The use of digital technologies and open data in education in general and in addressing the need for active citizenship in particular remains fragmented because educational stakeholders are largely unaware of the potential benefits that digital technologies and open data can offer for learning as well as the opportunities available to them when they develop digital skills in an open data environment. Digital technologies are used in most employment areas, but the understanding and recognition of data and information literacy is lacking in the European job marketplace. This is recognized as the first item in the European Commission Digital Competence Framework (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/digcomp/digital-competence-framework).Until now, educational stakeholders have been extremely timid in applying the use of open data and digital technologies in satisfying their responsibility to help young people in their demographic engagement and acquisition of digital citizenship skills in order to fully participate in their communities and make smart choices online and in life. According to the EU Science hub, this European initiative urgently needs to be embedded in schools and in teacher training. This proposal, D3: Developing Digital Data literacy is a response to these needs, while embracing engagement in citizenship through digital technologies as outlined in the European Commission Digicomp Conceptual reference model. The D3 project aims to make use of the outcomes of the Comenius Forward Looking Youth project “YouthMetre: A Tool for Forward Youth Participation”, which promoted “the collection and analysis of substantive evidence allowing young people to participate effectively in policy making”. This project, in turn recommended relating further actions to the European Framework for Digitally Competent Educational Organizations and supporting innovative approaches and digital technologies for teaching and learning in schools.D3 is designed to promote a highly relevant educational approach, applying the framework of a digital citizenship educational paradigm, by providing innovative mechanisms (curricula and engagement structures) resulting in learning and engagement opportunities to integrate digital technologies and open data in schools. The goal, therefore, of the proposed project is not only to narrow the existing gap between education and digital literacy, but to shift the education process in innovative ways altering the approaches we have catalysed learning that needs to include digital citizenship. Towards that goal the project will produce the following outputs:IO1: Review school curricula and qualifications, open data tools This review is relates to the EC Digicomp framework and provides a capacity building tool by identifying opportunities to integrate open data and digital data tools into secondary schools and responsive to the “digital data skills” gaps.IO2: Teacher Training Course focusing on competences related to digital technologies and data literacy key competences in initial and continuing teacher education and trainingIO3: Teaching resources on democratic engagement and open dataThese teaching resources will provide blueprints for teachers to use digital data and information tools to help build critical engagement and active citizenship.IO4: Gallery of Case studies demonstrating pedagogical approaches such as citizen science. A series of Multiplier events will be organized to promote and share these outputs and engage and enthuse teachers and educators to adopt ‘digital data literacy’ with ‘active citizenship activities’ in school situations.

The five schools have come together for all of the planned activities, both in terms of management and planning of the project and the implementation by the students. The overall topic of “less is More” was broken down each year into smaller sections – Environment and Mobility, Living and Economy, People and Government. In each of the three years, students from each of the five schools worked together in small workshop groups of between 5 and 10 students from all the schools examining a particular aspect of the yearly theme. Their findings and results were then documented in various ways – written articles, videos, displays, presentations and so on to the whole of that years’ cohort of students, staff and invited guests. These included civic dignitaries, staff from the schools, parents and friends. In this way an immediate dissemination occurred to several hundred people at each closing event. Each school then presented their findings back at their own school to other students in the schools, via newspaper articles and on their own websites. In addition, the ROTA website (rotaonline.org) and eTwinning contains details of each year’s activities.Overall the students have though very carefully about the sort of world they would like to live in. This is evidenced through the questionnaires compiled by the students after each event. Their longer term thinking has been effected, especially towards the importance of international co-operation and friendship in the modern world, especially as Brexit, which has been a theme throughout the project, get ever nearer.

