Data Literate: Digital Data Literacy for Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Data Literate: Digital Data Literacy for Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Data Literate project has a well-defined and very specific mission to capacitate educators in Digital Data Literacy, through continuous professional development initiatives and hands-on, collaborative approach which will allow not just teachers, but also school leaders and students to increase their Digital Competences, in particular those related with digital data literacy for education.

Having to transition to distance learning from day to night, schools have faced the pandemic as a quintessential adaptive and transformative challenge which highlighted previously deep-rooted existing gaps. On one side, it showed sharply the importance of digital learning and the need for high-quality teachers’ continuous professional development (CPD) in ICT. On the other side, COVID19 called renovated attention to specific digital competences, including Digital Data Literacy (DDL). Even before the pandemic, it was already well set that is impossible not to recognize that data is essential for everyday life, since nearly everything is digital, and those digital things produce and consume data.

The evidence clearly shows not only the importance of data literacy within the context of a digitalized society, but also highlights its relevance to education. With COVID19, “the demand for digital skills will grow with skills in demand (…) including (…) data literacy (…)” (Digital Education Action Plan).
With the rapid schools’ shift to online learning, not just teachers, but also students and school leaders need to critically approach, filter and assess information, to identify disinformation and to manage the overload of information. Teachers and school leaders should nimbly use the information that is available to them to support student learning. Knowing how to communicate, marshal resources and tailor practice to student need are the same skills teachers need in a regular classroom setting but have taken on new urgency during COVID19. Becoming data literate is thus a skill set that educational communities must acquire and nurture increasingly.

Simply put, and addressing the abovementioned needs, Data Literate project has a mission to capacitate educators in DDL. Aligned to such mission, the specific objectives are:
• To raise awareness of DDL relevance in an increasingly digital world.
• To build capacity on DDL applied to educational purposes.
• To create a CPD course under the DDL topic for educators.
• Build digital education readiness (trough DDL) and thus mitigate the impact of COVID19 in education.
• Ensure that teachers know how to communicate, marshal resources, and tailor practice to student needs, especially in a digital context.
• Promote, support, and motivate quality, ongoing teachers’ CPD that is based on DDL use to improve instruction.
• Contribute to a cultural change at the participating institutions regarding attitudes towards DDL and openness.
• Significantly increase teachers’ and student’s data competencies and thus increase their academic success and qualify them for a successful career by adapting to the growing needs for DDL competencies in the increasingly data-driven job markets.
• To strengthen the capacity of school leaders to deepen understanding of student and school data.

Such objectives will be reached through the development of 2 main outputs:
• Creation of a capacity building programme, including a MOOC for teachers and school leaders’ CPD, supported by a piloting scheme which actively involves students.
• Collaborative creation of a DDL Strategic Plan for Schools, as well as the Data Literate Handbook.

By actively contributing to teachers’ high-quality CPD in the field DDL and through a holistic, collaborative approach which brings together school communities, as well as training & data literacy experts, the project will not only tackle specific European education challenges bought up by COVID19, but will at the same time address the Commission proposes to consolidate ongoing efforts and further develop the European Education Area along with dimensions number 1; 3 and 4; Contribute to Digital Education Action Plan strategic priority number 2, and finally, Data Literate has the added value of addressing both DigComp and DigCompEdu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 232400 Eur

Project Coordinator

VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS & Country: LT

Project Partners

• Vilniaus jezuitu gimnazija
• Agrupamento de Escolas Sebastião da Gama
• INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA “VILLA DE ABARÁN”
• Istituto Tecnico Economico e Tecnologico “Girolamo Caruso”
• INOVA+ – INNOVATION SERVICES, SA
• DATANINJA SOCIETA A RESPONSABILITA LIMITATA SEMPLIFICATA
• Virolai E.M.S.A.