E-learning youth platform for civic monitoring and open data learning and making [Public Makers] Erasmus Project

Project Title

E-learning youth platform for civic monitoring and open data learning and making [Public Makers]

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 : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is an emerging field, and little is known about innovators, organisations, and activities that support them and the use of digital tools for social change. There has been a recent big effort by the European Commission to sustain platforms and initiatives related to social innovation through the usage of open data, open-source programmes, hackathon initiatives, and more in general education programmes because it is critical to developing a culture of innovation, not only inside schools, colleges or universities but also within communities and educators, as local realities are drivers of change for real needs.

One of the growing sectors for DSI is referred to as open data. Despite the fact that data-driven business intelligence has been implemented with success to address business innovation, open data have not revealed yet their full potential in solving social problems, even though there are numerous initiatives brought up at the local level.

In particular, the E-learning youth platform for civic monitoring and open data learning and making [Public Makers] tackle a number of elements to build up the basis of DS:
-Ways of thinking: Creativity and innovation/Critical thinking/problem solving/decision making/Learning to learn
-Ways of working: Communication/Collaboration
-Tools for working: Open data Information literacy/ ICT literacy
-Living in the world: Citizenship—local and global/Life and career/Personal & social responsibility
Public Makers aims at empowering young people in open data learning with a focus on DSI, supporting them in being more active at the social level, enabling them to be social changes through the usage of digital tools and open data, promoting open data hackathon as a tool for networking, knowledge sharing, and inspiring moments, as well as to develop investigations at the local level and make data as a service. Overall, the project wants to raise awareness on open data tools/possibilities and create resources for youth to access the opportunities created by open data policies (especially for active citizenship and youth).

The project offers the possibilities to:
– Promote open data with concrete tools to address open data work for youth workers and learn concrete techniques (QGIS) through an EDUCATIONAL OPEN DATA CAPACITY-BUILDING HANDBOOK FOR NGOs that contain the Public Makers framework and the proposed methodology to be reused by different organisations, even schools or institutions.
– Incubate/support local projects in open-data investigation and aggregation through blended educational training, concretely supporting youth in building transversal digital competencies, encouraging them to understand how democracies work, how public money is invested, or how to get deeper into local issues (environment, immigration, cultural investments etc.) and how citizens can influence decision-making which leads to a COMPLETE E-TRAINING PROGRAMME FOR YOUNG PEOPLE IN OPEN-DATA (activities and scenario)
– access an E-LEARNING PLATFORM with interactive online tools to guide in a simplified way youth in learning all the basics regarding open data and how to use it.

The core of the project is the e-learning platform which contains learning materials, webinars, existing resources and toolkits freely accessible. On this platform can be found a self-assessment questionnaire to self-assess the user’s knowledge about open data. The “Courses” section is also gathering the training materials developed for trainers/youth organisations, educational materials targeting young people, guidelines and instructions as well as additional toolkits regarding democratic participation and the organisation of a hackathon with open data thematic. Following the 4 areas of our framework (Ways of thinking; Ways of working; Tools for work; Living in your community), we developed materials for young people that are in form of lessons, videos, articles, webinars, graphical content and contain a final quiz to get Open Badges after completion. The platform also offers to join a Public Makers Telegram group running as a Public Makers Community for users to ask questions and exchange around the thematic of open data. We are also providing videos/teasers for each unit to engage with youth and to enhance the learning/communication purposes of Public Makers.

Public Makers aims to broaden target group ICT competencies creating sustainable and needs-focused learning patterns, enabling youth NGOs/informal youth/young citizens to act at the local level through open data interpretation and management. The project partners, combining their different expertise, want to ultimately empower different strata of society in becoming their own watchdogs of democracy.

Project Website

https://publicmakers.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 111959 Eur

Project Coordinator

WOMEN IN DIGITAL INITIATIVES LUXEMBOURG ASBL & Country: LU

Project Partners

• Polygonal
• CENTAR TEHNICKE KULTURE RIJEKA
• INTER ALIA