The latest in our occasional series of blogs about data.

Although in education much of the emphasis has been on viualising data as an aid to teaching and learning, or to explore network effects, the use of data can be a useful research tool. This simple visualisation below, posted by Mike Herrity on twitpic, shows the depth and length of the present economic recession and also, I suggest, the total failure of political and economic policies to deal with the recession.

Th second visualisation also deals with politics and economics. It comes from research by the Guardian Data Blog, following the demands of the #OccupytheCity movement in London for the democratisation of the City of London. The City of London is run as a state within a state at the moment, with its own police force and governance, and with companies allowed multiple votes in elections, dependent of the number of employees. Unsurprisingly the finances of the City of London are less than transparent. however, the Guardian did mange to obtain some details about expenditure and produced the following visualisation using the free IBM ManyEyes tools.

Mike Herrity shared his picture without comment. The Guardian appealed for readers help in further investigating the city of London finances. essentially both visualisations can form part of a distributed and loosely coupled research effort, with materials openly published being able to be reused and repurposed in education and in research.

I am intrigued by this presentation. Whilst I appreciate what Chris Taggart, who has been invo0lved in the development of the opencorporates and openlylocal data sites (and who undoubtedly has more experience and knowledge than me of the use of Open and Linked Data) I would be less pessimistic. I see the use of open and linked data as in very early days.

Firstly, although I appreciate that politicians and bureaucrats do not always want to release data – I think there is still a groundswell in favour of making data available – at least in Europe. Witness yesterdays unveiling of the Italian Open data store (sorry, I can’t find the url at the moment). And although Google search results do not help promote open data sites (and I am not a great fan of Google at the moment after they wiped out my account ten days again), they have contributed very useful tools such as Refine, Fusion Tables and Public Data Explorer.

I still think that as Chris Taggart says in one of his first slides the biggest challenge is relevance. And here I wonder if one of the problems is that Open and Linked Data specialists are just that – specialist developers in their own field. Many of the applications released so far on the UK Data store, whilst admiral examples of the art of development – would seem to have little practical use.

Maybe it is only when the tools and knowledge of how to work with Open and Linked data are adopted by developers and others in wonder social and subject areas that the true benefits will begin to show. Open data applications may work best, not through dedicated apps or sites, but when incorporated in other web sites which provide them with context and relevance. Thus we have been working with the use of open and linked data for careers guidance (see our new web site, www.careerstalk.org which includes working demonstrations).

Bu even more important may be finding ways of combining Open and Linked data with other forms of (human) knowledge and intelligence. It is just this form of knowledge – for instance the experiences and informal knowledge of careers guidance professionals, which brings relevance and context to the data from official data sets. And that provides a new design challenge.

Over the last two years there has been much excitement about the idea of Open and Linked Data. This is especially so in countries like the UK where there has been a pronounced policy commitment to opening the use of public data for commercial and non commercial use. The UK government open data store boasts links to over 5400 sets of data saying “This can then be used by people to build useful applications that help society, or investigate how effective policy changes have been over time.”

There is no doubt that this data is of immense value to researchers. But despite various hack days, the number of genuinely useful applications seem limited.

We have been working with the data for the last nine months attempting to use labour market data to assist careers professionals and young people in choosing careers pathways. As Leia says in a comment on a recent post on this site “so many of our learners arrive with a complete incorrect (or no) idea about what skills are in demand and what’s realistic to expect in terms of looking for work and training.” We are not saying that labour market data and skills demand alone should guide young peoples’ choices. But it is certainly an important factor especially with university education becoming so expensive.

Why are we finding it hard to do? Firstly as the similar Salami project run by the University of Nottingham noted in a recent report much of the official data is collected for economic purposes, not for social use. For instance, much of the labour market information is collected through the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) which although useful for analysing economic trends, is of limited use for occupational guidance. Instead, we really need Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) data. It doesn’t help that despite the data store which provides links to different data sets, the raw and interpreted data is scattered across a number of different web sites. Most of them are in the course of updating their sites, probably in order to make the data more accessible. But at the same time his is breaking links. And although there are a growing number of on-line tools, these all have their own idiosyncratic interfaces and processes (and often seem just not to work).

I was never very interested in statistics until I got involved in this project. And now I am desperately trying to teach myself SPSS but it is not easy and once more is time consuming.

Even when we have obtained the data it has to be cleaned. much of the data also requires manipulation if it is to be visualised. Visualisation tools are becoming more powerful, but still are not always simple to handle.

Using Open and Linked Data is a design process. And some of the most important people who have to be involved in any design process are the end users. Once more this is time consuming. And of course it is necessary to show them what the possibilities are. each different group of users will have different needs. We have spent a long time thinking about what data we should show to young people and what might be relevant for careers advisers.

