In the 2019-2020 academic year, more than 8 million students were enrolled in non-university regulated education in Spain. Meanwhile, there were 1.5 million university students. This is a large group that in times of pandemic needs to continue maintaining quality education, whether in the classroom or at a distance, to facilitate equal opportunities.

To achieve this objective, it is necessary to guarantee universal access to free and quality educational resources, the so-called OER (Open Educational Resources): teaching, learning or research materials published under an open licence that allows their reuse, adaptation and distribution for educational purposes.

UNESCO itself highlights how OERs "provides a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as improve policy dialogue, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building".

In our country, one of the main state-level sources of this type of resource is Procomún.

Procomún, a network of open educational resources and much more

Procomún was born as a result of the Plan for Digital Culture in Schools carried out in 2012 by the then called Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. This plan included among its lines of action the development of a "Procomún" space with open contents.

The idea was to promote a repository with educational resources of free access published by the Ministry and the Autonomous Communities. So that all the materials would follow a standard, a profile of application of common use metadata (LOM-ES) was developed, which would respond to the specific needs of the Spanish educational community. But Procomún is not only a repository, it is also a social network.

Procomún as a repository

Procomún currently houses 95,000 resources, and more than 100,000 multimedia elements. The website offers a search engine that allows users to filter by type of content, area of knowledge or educational context (ranging from infant education to university education without forgetting the materials aimed at teacher training). These contents are under an open Creative Commons licence, so users can not only access them for free and use them in the classroom, but they can also modify them to adapt them to the specific needs of their students. In this sense, teachers have a tool, eXelearning, which allows them to edit educational resources in a simple way. These new materials, in turn, can be incorporated into Procomún's catalogue and be used or transformed by other users. In this way the network is continuously enriched. Users have at their disposal a series of short tutorials in video format where they are explained how to publish or create content, among other aspects.

Procomún is also a semantic web, thanks to which it can connect with existing educational communities through the Linked Open Data Cloud.

Procomún as a social network

All of the above makes Procomún a meeting place, where ideas and experiences can be shared. The space currently has almost 40,000 users who have at their disposal functionalities such as social labelling, voting systems and recommendations for use. They also have more than 200 integrated communities that function as a space for consultation and learning.

Procomún is thus a web space that integrates learning objects and teaching experiences, constituting an intelligent, social and distributed network.

To know more, you can follow their twitter account.

The use of Procomún's resources during the COVID-19 pandemic

Access to this type of resource has been particularly important during the period of suspension of face-to-face classes. The REAs of procomún have served, together with other resources such as those of the Centre for Innovation and Development in Distance Education (CIDEAD), to launch the website https://aprendoencasa.educacion.es/ which sought to facilitate the continuity of educational activity thanks to access to different materials, tools and applications. This website offers useful resources for both teachers and families, including content aimed at parents who want to extend their children's education with leisure activities.

Procomún's resources have also been used in the programmes broadcast by TVE during the pandemic.

Other open educational resources

Procomún is not the only initiative of this type in our country. You can find many more in this document.  In addition, many Autonomous Communities also offer spaces where educational information can be channelled, ranging from regulations to resources and applications, as shown in the visual at the end of this article, from which you can access the different repositories available.

With the return to the classroom, it is important not to forget the existence of these open materials that can continue to enrich the education of students, whether in the classroom or in their own homes. These will soon be joined by the digital educational resources that will be developed within the framework of Educa en Digital, a programme in which all the Autonomous Communities will participate.

Education is one of the most influential factors in the progress of individuals and societies, promoting equal opportunities and the reduction of inequality through knowledge. But to achieve these advances, equitable and quality education is necessary. Open data can help achieve improvements in both directions.

The role of open data in education

Open data has different roles in education. On the one hand, they can serve as a basis for creating educational resources that facilitate more attractive learning.  In any subject, students can be offered work based on the analysis and interpretation of information, which helps them to develop critical thinking. The use of open data is usually well received by students, as it boosts their motivation to work with real content and helps them to develop a data culture that is much needed in today's professional environment.

But in addition to being an educational resource, open data can also be used to drive improvements in the education system through the development of solutions and tools that facilitate effectiveness, efficiency and informed decision-making, responding to a wide range of challenges in the education system. This is the focus of the 3rd edition of the Aporta 2020 Challenge (in this article you can find a series of tips for implementing a solution of this type).

Open data on education

The educational data that institutions open up, and which can be used to integrate into this type of solution, are very diverse. The report "Towards an Open University: Recommendations for the SUE" details some of the most common education data sets, as shown in the graph below.

