Data can envision what’s going on.

Last November, I had a chance to evaluate about 250 grant projects and most of them were weak in that applicants put either too many data or no data at all. On the other hand, those who passed the first evaluation knew what data to present and when and how to use. For example, instead of saying “many”, “250 projects” can capture more image.

I guess where, when and how might depend on that person’s presentation style.
But before that, we need to KNOW “what” data are available.

I came across one example of data tool created by World Bank.
The Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) web tool helps countries collect and analyse information on their education policies, benchmark themselves against other countries, and prioritize areas for reform, with the goal of ensuring that all children and youth go to school and learn.

through SABER, World Bank analyzed more than 100 countries in order to improve educational system effeciently.

When I saw this title, I thought it was mainly about the data in Latin America, given that “Saber” in Spanish means “to know”, and that connecting the title of data tool to “know” makes a lot of sense.

But it was not about the Latin America.

Then I tried to look into the one for LA region, and voila!, what popped up after playing SABER video was about the data base of Latin America, called “Open Data For Development (OD4D)”.

Although this data project is not especially for Education, only a few click led me to this data base.
That means there are a lot of data tools and it’s possible that some of them are overlapping in one way or another. I wish there were an initiative to integrate some data base and try to combine them together through their KNOWledge.