The idea of the project rose from following facts:- job opportunities: The EC identified Geo-ICT as part of the digital economy being vital for innovation, growth, jobs and European competitiveness. However, there is a clear mismatch between workforce demand and supply, resulting in this sector being a shortage occupation sector.- Geo-ICT including geospatial thinking is essential in education. It implies visualisation, manipulation, interpretation and explanation of information ... at different geographic scales using GI tools. Its importance has been acknowledged in the “European Reference Framework, Key Competences for Lifelong Learning” document published by the DG EAC.The project was thus designed to create a series of resources which introduce students to geospatial thinking using these GI tools, develop their ability to use them, be critical of them, based on a learning line from age 12 - 18 years.Although some GI-related materials are already available, teachers so far do not tend to use them. The main blocking factor was that the notion of GIScience, GI or spatial thinking is uncommon in the curriculum of almost all European countries. So, we needed to introduce and institutionalize it within the curricula, taking into account the level of difficulty of each task connected to the age group by using the concept of a learning line. A learning line is an educational term used for progression in the construction of knowledge and skills, designed to have an increasing level of complexity, starting from easier, more basic skills and knowledge, and developing into difficult, more challenging knowledge and skills. The GI Learner consortium consisted of seven European partners covering six countries: Belgium, UK, Spain, Austria, Poland and Romania. The partnership consisted of various types of organizations and institutions operating within the field of education, who each brought their own experience and expertise to the consortium: two universities, four secondary schools and a pan-European professional association. The schools were of different types and took students of broadly similar age range. Following the initial start-up meeting, the project was initiated by doing an in-depth analysis of the most important literature on learning lines and spatial thinking. Ten spatial thinking competencies then emerged following lengthy discussions and peer review and amendments and adaptations. For curriculum development purposes, they have been further developed into a learning line, using three levels of complexity (described as A, B and C).To link the competencies to real curriculum content all partners scanned the curricula from their countries to identify opportunities to introduce GIScience in a range of subjects.Next, for each year group different learning materials and exercises were written, trialled, evaluated and edited. These were linked to the curriculum and mapped to the competencies and level of difficulty for each group. To test the developed materials the cooperation of the target group was obtained: the pupils at the partner schools. They selected pupils K7 (12 y) and K10 (15 y) became the ‘guinea pigs’ for 3 years, as they had to ‘test the test’ by accessing the materials and give their feedback and provide their proposed amendments. This led to adjustments and guidelines when developing the newer exercises. To measure the impact of the learning lines on spatial thinking a self-test was developed, it consists of several parts, related to the selected learning competencies and level of complexity. The tests were completed at the start of the project (providing a zero-value) and at the end of each year to assess progress. Finally, a publication with amendments for inclusion into the national curricula was produced and disseminated among the different national Ministries of Education. This was intended to provide a rationale for the inclusion of GISciences within curriculum change, and perhaps also by qualification awarding bodies.Materials and resources will continue to remain freely available online (shared under a Creative Commons license). Translations have been completed in all the languages of the project partners involved, additionally also a French translation was completed to widen access .GILearner materials are already starting to be used in teacher training programmes in the countries involved in the project. Within the timeframe of reporting on the GI Learner project it has not been possible to evaluate the long-term impact on dissemination to Ministries of Education. However, the development and use of GI learning tools has been encouraged by the involvement of a GIS company ESRI in the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, whereby they provide free access to their Cloud-based platform to many thousands of secondary schools across Europe.