Below are some examples of data included in these categories:

• Organizational information: organization charts, profiles and personnel directories, job offers.
• Teaching: study catalogues, calendars, mobility programmes, educational content catalogues.
• Students: profiles, scholarship programmes, academic performance (such as grades or dropout rates), satisfaction rates.
• Economy: accounts, budgets, tenders, grants and subsidies.
• Infrastructures and services: buildings, geospatial information, images of the buildings, accessibility information, equipment, catering, computer or library services.
• Communication: events, news related to the university.

These datasets are of interest to those responsible in different governments for evaluating educational results and making political decisions to promote improvements, but also to parents and students themselves who have to choose about their future.

Moreover, these data, like all data, are susceptible to cross-checking with others to generate greater knowledge. For example, geospatial, demographic or social data can be used to conduct analyses of schools based on population density, access to services, internet connectivity or other factors.

What kind of education-related data can I find in datos.gob.es?

In datos.gob.es there are currently more than 1,600 data sets related to the Education category. The most important publishers of this type of data are the Government of Aragon, the National Institute of Statistics, the University of Zaragoza and the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.

Of all these datasets, we have compiled some examples of the most popular ones and the formats in which they are found.

At state level

• Red.es. Location and equipment of Education programmes. CSV, XLS, ODS.
• ICEX España. Search engine for courses, seminars and conferences related to Foreign Trade. XHTML.
• CIS. Young people and the education system. ASCII.
• CIS. Current issues: the conflict in education. ASCII.
• INE.  Number of students and households with students by type of education Household Expenditure on Education Survey. CSV. XLSX, XLS, HTML, JSON, PC-Axis.

At regional level

• Basque Government. Early school leaving rate of men aged 18-24 by country. CSV, XLS.
• Government of Aragon. Compulsory education, E. Infant and E. Special. Scholarship holders by level of education, financial educational administration and province of the scholarship holder. PC-Axis.
• Community of Madrid. Language options in schools in the Community of Madrid. JSON, CSV.
• Region of Murcia. Evolution of the teaching staff in General Education Public schools. XLS, XML-APP.

At the local level

• Rivas-Vaciamadrid City Council. Adult education centres. CSV, JSON, SHP, KML
• Cartagena City Council. Current news from the Universidad Popular. CSV, HTML, RDF-XML.
• Madrid City Council. Study and reading rooms. CSV, XML-APP, JSON, HTML, RSS, RDF-XML
• Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council. News related to employment and training. XML-APP
• Santander City Council. Culture, Education and Youth News. CSV, RDF-Turtle, HTML, JSON, RDF-XML, Atom, XML-APP, RDF-N3, JSON-LD, RSS                                                          

Universities

• University of Castilla-La Mancha. Supply and demand for undergraduate studies. CSV, HTML.
• University of Zaragoza. Performance by subject and qualification. CSV, JSON, HTML, XML-APP.
• University of Extremadura. Academic performance indicators 2020. CSV, XLS, JSON, RDF-Turtle, SPARQL.

In the case of university data, it is worth highlighting the UniversiDATA initiative, a collaborative project oriented and driven by public universities that seeks to promote open data in the higher education sector in Spain in a harmonised way.

In datos.gob.es we also have examples of applications and services that have been made through the reuse of this type of data, such as the Academic Application of the University of Extremadura or Ubicole, which offers the user the possibility of finding educational centres depending on the location and travel time. The European Data Portal also highlights several examples of open data and use cases related to the field of education on its website.

From datos.gob.es we invite you to visit our data catalogue and dive into all the datasets, as well as to devise new solutions based on them.

The Aporta Challenge, in line with many other initiatives promoted by public administrations, could not be unaware of the great challenges we are facing in this year 2020. For this reason, its third edition, while fulfilling its usual objective of promoting the use of data and related technologies, aims to contribute to solving problems related to digital education. Without doubt, this is one of the areas in which the need to propose new innovations to ensure that the pandemic does not cause serious damage to the potential of the younger generations has been most evident.

With the slogan "The value of data in digital education", datos.gob.es is proposing an Aporta Challenge that in 2020 reward ideas and prototypes that identify new opportunities for capturing, analysing and using the intelligence of data in the development of solutions for the educational sphere at any of its stages.

Identifying a problem

If we were to approach participation in the challenge as a data science project, the first thing we would do is determine the question we would like to solve, in short, choose a problem worth working on.  In this article we propose some lines of work, but they are not restrictions, they are only intended to serve as inspiration to make it easier for us to choose an educational challenge with a great impact. We must always aspire to improve the world.

