage. However, only a few efforts are made to start teaching them about (open) data literacy. When teaching about data, multiple stages of the data value chain can be tackled, adapted to children’s capabilities; from data production or collection to data usage or impact. Such teaching can be more theoretical, with already prepared examples, or a complete hands-on experience, where the data is collected from the environment, further analyzed, visualized and the conclusions about data are made. In this paper, we will present the currently available research on the approaches to teaching children about data. We will also discuss the potential benefits and the main issues impeding such an effort. Finally, we will propose the way forward for informal active learning about data for lower-level primary school children, based on the hands-on workshops using environmental data. ... Read more

Open data portals are web services that serve as a central access point for all government-published open data and can exist at local, regional, national, and international levels. They are an important element of most open data initiatives that have enabled a large amount of government data to be widely available. However, data quantity and quality are not the only aspects that should be considered when publishing data. To improve the reusability of data and to achieve greater impact and benefits from open data, it is important to consider user-oriented aspects of the portal management, discovery, and use of data (e.g., organizing the portal in a user-centric way, providing accurate metadata, using a standardized and open data format, etc.). In this paper, we adopted the metrics proposed by the European Commission to assess compliance of the Croatian Open Data Portal with 10 user-oriented principles that open data portals should implement in terms of sustainability and added value. While the results show the government’s efforts in publishing data, some aspects such as better collaboration with data providers and other data portals, offering different visualization tools, etc. need to be improved to achieve active use and impact. ... Read more

As part of the Twinning Open Data Operational (TODO) Project, a series of virtual and physical site visits were organized in 2021 and 2022 as part of the Capacity Building Work Package. The goal of the site visits was to increase the knowledge of the TODO Consortium partners and to expand their understanding of the real-life implementation of open data policies, technologies, and initiatives in different domains. The institutions that participated in the site visits are considered to be among open data best practices in Europe. These organizations included public organizations at different administrative levels (EU, national, regional, local), businesses, research institutions and non-profit organizations. The aim of the site visits was to gain insight in policies and day-to -day practices of open data organizations and in the main challenges they are facing. This paper describes the outcomes of these site visits, and which open data developments, challenges and opportunities are currently going on for open data organisations. ... Read more

Over the last decade, open data has become a hot topic that researchers and governments all over the world are eager to explore. The term first appeared in a 1995 document from an American scientific agency (Chignard, 2013), but its popularity increased when the U.S. president, Barrack Obama, signed the 2009 Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, pledging to achieve an unprecedented level of openness in government (Obama, 2009). This memorandum emphasized the importance of creating a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration through openness. ... Read more