Info evening for #ODNI4EDU challenge

With the “OpenDataNI Challenge – Using Open Data for Education” having been launched in the press release of 14th June 2016, Tuesday 21st June 2016 saw the promotion of the Challenge step up a gear with an Information Evening, very kindly hosted by the Ulster University, at the Connor Lecture Theatre, York Street, Belfast.

A great attendance on the night (comprising a mix of developers, teachers and curriculum experts from Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA), and also representatives from both Open Data Institute Belfast and Northern Ireland Digital Catapult) heard details of the Challenge, on the subject of Education data and how Open Data can be harnessed as a means to create powerful new teaching resources, to the ultimate benefit of Northern Ireland’s primary and secondary level schoolchildren.

In his Introduction, Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir outlined the important role his department had in supporting the Open Data Strategy for Northern Ireland’s ‘Open by Default’ agenda and encouraging greater collaboration and cooperation across government. He particularly noted the great work being done by his department’s Open Data Team to encourage government departments to publish their data in a free and open format, and challenged all app developers, amateurs and professionals alike, to create an educational resource for schoolchildren using open data.

The Director of Northern Ireland Digital Catapult, Tom Gray encouraged all developers to get involved and to embrace the challenge to use open data, in order to develop innovative teaching and learning resources.

Next up, Suzanne from OpenDataNI presented an overview of the Open Data Strategy, highlighting that all public sector data here is now ‘Open by Default’. In line with this, all of OpenDataNI’s data is available under an Open Government Licence (OGL), thereby permitting anyone to copy, publish, distribute, transmit and adapt the data, and to exploit it (both commercially and non-commercially). It was also noted that all datasets are available in non-proprietary formats.

There followed a demonstration of the portal itself, with particular emphasis on the Suggest Data feature - if there is any data that anyone would like to see released as open data, they can register on the portal and use the Suggest Data form; the Open Data Team will endeavour to get the data released, where possible. Another point featured was that the majority of the data on the portal can be accessed via API endpoints.

As for the Challenge itself, Suzanne outlined the structure of the competition, the entry deadline, and the timelines for the subsequent competition stages. The aim of the Challenge is to develop a learning resource to benefit pupils in either primary or secondary level education. The remit has been left deliberately wide so that Challenge entrant applications can be developed for any area in the primary or post-primary curricula; in this way, such applications could be tools to assist in the teaching of maths, geology, history etc. etc.

To meet the Challenge competition brief, the teaching or learning tool must utilise at least one dataset from OpenDataNI. She also stressed that whilst developers will retain their intellectual property rights, the successful entrants must make their applications freely available for use in schools in Northern Ireland.

The first competition phase will be a paper-based submission, the entry deadline for which is 5pm on Wednesday 28th September 2016. OpenDataNI will notify people via Twitter (@OpenDataNI) when the online form to submit an application goes ‘live’.

Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) Chief Executive, Justin Edwards outlined the transformation CCEA has gone through with its use of data to now considering its role as a publisher of Open Data & gave his perspective on the potential force for good that this data could play in assessing the relationship between educational attainment and societal deprivation patterns.

John Peto, the Director of Education at the Nerve Centre, gave an overview of some of their work in the education sector, where they have used technology to solve educational problems. They have worked with FabLabs to develop innovative solutions in the use of digital technology in teaching and showed us how a hydroponics project in a school of pupils with mental health issues has been a real success.

The evening finished with a ‘breakout’ session facilitated by CCEA. This enabled developers to talk on a one-to-one basis with experts from areas including mathematics/numeracy, digital technologies, health/wellbeing, and curriculum/assessment.

Further information from

can be obtained at the links below:

CCEA website home

Statutory Curriculum

Big Picture of the Curriculum at Key Stages 1 & 2

Big Picture of the Curriculum at Key Stage 3

Big Picture of the Curriculum at Key Stage 4

Qualification and subject microsites (when launched, select the “Choose Subject Microsite” menu option, from which you can ‘drill down’ to the various academic subjects and their details)

The terms and conditions of the competition (along with the judging criteria) will be published on the OpenDataNI Challenge news article page.

For any further information, you can contact us at Opendata@finance-ni.gov.uk

Images attribution statement (photographic images near top of article, in order l-r):

Image 1, courtesy of Lucélia Ribeiro, under CC B-SA 2.0 licence

Image 2, courtesy of The Kingsway School, under CC BY 2.0 licence

Image 3, courtesy of Anthony DiLaura, under CC BY 2.0 licence