My presentation will illustrate what students, faculty, and community partners can do with open data. Of course, open data is not a brand-new concept. For years, we have used federal census, state agency, and local government records to answer research questions. But open data makes our work easier and more accessible, for several reasons:
1) Open data is findable and exportable in many formats, such as the CT Education Directory, which enabled my students to create this basic school map, and to overlay school and town-level map data with a non-profit organization.
2) Open data providers can aggregate (or group) records in multiple ways, while protecting individual confidentiality, such as this data request, which led to our map of Hartford students by neighborhood residence.
3) Open data allows us to more easily build useful tools for the public, such as the Mobility App created by students with the Open Communities Alliance.
4) With open data, we also can build tools from live data feeds, such as this CTfastrak bus location site (beta version; learn how it works).
Remember: Technology is the easy part of open data. Rethinking our organizational roles and responsibilities requires hard work.