Finally we have to remember that data is just data – however well visualised. The use of data has to involve meaning making. meaning making is not a precise science. Different people will make different meanings from the same data. The real added value comes when we allow them to participate in collective sense making through sharing and negotiating meanings.

We have developed the idea of a Technology Enhanced Boundary Object which is able to bring together data and data vidsualisations with a  social software layer to explore meanings. We hope to pilot this in the autumn. And we will provide access to a working version of some of our tools in the next week.

So in conclusion – I remain very excited about the potential of Open and Linked Data. But to design apps which are useful takes a lot of work.

The movement towards Open Data is advancing in Europe. The Open Knowledge Forum Österreich! report that the cities of Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, and Graz, together with the Chancellor’s office, have established the “Cooperation OGD Austria” – a new alliance bringing together federal, state, and city governments, as well as local communities, to forge common standards and develop conditions in which OGD can flourish to the benefit of all stakeholders. The Open Knowledge Foundation in Austria will be acting as the advisory member to the new group.

I have spent many years living in Pontypridd, in the South Wales Valleys. During this time I also spent several years living in social housing on a housing estate where many people were unemployed. Nealy everyone I knew who was unemployed wanted to work. True, some of them suffered from chronic illness or disability – all too often caused by depression. But most simply couldn’t get work. Many had few qualifications.There were also a considerable number of single parents, unable to work due to childcare responsibilities.

People were reliant on social benefits to feed and cloth their children – and yes to go on an occasional night out. But then as now it was very hard to survive on benefits. however families helped out plus there was generally (not always) a sense of solidarity and community support. Many people also worked on what we called ‘hobbles’ – off the cards (illegal work) – mostly for a local Christmas decoration company paying little more than £1 an hour.

But some, like me had degrees. And for two years I was unemployed. I admit I took to lying in my job applications. After endlessly being told I was overqualified I forgot to tell people about my degree. And at the same time no-one was looking for history graduates in the valleys.

None of these people were lazy. None were afraid of hard work – quite the reverse. Few people would choose to live on benefits. It is simply that within the limits of their qualifications and responsibilities there was no work.

And so I get angry when I hear ideologically driven nonsense from people like UK prime minster Cameron – who wouldn’t even last half a day on one weeks social benefits – that poor people are “culturally” unique, dependent on welfare by their own design and workshy.

And such nonsense is shamelessly peddled by the popular press who produce all kinds of spurious and inaccurate statistics to back it up. Even the Department of Work and Pensions has got in on the act, this week being forced to admit that its false its claim that there had been a 30% rise in people on disability living allowance over eight years was in fact “distorted”.

All the more welcome then that the UK Higher Education Economic and Social Data Service has released a new web page entitled “Understanding the riots: Data that can inform new research”.

The article states:

The recent street violence that erupted in parts of London and other English cities is sparking heated debates about the underlying causes.

Policy makers and the public want to know more. For researchers, there is a wealth of data to consult.

In August 2011, areas of London and towns and cities across England experienced outbreaks of rioting, looting, crime and arson unseen since the riots in Brixton and Toxteth of 1981.

While the situation has calmed for the moment, media coverage has raised many questions, for example:

• How has socio-economic discontent and the rise of consumer culture contributed to the unrest?
• How do young people see their lives and opportunities in an uncertain world?
• How do the police use their powers and resources during civil disturbances and in the wider policing of communities, especially with regard to race, and how does the presence of gangs affect community life?
• Given the role of technological and social media as an agent of communication in the riots, how has the rise of the internet and mobile technology changed society, especially among young people?

ESDS provides access to a range of qualitative and quantitative data resources that can give researchers contextual information to make analytical sense of these issues.

The article goes on to provide access to a number of relevant studies. But the ESDS also provides access to a wide range of statistical resources. And the sooner social science and education researchers start making use of these statistics the better. The problem, I suspect, is that analysing such statistics takes some skill and time.

Even more is the problem that academic researchers are not used to telling their story in a way that connects with people. Whilst I would not want to see research presented ‘Daily Mail’ style, I think there is much we can do to think of new ways of connecting with the wider world outside academia and making considered research and analysis available to counter blind prejudice and ideology (more to follow in next few days).

A quick update. I have been slow posting lately due to travelling around and a series of project meetings.

We are moving forward on a series of ideas and developments.

Firstly we are working with The Univeristy of East London, the Hackeny Education – Business Partnership and a Yoiuth Organisation called Go! to launch Radiocative, an internet radion station run by young people for young people.

Secondly we are developing a new application for online story telling.