On the other hand, we can look at the large educational gaps defined by the Educa en Digital programme, which aims to complement the Digitalisation and Digital Skills Plan and to promote the digital transformation of education in Spain, making intensive use of ICT both in the classroom and in non-presential formats, and tackling specific problems thanks to developments linked to data and artificial intelligence. For each of the specific objectives we can think of a good number of issues on which we can work:

1. The provision of digital educational devices and resources. For example, how can we help ensure that access to technology is not a barrier to access to education, especially for the most vulnerable groups? how can we reduce the requirements for accessing educational programmes remotely? how can we rely on the most economical devices that are most widely available to students? etc.
2. The provision of digital educational resources, especially in relation to the previous point. On many occasions the problem we can work on does not have to be completely new, but we can find a more efficient approach to an apparently resolved issue.  For example, how can we help a teacher to better monitor a large number of students? how can we improve the security of the applications used by students through public networks? how can we guarantee the privacy of students? etc.
3. The adequacy of teachers' digital skills. In this line there are also a significant number of questions to be resolved: how can we improve the usability of tools for teachers and students? how can we promote skills related to collaboration or communication when people are not in the same physical space? how can we help STEM skills to be perceived as transversal? etc.
4. The application of artificial intelligence to personalised education, which is almost a holy grail of Education. How can we create personalised learning paths for each group of students, or better still, optimising the learning pace of each student according to their individual characteristics? how can we predict the impact of changes in programmes on the evolution of group or student learning? how can we detect and avoid gender bias in models that work on any of the above problems?

In short, with the suggestions published in the bases and a little research, it is easy to locate a good number of issues on which we can do our bit to improve digital education. Without forgetting our own experience. We have all been at least students, and perhaps also teachers, at some point.

Examining the prior art

Before we begin our work, we must consider that it is very likely that, with or without success, others have identified and proposed solutions to the problem we have chosen. From their success or failure, we can also draw lessons so reviewing the state of the art is key to focusing our project well. In relation to educational technology it is interesting to review resources such as

• The activity of educational technology start-ups in repositories such as EU-startups or the WISE accelerator.
• Awards focused on educational technology such as the prestigious Global Learning XPRIZE or the WISE Prize for Education.
• The list of more than 2.500 educational innovation projects from around the world contained in the Leapfrogging Inequality: Remaking Education to Help Young People Thrive.
• The solutions that reuse open data in the area of education and that highlight portals such as the European data portal or datos.gob.es.

As you will see, many of the projects are focused on solving problems that are mostly present in countries less developed than ours. However, the pandemic has changed the rules of the game from what we could have foreseen and is challenging us again with problems that under normal circumstances we would consider to be overcome.

Locating datasets

Open data is present in almost every problem that is solved by data related technologies and it is usually one ingredient, not the only one. The foundations of the Aporta Challenge reflect this reality and impose very few restrictions on creators, using data sources listed in datos.gob.es is not even mandatory, despite being the driving force behind the challenge. At least one set of data generated by the public administrations must be used, but it can come from any source and can play any role within the project.

To locate data related to our project we can start with the more than 1,700 datasets of the datos.gob.es data catalogue, which federates a good part of the data available in Spanish portals. In the European Data Portal we can find more than 8,000 datasets related to education from all EU countries and another 3,000 datasets from the catalogue of the European Union open data portal.

International institutions that work for the development of education such as UNICEF or the World Bank also have open data catalogues in which we can locate resources that help us in some part of our project.

The Google dataset search engine, the AWS open data registry or the Microsoft Azure datasets are resources in which we can also find datasets to enrich any data-based project.

The data catalogue of institutions such as the US Government's Institute of Education Sciences, which although focused on the United States, undoubtedly contains data of great value for measuring and understanding the impact of initiatives developed to improve education and which can enrich many projects.

Another option that we should bear in mind is that it may not be enough to solve the problem we have chosen to clean up, reconcile and transform datasets from any of the sources that are publicly and openly available. Sometimes we need to work on generating or building our own dataset. And in that case a very good option is to make it publicly and openly available so that it can be reused and improved by others.

Defining the product

Finally, we have to think about the best way to deliver the result of our work so that it can be used by its recipients and have the impact we want. The options are multiple and again the bases do not impose restrictions. Some possibilities could be:

• Mobile Apps: The enormous penetration of the iOS and Android platforms means that any product we build for these platforms and publish in their respective stores is guaranteed to have a huge potential diffusion. In addition, there are options to carry out multiplatform developments and even to carry out developments with little (low-code) or no (non-code) software development knowledge.
• Websites: Web applications are probably still the most common mechanism for making a project of any kind available to society in general. The advances in managed services of the large cloud providers and the facilities they offer to make infrastructure available for free mean that it has never been easier to start a project. It is also possible to use non-code platforms such as appypie or low-code platforms such as Appian to reduce the initial barrier if we do not have a software developer on the team.
• Artificial Intelligence Algorithms: It is increasingly common for a data-based project to be delivered in the form of an automatic learning model or artificial intelligence. For example, Amazon AWS offers the possibility to list algorithms like Microsoft Azure in its Machine Learning Marketplace so that they can be consumed by other applications.
•  Stories and Visualizations: Sometimes the best way to deliver results is through a visualization or a DataStory that allows you to communicate the result of your work. For this purpose, there are multiple options that range from the utilities that incorporate most of the generic Business Intelligence tools such as Tableau to others specialised in spatial location such as the Spanish Carto.

