A new era is dawning for School of Data – after 13 years of pioneering data learning, the project is back to help bridge the digital literacy gap using tools and methods that are useful, simple and focused on solving people’s real problems.
In May, we brought the community together again for a special training session to enable trainers to deliver the ‘Quality and Consistent Data with Open Data Editor’ course locally.
The following 18 trainers from various countries participated in the initial cohort (in alphabetical order by country).
- 🇧🇩 M. Rafiul Bahar Rafi, NDEC Wikipedia Editorial and Research Team, Bangladesh
- 🇧🇯 Saliou Abdou, OSM Benin, Benin
- 🇧🇷 Juliana Soares Lima, Federal University of Ceará, Brazil
- 🇧🇷 Anicely Santos, Open Knowledge Brasil, Brazil
- 🇧🇷 Thays Lavor, Escola de Dados, Brazil
- 🇨🇩 Crispin Ngakani, Climate Clock, Democratic Republic of Congo
- 🇩🇪 Nicole Siggins, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Germany
- 🇩🇪🇲🇽 Marcos Gibran Mena-Aguilar, Data Crítica, Germany/Mexico
- 🇮🇳 Mohit Garg, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
- 🇮🇳 Priya Rangra, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, India
- 🇮🇳 Sridhar Gutam, ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, India
- 🇱🇻 Nika Aleksejeva, Datu skola, Latvia
- 🇲🇳 Tsenguun Tumurkhuyag, Public Lab Mongolia, Mongolia
- 🇳🇬 Nuela Ada Ononiwu, Technology for Inspiration Initiative ‘InspireIT’, Nigeria
- 🇳🇬 Andikan Eduok, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Nigeria
- 🇳🇬 Seun Olufemi, Bioinformatics Outreach Nigeria / OLS, Nigeria
- 🇸🇸 Denaya Dennis, Koneta Hub, South Sudan
- 🇿🇼 Debra Chibaya, Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe
Most of them will deliver in-person versions of the course in June, reaching an estimated 500 people from various target audiences, including independent journalists, undergraduate and postgraduate students, civil society organisations, researchers, public servants, librarians, teachers, and community leaders. This has been our strategy to improve data literacy around the world through the adoption of the Open Data Editor (ODE).
Part of the same initiative was the workshop held in Mexico City this week as part of the Openness Bazaar event, co-organised by Info CDMX and the Open Knowledge Foundation. Omar Luna, the coordinator of the local branch of the School of Data for Latin America (Escuela de Datos), held a 50-minute version of the course for around 150 people both in-person and online.
You can watch a recording of the training in the video below (in Spanish).
We look forward to continuing to develop critical thinking around the role of knowledge and digital technologies in today’s society through the School of Data.
If you are interested in participating in and interacting with the community, as well as learning about future opportunities of training, please subscribe to the School of Data’s new email distribution list.
About the Open Data Editor
The Open Data Editor (ODE) is Open Knowledge’s new open source desktop application for nonprofits, data journalists, activists, and public servants, aiming at helping them detect errors in their datasets. It’s a free, open-source tool designed for people working with tabular data (Excel, Google Sheets, CSV) who don’t know how to code or don’t have the programming skills to automatise the data exploration process.
Simple, lightweight, privacy-friendly, and built for real-world challenges like offline work and low-resource settings, ODE is part of Open Knowledge’s initiative The Tech We Want — our ambitious effort to reimagine how technology is built and used.
And there’s more! ODE comes with a free online course that can help you improve the quality of your datasets, therefore making your life/work easier.
↪ Take the course: Learn how to use ODE
All of Open Knowledge’s work with the Open Data Editor is made possible thanks to a charitable grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. Learn more about its funding programmes here.