Over the past decade, there is a shift towards more democratic and participatory decision-making processes. Among other institutions, EU promotes and develops participatory governance by meaningfully involving relevant stakeholders in all phases of the policy cycle from the identification of the problem to policy evaluation and recognising the added value of such engagement (2015 EU Youth Report). This “participatory turn” is based on the various citizen and social groups’ consultation/participation methods developed in the last decades. Yet, the process has been greatly enhanced by the explosion of new technologies and social networking tools.In parallel, architects, urban planners and designers of public space have developed Participatory Design tools and methods. Yet, the current challenge at European level is to include Participatory Design in the context of Co-Design, Open Design Processes and Democratic Innovation. In other words, to develop a different approach to designing the public space, which arises from (and results in) people’s involvement, openness and democratisation.Schools can play a vital role in Participatory Design process of public space design in and around the schools. By co-creating public space and learning spaces, users (including students, teachers, parents and local authorities) engage more with an “intimate place”, a place that is theirs. Thus, school environment becomes friendlier and learning process more familiar and involving. Furthermore, Participatory Design becomes a new pedagogical experience and an experience of applied geography based on community building within school units.INPAD project aims to pilot the design and practice of an innovative methodology for Participatory Design in schools for public space design in and around schools, moving towards more complex and long-term engagement of different and heterogeneous stakeholders from the entire school community in the strategic and management processes of public space design, throughout larger “ecologies” of social and technological transformation.The specific objectives of the project are to:- develop the concept of Participatory Design for school education focused on the planning and design a strategic and management processes for public space design (in and around schools).- provide high quality instruments and tools for Participatory Design in schools.- encourage the entire community (teachers, students, parents, local authorities) to raise awareness about the importance of Participatory Design of public space design in order to make the school environment more friendly and familiar with the learning process.- disseminate the concept of Participatory Design in the community, involving key actors (parents, students, teacher, local authorities, NGOs etc).The target groups of the project are:-Students: the introduction of design, architecture and a new way to teach geography in school curriculum as it provides students with new digital skills-Teachers: they will be trained on facilitating Participatory Design projects-Schools: they will have high quality instruments and tools to implement innovative ParticipatoryDesign for public space around the schools-Local communities: they will be part of the process of creating a better school environment in their community-Public administration/ stakeholders: they will be involved in a growing network of activities promotingParticipatory Design in and around schoolsThe main project results are:-Teachers’ guide on Participatory Design for public space design, offering practical guidelines and approaches to teachers for creating, putting in practice and reviewing Participatory Design projects in schools.-Open Educational Software for Participatory Design, a unique system for students (firstly) and other users (secondly) that will allow participatory planning & design implementation of courtyard and public space around the school.-Compendium of good practices, a collection of stories, in illustrated way, of implemented pilot implementations of Participatory Design in schools.The expected impact of the project is to:-Improve different skills in teachers and students (IT, collaboration, co-design, dialogue and codecision).-Provide the schools with high quality tools and skills for Participatory Design.-Address the challenge of involving different stakeholders (students, teachers, parents and local authorities) in the development of an inclusive Participatory Design for public space design around schools.-Strengthen, through a pilot implementation in selected schools, a wider socio-technical holistic approach in the development of Participatory Design for public space design, in order to create sustainable change.The project will be implemented by 7 partners from 4 countries: two universities (France and Spain), two schools (Belgium and Spain), one social enterprise (Greece), one NGO (Belgium) and and one training & ICT enterprise (Greece).

<< Objectives >>This project aims to adapt Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods and techniques to the learning outcomes about climate change in the secondary school education curriculum of the participating countries. In this context, it is desired to implement a digital platform where participants can share their ideas, projects and studies, with course contents using GIS applications, a learning module in which teachers and trainers can improve themselves on this subject.<< Implementation >>5 different LTTs, each for 5 days, are planned to generate 3 project results;1. LTT (O) :February 2023 (Creation of an associative curriculum) ROMANIA2.LTT: April 2023 (training on how to prepare e-learning videos) BELGIUM3.LTT. June 2023 (Exchange of GIS experience in schools) ESTONIA4.LTT.November 2023 ( case studies againist climate change) SPAIN5.LTT April 2024 (Implementation of project results with students) ROMANIA<< Results >>1- GIS for the future - LMS platform - It is an open source management system that makes the results of the first two projects accessible.2- GIS e-learning Module against Climate Change - Contains trainings for teachers.3- GIS case studies against Climate Change - This is the section where activities suitable for climate change-related learning outcomes in Geography and Natural Sciences courses will be found.