We wish all participants good luck and encourage you to work on a challenge that has a great impact on society.

Content prepared by Jose Luis Marín, Senior Consultant in Data, Strategy, Innovation & Digitalization.

The contents and points of view reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of its author.

One more year, the Aporta Initiative launches the Aporta Challenge, a competition aimed at promoting the creation of solutions based on public sector information, which help solve challenges in specific sectors that affect society as a whole. This time, the chosen sector is education.

A teaching model based on data and disruptive technologies

The current context of a global pandemic has marked a before and after in the education sector. Although there has been talk for years about the benefits of incorporating new technologies in the teaching-learning process, in what has come to be called Edtech, this trend has become even more necessary in the new post-COVID-19 educational ecosystem.

Edtech refers to all kinds of digital or technological innovations that aim to improve education. This will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector and promote more universal access to knowledge. A field where open data has great potential, as the European Union clearly states. Open data can serve as the basis for solutions that drive automated and personalized online processes based on disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, while promoting greater effectiveness and inclusion, and helping to meet sustainable development goals.

Under the conviction that digital technology enriches learning in a wide variety of ways and offers new opportunities, the European Commission itself launched the Digital Education Action Plan. Among other issues, said plan highlights the importance of promoting innovation in the sector by holding hackathons aimed at developing solutions that respond to the main challenges in education.

Challenges to solve in the Challenge Aporta 2020

In this context, the new edition of the Aporta Challenge is being developed, which seeks original ideas and prototypes that provide new opportunities to capture, analyze and use data intelligence in the development of solutions in the educational field. These solutions can be aimed at solving challenges such as the following:

• Encourage more effective teaching and improve students' experience in the learning process from home or the classroom. Address the growing need for personalized education and identify mechanisms that contribute to responding to the evaluation of learning in non-face-to-face digital environments.
• Promote the dissemination of teaching-learning experiences among the educational community.
• Accelerate the development of skills in teaching professionals to ensure that students learn more and better, in addition to reinforcing the learning of skills related to data analysis and emerging technologies.
• Make learning more attractive and help solve behavior or inattention problems of students.
• Facilitate student tutoring and improve decision-making.
• Respond to Internet security and / or data privacy problems.
• Improve the efficiency and effectiveness in the management of students, educational resources, institutions, etc.
• Introduce students to STEM fields and encourage their training in these subjects.
• Devise solutions aimed at reinforcing the prestige and social recognition of the teaching function.

How does the Aporta 2020 Challenge work?

The Aporta Challenge is developed in 2 phases:

Phase I: Ideas competition

Participants must present an original idea, developed specifically for this contest, and that responds to the proposed theme. The ideas and prototypes that are presented must use at least one data source generated by the Public Administrations, whether national or international. Additionally, its use can be combined with data sets exposed by other sources, public or private.

The ideas presented will be evaluated by the jury based on 5 criteria:

• Relevance
• Quality and overall clarity of the proposed idea
• Impact on the improvement of the educational system of the proposed idea
• Sources of utility
• Promotion of the quality of life of vulnerable groups

The 10 ideas with the highest score will go to phase 2.

Phase II: Prototype development and face-to-face exhibition

The authors of the 10 selected ideas will develop a prototype associated with the proposed idea. From the moment they communicate their pass to phase 2, participants will have a minimum period of 3 months to develop the prototype. A functional exemplification or simulation is sought that allows some interaction, a visualization or a multimedia solution that allows the proposal to be exemplified in a tangible prototype.

The three best prototypes will be selected according to the assessment of the established criteria:

• Easy to use
• Technical quality of the prototype
• Viability

What do the winning teams get?

The three selected prototypes will receive the following financial award:

• First classified: € 4,000
• Second place: € 3,000
• Third place: € 2,000

What do I have to do to participate?

The Aporta Challenge is aimed at individuals and legal entities from the European Union, who can participate individually or in teams.

Those interested in participating must submit their idea through this form at the Red.es website before November 18 at 1:00 p.m.

To present the idea, it is necessary to have an electronic certificate, so it is recommended not to rush the established deadline. Our support team will be at your disposal for any questions that may arise in the email desafio_aporta@datos.gob.es.

More information in the bases of the Challenge Aporta 2020.

