Open Data Literacy by Remote: Hiccups and Lessons

Open Data are published to ensure the creation of value and data exploitation, but limited technical skills are a critical barrier. Most users lack the skills required to assess data quality and its fitness to use, awareness of open data sources, and what they can do with the data. To advance the dialogue around methods to increase awareness of Open Data, improve users' skills to work with them, and deal with the requirement of letting future citizens develop data and information literacy according to 21st-century skills, this article proposes a series of workshops to let Italian high school learners familiarise themselves with effective communication based on Open Data. The article describes an ongoing activity, reporting preliminary results on engagement and learning. We discuss challenges in engaging learners remotely and the promising learning outcomes achieved by overcoming cultural and technical barriers to visualise Open Data.