Empowering Data Literacy Among High School Learners: Insights from a Linked Open Data Workshop

The growing accessibility of (linked) open data offers a rich opportunity for stakeholders to harness their potential value. Nonetheless, significant obstacles like inadequate technical skills and a lack of awareness hinder their effective utilization. As a result, there is a pressing need for learners to cultivate competencies in data and information literacy, which are integral components of 21st-century skill sets. To foster discussion on initiatives to raise awareness of linked open data and enhance users’ capabilities to work with them, we proposed a workshop to introduce Italian high school learners to retrieve information from encyclopedic sources modeled as knowledge graphs. Specifically, the workshop guided the learners through the process of querying the Wikidata endpoint via KGSnap!, a block-based programming interface that allows lay users to build and run queries over a SPARQL endpoint. This article describes the activities of the workshop, delineating its protocol, participants, and outcomes. The results indicate that participants were highly engaged and achieved accurate results in the assigned tasks within a short timeframe, suggesting promising expectations for further initiatives in this domain.