If you want to contribute to getting this information to others, we offer you materials that will make it easier for you:

• Promotional materials
• Promotional video

During the second quarter of 2020, humanity was forced to improvise a large-scale experiment in distance education due to the need to close schools at all levels to help contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many other sectors and activities, whose face-to-face formula has been abruptly disrupted, the entire education community has worked against the clock to improvise solutions to  solve the immensity of the challenge.

A little bit of history

Distance learning is by no means a new concept and the first correspondence courses in the modern sense were created in the United Kingdom and the United States as early as the mid-19th century. Later on, radio and television were also used as a vehicle to bring various forms of distance learning to the public. The main objective of these early experiences was to bring education to less densely populated areas rather than to completely replace the dominant model of classroom education.

Since the beginning of the large-scale deployment of the internet and the web in the 1990s, education has been one of the sectors in which revolutionary advances were most expected. However, the truth is that the solutions available today are limited, especially when compared to the scale of the challenge of keeping the education system functioning in a non-face-to-face way.

During this period organizations such as Unesco have listed educational technology solutions to help the educational community adapt its programmes to the distance education formula. Perhaps the best known of the solutions that facilitate self-learning is Khan Academy, which provides free classes in mathematics, science and humanities. Khan Academy won the Princess of Asturias Award for international cooperation in 2019.

MooCs courses for a more equitable education

The field of educational technology (edTech) has been proposing solutions for decades to facilitate learning and improve academic performance with the incorporation of information and communication technologies to enhance educational theories at different stages, cycles and circumstances. Education through mass and open online courseware platforms (MOOCs) is perhaps the most popular innovation in educational technology in terms of its worldwide adoption.

The idea behind MOOCs is to educate a number of students that would be physically impossible to reach with a traditional course (M for Mass), to offer them learning materials structured as complete courses, not as individual lessons (C for Courses), and of course completely distance learning via the internet (O for online).

Although the concept was proposed earlier, it was not until the beginning of the 2010's that the large MOOC platforms that currently dominate the market, such as Coursera, edX or Udemy, heirs to MIT's pioneering MitOpenCourseWare project, became popular. Its growth was so explosive that The New York Times declared 2012 the "Year of the MOOC". In just one year, it went from one university offering three courses to 300,000 students to 40 universities offering more than 250 courses to 4 million students.

During the months of strictest confinement in the world, MOOC's platforms have seen their enrolment growth soar. Coursera announced at its annual conference that enrolment in its courses grew by 644% over the previous year between mid-March and mid-April 2020, from 1.6 to 10.3 million. Enrolment at Udemy also increased by more than 400% between February and March compared to 2019.

The role of open data in MooCs

The fact that the birth and development of MOOCs' platforms comes from the environment of large American academic institutions (Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and large technology companies means that their impact has mainly been in the field of higher and professional education with a certain bias towards training in STEM subjects.

This makes open data play a prominent role in courses offered in disciplines such as data science, data analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning or big data in general. For example, the most widely used programming languages in these disciplines such as R or Python include both structured and unstructured datasets that are available either directly with the initial installation or with the inclusion of specialised packages. In the context of online training and practical projects, these datasets serve to introduce, test, experiment and understand concepts ranging from basic statistics to the most advanced artificial intelligence techniques.

A well-known example is the Iris dataset that is included in many packages of the main programming languages and has become a common example to explain and test various statistical classification techniques in machine learning. In other cases, public or private data portals are the source used by trainers to customize the education of learners and even to motivate them with examples that may be closer to their interests.

Although not available on major platforms, some companies such as Esri, which provide mapping software, have published MOOCs to help anyone learn about topics including spatial imaging, geospatial analysis and mapping using open data sets.

A few years ago some universities were concerned that MOOCs would become competitors for their face-to-face Bachelor or Master programmes, but now they seem to have found their niche in professional and complementary training for people looking to improve their skills, change careers or simply enjoy the process of learning. In this sense, the pandemic has once again highlighted the opportunity for MOOCs to "democratise" higher education by providing cheap or free access to anyone in the world.

Content prepared by Jose Luis Marín, Senior Consultant in Data, Strategy, Innovation & Digitalization.

The contents and points of view reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of its author.

Once again, Barcelona City Council is organising the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge, now in its fourth year. The aim of this competition is to bring the benefits of open data closer and to promote its use in the city's educational centres.

What does the challenge consist of? This year there are new changes!

Like last year's edition, this is a competition for the city's students to develop real projects of analysis and/or interpretation, based on the use of datasets included in the Open Data BCN portal.

The main objective of this initiative is for students to acquire a critical vision when proposing improvements related to the city and its citizens, while discovering the potential and usefulness of open data.