Thirdly I have been doing demos of our new open and linked data application for supporting young people in planning careers and providing information for careers advisors. Early feedback has been very positive and I am hopeful we will be able to roll this out for an extended trial after the summer. Before that though, I want to develop a social layer, allowing data outputs to be discussed  and incorporated in wider social discourses.

This is the first in a new weekly series ‘Talking about Data’. As the name implies, each week I shall be publishing data related to education and learning and talking about it. And I hope you will join in the discussions.

This weeks ‘Talking about Data’ focuses on the provision of Careers Information, Advance and Guidance in England. The data source is Wave Six of the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. The main objectives of the study are:

• to gather evidence about the transitions young people make from secondary and tertiary education or training to economic roles in early adulthood
• to enhance the ability to monitor and evaluate the effects of existing policy and provide a strong information base for future policy development
• to contextualise the implementation of new policies in terms of young people’s current lives.

Today Google Labs released their new data visualisation store. Very impressive it is too, although it is not a straightforward task to register on the site, upload uses an XML format and you cannot download data. But the visualisation is pretty good and Google themselves have linked to a number of large Eurostat data sets.

I have been working on data for the last couple of weeks. I am trying to build a TEBO – a Technology Enhanced Boundary Object (or objects) for explaining Labour Market data to Careers Advice, Information and Guidance (CAIG). Together with my colleagues from the Institute for Employment Research at Warwick University, I have been looking at TEBOs for some time.

Alan Brown explains the conceptual idea behind TEBOs:

The ideas of boundary crossing and tool mediation (Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003; Kaptelinin & Miettinen 2005) and situated learning with a close alignment to the importance of a focus upon practice (Brown et al., 1989; Hall, 1996) informed considerations of the role of technologically-enhanced boundary objects in knowledge maturing processes in different contexts. One specific concern is to make visible the epistemological role of symbolic boundary objects in situations in which people from different communities use common artefacts in communication. A fruitful approach to choosing ways to develop particular boundary objects is to focus on what Onstenk (1997) defines as core problems: the problems and dilemmas that are central to the practice of an occupation that have significance both for individual and organisational performance — in this case the problems associated with providing advice relevant for career planning. One method this development project used was therefore to engage in a dialogue with guidance practitioners about common scenarios involving Labour Market Information (LMI) which could inform the development of prototype technologically-enhanced boundary objects (TEBOs). The development … was therefore informed by a consideration of the following issues:

• Importance of developing methods and strategies for co-design with users
• Need for conceptual tools to help people understand the models and ideas which are part of LMI
• Need for a more open pedagogy (than is typical of much existing technology-enhanced learning, and existing workplace training practice)
• A system in which boundary objects are configurable by end-users (practitioners) and by guidance trainers to be used in multiple ways
• Need to build an understanding of how TEBOs may be used in ways that are empowering for practitioners, and ultimately for clients too.

These concerns could be coupled with another set of issues concerning appropriate skill development:

• Need for time for people to interact, reflect, use concepts etc.
• Trying to reach a stage where practitioners have justifiable confidence in the claims they make and can exercise judgement about the value of information when faced with unfamiliar LMI
• Choosing between a range of possible use-contexts
• Decide how to employ support from communication and discussion tools
• Developing and transmitting Labour Market intelligence – importance of communicating to others
• Preconfigure certain ways of thinking through use of scenarios; discussions can point into and lead from scenarios.

In practice it is not so easy to develop such TEBOs. Identifying key problmes is probably the most useful approach. But then there is an issue in accessing different data to visualise as part of the process. A great deal of data is now publicly available. But I am no data specialist and have faced a steep learning curve in understanding and interpreting the data myself. then there is the issue of visualisation – I am mainly using Google Gadgets, although we are also working with Tableau (a powerful tool, but unfortunately only available for Windows) and IBM;s Many Eyes. All these tools are good, but are all extremely finicky about how the data is formatted. We are working with data in xls and Apple’s Numbers but I suspect longer term it would be better to use the Open Source R programming environment.

And the hardest task of all is the storyboarding. At the end of the day we are trying to tell stories with data: TEBOs are a storytelling and exploration approach to learning. So for each TEBO I intend to make a short video explaining the key concepts and showing the various visualizations. We will also provide access to the raw data and to static versions of the graphing, along with explanatory notes. And for each TEBO we will try to construct an interactive visualisation tool, allowing learners to play with the data and displays. I also want to try to build some sort of simulations using the Forio tool. No doubt there is better software (and if anyone has any ideas I would be very grateful). But I sort of feel that the more social software, open source or free tools we can use the better. We want to encourage people to do it for themselves. And they have no money to spend on fancy software tools.We cannot possibly provide access to visualisations of all the data available. But if we cane explain what is possible, hopefully interested CAIG professionals will start there own work. And then who knows – a Careers Guidance data store?