Un año más, el Ayuntamiento de Barcelona vuelve a organizar el Reto Barcelona Dades Obertes, que cumple ya su cuarta edición. Este concurso tiene como finalidad acercar los beneficios de los datos abiertos y promover su uso en los centros educativos de la ciudad.

What are the differences from the previous edition?

The exceptional circumstances we are currently experiencing mean that the Barcelona Dades Obertes 2021 Challenge has to be adapted to a new context that is committed to digitisation. Therefore, this will be the modality chosen both for the training of the teaching staff and for the presentation of the students' work.

Another novelty is that this year other open datasets can also be used, in addition to those published on the Open Data BCN portal.

Who can participate?

The competition is aimed at students in the 3rd and 4th year of ESO, as well as students in training courses at schools in the city of Barcelona.

In addition, those teachers can take advantage of a specific training plan on open data that focuses on learning general open data concepts, the Open Data BCN portal and tools for processing and representing data.

Procedure and deadlines for submission of applications

Participating schools must submit a single project chosen from all those prepared by their students. This will represent them and will be evaluated by the competition jury, according to the established criteria.

The deadline for the presentation of the works will open on 12 April 2021 and will end on 30 April 2021. The finalist projects will be announced on 18 May 2021.

The representatives of the 10 best projects will also be invited to the award ceremony to be held from 24 to 30 May 2021.

Discover some of the finalist projects of the 2020 edition

Those centres that wish to participate can draw inspiration from the work presented in previous years. In the first edition, which dates from 2018, the project "La cohesió social va per barris" (Social cohesion goes by neighbourhoods) was highlighted. This project analysed the social cohesion indices (SCI) of the different neighbourhoods of the city, thus allowing a comparison of inequalities. In the second edition, the first prize went to "La gentrificació als barris a Barcelona" (Gentrification in the neighbourhoods in Barcelona), which showed the process of urban transformation caused by strategic speculative actions.

The third edition of the Barcelona Dades Obertes 2020 Challenge was held virtually because of the exceptional circumstances present at that time. In this case there was no winning project, but rather, as it was a unique edition, all the projects were considered finalists just for the fact of participating. All were evaluated by the jury of experts, whose assessment can be seen in this link.

How can I participate?

Although the deadline for submitting entries will not open until next year - 12 April 2021, as mentioned above -, several centres have already registered to participate in the specific training plan for open data of the Barcelona Open Data Challenge Fourth edition 2021. Registration for the training remains open and is being carried out via the Barcelona Education Consortium. Likewise, the centres can present a project to the competition without previous attendance to the training as it is not an obligatory requirement.

You can follow all the information about the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge on twitter under hashtag #OpenDataBCN. Also, if you have any doubt or question you can contact the organization through this form.

In order to continue with the dissemination of geographical knowledge in society and to encourage the study of Spanish geography and the interaction of young people, the National Geographic Institute (IGN) has created a series of educational materials aimed at secondary and high school students. To create these contents, the IGN has used their own geographic data, that are shared openly in its Download Center, and maps from its viewers, such as the Interactive National Atlas of Spain.

With these training materials, the IGN aims to provide interesting and attractive information on Spanish geography in an interactive way for young people to become familiar with cartographic systems, maps, coordinates, etc.

Until now, these materials were available in Spanish, but now they can also be found in English, to continue strengthening materials in bilingual education and, at the same time, contributing to their dissemination beyond our borders.

Specifically, these 4 contents have been translated:

1. Territorial inequalities

The activity on territorial inequalities is focused on students between 16 and 18 years old (Bachillerato). The objective is to show in a synthesized way and from different perspectives how human occupation, communication infrastructures or the physical environment (north/south, inland/coast, lowlands/mountains, mainland/islands...) generate a series of differences that characterize the current Spanish society and that are manifested at different scales.

This interactive and educational resource will analyse the territorial inequalities of Spain as a historical process in which economic, political, social and geographical factors come together. For this purpose, data and maps are used not only from the IGN, but also from different entities such as the INE.

2. Economy and urban features

This new activity aimed at high school students is especially focused on knowing the economic characteristics that define 5 Spanish towns (Villablino, Benidorm, El Ejido, Avilés and Zaragoza). In order to study each of them and know their main economic activity, the student must answer several questions by researching through different resources such as: maps, photographs, orthoimages, graphics...

The aim of this exercise is for young people to obtain all the information through the Internet and the different platforms, such as the Geoportal of the National Atlas of Spain, in addition to the topographic resources offered by the National Geographic Institute. What is the ultimate goal? To show students, in the most interactive way, the endless documentation and public information available to citizens and through which they can recognize the characteristics of Spanish populations and learn to distinguish them according to their predominant function.

3. Physical environment and settlement

The third activity is a new exercise in which students between 12 and 16 years old (Secondary) must look for information in several maps to solve the issues raised in the activity.

They must answer questions about why the city has a certain organization, how it is oriented, the layout of its streets and what the reasons are that justify its urban morphology. To answer the questions, they have a series of IGN geolocation services to make the search. These are: CartoCiudad to search for postal codes, streets or house numbers, and the Basic Geographic Nomenclature of Spain for population entities, municipalities and all the toponyms of the country.

4. Spain, 8,000 kilometres of coastline

The following activity delves into the study of the Spanish coastal landscape through definitions, photographs, geographic displays and the use of maps using the National Geographic Information System of Spain (SignA) of the IGN. The exercise, aimed mainly at high school students, tries to show students the different geographical features that are characteristic of the Spanish coast (estuaries, deltas ...), through the management of coordinates in the application SignA.

We live in an era in which training has become an essential element, both to enter and to progress in an increasingly competitive labour market, as well as to be part of research projects that can lead to great improvements in our lifetime.

Summer is coming and with it, a renewed training offer that does not rest at all in the summer season, but quite the opposite. Every year, the number of courses related to data science, analytics or open data increases. The current labour market demands and requires professionals specialized in these technological fields, as reflected by the EC in its European Data Strategy, where it is highlighted that the EU will provide financing "to  expand  the  digital  talent  pool  with  in  the  order  of  250000  people  who will  be  able  to  deploy  the  latest  technologies  in  businesses  throughout  the  EU”.

In this sense, the possibilities offered by new technologies to carry out any type of online training, from your own home with the maximum guarantees, help more professionals to use this type of course each year.

From datos.gob.es we have selected a series of online courses, both free and paid, related to data that may be of interest to you:

• We started with the Machine Learning and Data Science Course taught by the Polytechnic University of Valencia, which stands out for offering its future students the learning necessary to extract technical knowledge from the data. With a 5-week program, this course introduce R language and, among other things, different preprocessing techniques and data visualization.
• The Modern Methods in Data Analytics course is another option if you are looking to expand your data training and learn English at the same time. The University of Utrecht will begin to teach this course completely online from August 31, totally focused on the study of linear models and longitudinal data analysis, among other fields.
• Another of the English courses that will begin on June 16 is a 9-week training programme focused on Data Analytics and which is taught by the Ironhack International School. This is a recommended course for those who want to learn how to load, clean, explore and extract information from a wide range of datasets, as well as how to use Python, SQL and Tableau, among other aspects.
• Next we discover the course on Business Digitization and Big Data: Data, Information and Knowledge in Highly Competitive Markets, taught by FGUMA (General Foundation of the University of Malaga). Its duration is 25 hours and its registration deadline is June 15. If you are a professional related to business management and / or entrepreneurship, this course will surely be of interest to you.
• R for Data Science is another course offered by the FGUMA. Its main objective is to show an introductory view to the R programming language for data analysis tasks, including advanced reports and visualizations, presenting techniques typical of computer learning as an extra value. As with the previous course, the deadline for registration for this training is June 15.
• For its part, Google Cloud offers a completely online and free learning path for data professionals seeking to perfect the design, complication, analysis and optimization of macrodata solutions. Surely this Specialized program: Data Engineering, Big Data, and Machine Learning on GCP fits into the training you had planned.

In addition to these specific courses, it is worth noting the existence of online training platforms that offer courses related to new technologies on an ongoing basis. These courses are known as MOOC and are an alternative to traditional training, in areas such as Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Business Intelligence or Deep Learning, knowledge that is increasingly demanded by companies.

This is just a selection of the many courses that exist as data related training offerings. However, we would love to count on your collaboration by sending us, through the comments, other courses of interest in the field of data to complete this list in the future.

The opening of data related to academic and research work entails multiple advantages, such as the improvement of transparency, the possibilities of replicating studies to verify their validity or greater visibility and impact that boost the recognition of the researcher. In this sense, Law 14/2011, of June 1, on Science, Technology and Innovation highlights the need to boost open access to research content, including mandatory when research has been funded with public funds.

This situation creates a series of challenges for researchers in fields such as humanities, who often lack the technical knowledge and resources necessary to publish their work in accessible, open, free and updated formats. Therefore, they often hire technical collaborators outside the research.

In order to provide a solution to this situation, the National Distance Education University (UNED) created LINHD, a research centre in Digital Humanities. LINHD - whose acronym means Laboratory of Innovation in Digital Humanities - seeks to create a new framework with interdisciplinary and hybrid work teams, with experts in technical and humanities areas who collaborate to foster innovation and share ideas. It also offers training, and advisory, consulting and technological services.

LINHD is one of the key elements of the dialogue in the Digital Humanities and a pioneer centre in Spain in this area. And it is because it deals with fundamental matters for the development of new technologies, competitiveness and productivity of humanities.

The laboratory started from an initiative that aimed to digitally connect the research data of the university itself, in order to improve transparency and visualize them through linked data technology (UNEDATA project), but soon grew by hosting and developing multiple projects and services, with institutions such as the Goethe Institute in Germany, the Thyssen Museum or the National Library. Thus, LINHD become the first digital humanities research centre in the Hispanic field of international reference and unique in its characteristics.

Through this philosophy, technology projects applied to the humanities are promoted, with special emphasis on fields such as art, philosophy, history, geography or education. This has led to projects that range from digital editions or visualizations of results to museums and virtual libraries.

In addition, the laboratory has been recognized as Clarin-K centre together with two centres of the UPF and the UPV, constituting the first “Knowledge Centre” of an ERIC-European Research Infrastructure Consortium in Spain.

LINHD también colabora con la Infraestructura de Investigación Digital en Artes y Humanidades DARIAH, que busca mejorar y desarrollar la investigación digital de humanidades en Europa.

After New Year, it seems that Christmas comes to an end, but we still have a date marked on our agenda: Three Kings Day. Adults and children hope to get up on January 6 and discover what the Three Wise Men from the East have brought us. And what better gift than a book that can help us expand our knowledge and skills.

For those who have not yet finished their Christmas purchases and are rushing at the last minute, in datos.gob.es we have collected a selection of books on data and disruptive technologies that can be a good option to gift to your loved ones. We have all levels books: basic, to encourage your younger relatives to study a career focused on data management and analysis (professions that will be highly demanded in the coming years) or advanced, for those professionals who want to improve their knowledge and gain a competitive advantage to boost their career in 2020.

Las bases de Big Data, by Rafael Caballero and Enrique Martín.

What is it about? Disclosure book that explains what Big Data is and how it works, including details and curiosities that allow the reader to better understand the big data world, its processing and the business involved. It also explains basic aspects of the Hadoop ecosystem or databases, both relational and non-relational.

Who is it for? It is an introductory and easy-to-read book. The book does not include a technical vision, but it is detailed and critical so that the reader wants to continue going deeper into the subject.

Storytelling with data. Data visualization for Business professionals, by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic.

What is it about? A book to learn how to tell stories using data. Cole Nussbaumer tells us about the fundamentals of data visualization through real examples that help to understand the theory in a simple way. The book helps the user to reflect on the stories he/she wants to tell and how to tell them, teaching him to choose different types of graphics and tools according to the audience.

Who is it for? It is a simple and quick-to-read book, perfect for those who work with data, do not have a technical profile and want to improve the way they show the results.

Introduction to Data Science: Data Analysis and Prediction Algorithms with R, by Rafael A. Irizarry.

What is it about? Rafael A. Irizarry presents concepts and skills to solve the challenges of real-world data analysis. The book covers concepts from probability, statistical inference, linear regression, machine learning, R programming, data visualization, predictive algorithms building, file organization with UNIX / Linux shell, version control with Git and GitHub and preparation of reproducible documents.

Who is it for? To first-year data science students, so it is perfect to introduce this subject.

Learning Path: Understanding Tool Integration for Big Data Architecture, by O'Reilly Media

What is it about? The book explains how to integrate Hadoop components with the goal of implementing big data solutions for a variety of use cases, including clickstream analytics, time series problems, transferring data between Hadoop and relational databases, and applications in the finance sector.

Who is it for? Book aimed at professionals with technical knowledge related to the universe of data or advanced students.

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans y Avi Goldfarb

What is it about? The book starts from a question: how should companies establish strategies, governments design policies and citizens plan their lives in a world marked by technology and Artificial Intelligence? 3 eminent economists try to clarify this issue by demystifying artificial intelligence and examining it through standard economic theory.

Who is it for? To all those who want to understand the reality of artificial intelligence, although it is especially aimed at entrepreneurs, business leaders or public policy makers.

The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons, by Tim Davies, Stephen B. Walker y Mor Rubinstein.

What is it about? Book that reviews the lessons learned in the 10 years of the open data movement and looks to the future to make the reader reflect on how open data initiatives will respond to new privacy concerns, and the inclusion of artificial intelligence.

Who is it for? For those involved in the open data ecosystem, but also those who are curious about the evolution of the movement. The book is also available in free version here.

As in previous years, the list is just a selection that we have prepared based on recommendations from experts who collaborate with data.gob.es, but we know that there are many more interesting books on these topics. Therefore, we encourage you to share new recommendations in the comments.