Kudos!

Conspiring

Content Creation

A Visualization of Relationships between Words used in #teachtheweb Tweets

A Slightly Interactive Infographic

MOOC Attrition

• I learned that there's a farm nearby that delivers organic vegetables. I learned this when I was preparing to make dinner.
• I learned that using metal brushes to restore old painted wood works well in combination with heat guns and spatulas. I learned this when I was making a piece of furniture suitable to be brought inside.
• I learned that New York still holds mystical power for 15 year old girls, as it did for me at one point. I learned this when I launched the first German Storycamp at a high school nearby. I learned this through their making.

“And it’s why I prefer talking about the Maker Movement as having strong lessons for learning, as opposed to just making, which can be construed as more solitary. Making in and of itself can sometimes involve the sorts of steps I described here, but not always. That’s why the answer is complicated. I’m willing to say that someone is always learning something when they’re making, but they learn best when it entails the sort of process, community and well configured structures of participation I describe above.”

Related articles

• #teachtheweb: An Online Course(michellethorne.cc)
• Teach the Web (MOOC)(zythepsary.com)

Related articles

• Hacktivity Kits != Event Agenda, but they sure are close...
• 1-Pagers and Contributing
• Hacktivity Kits and Modular Curriculum
• All the posts where I use the word "hacktivity"

This post penned by the entire team and cross posted at http://explorecreateshare.org

Last week we had Mozilla Mentor Community team members from Toronto, Germany and New York City together for whirlwind week of making, plotting, talking (some talking is OK!) and of course, etherpad spawning. Here’s the overview from Day 1.

DAY 2

A fun Mozilla NYC dinner (with special guest David Ascher) at Rucola followed by raucous debates and night caps at the Nu Hotel, we had renewed vigor for Wednesday. Early in the day we revisited our Task Board and giddily moved sticky notes to track our progress–from “Make” to “Making” and some to “Made!” We also set up our projects for the day and were joined by teammates Beatrice Chen (Hive NYC and Mentor team archivist extraordinaire) and Julia Vallera (Hive NYC and Mentor team educator/superhero).

We spent time exploring how sites and communities like Mentor Mob might make our Activity Kits and resources more visible and remixable. We honed in on MOOC and Maker Party plans and messaging. We also reviewed a mentor badge  assessment tool that Chloe Varelidi, Jess Klein and Atul Varma have been working on, and outlined the process and criteria by which mentors will earn badges and benefits on Webmaker.org. Leah and Kathryn led day two of a design charrette with Hive Toronto to gather input for Toronto’s RFP process. Through this facilitated process, they ended up with many a white board filled with thoughts and diagrams. By the end, they had articulated – in draft form – Hive Toronto’s core beliefs and had building blocks for the application process.

Guide to Wednesday’s Makes:

• Mentor Mob Webmaker playlists
• Julia prototyped building an Activity Kit in Thimble, Knowing Your Neighborhood
• We continued to hone our Maker Party 2013 messaging–it’s a global party to celebrate all the things we can make thanks to the collaborative power of the web!
• Met with Open Badges team to feedback and iterate on peer assessed badges
• Laura shipped a color version of the #teachtheweb MOOC user experience infographic 
• We shipped the job description for an open position in the UK to run webmaker events, build community and talent scout for Hive London (know anyone good?)
• Shipped our thoughts and messaging about the upcoming #teachtheweb MOOC–in short: Learn how to teach digital literacies, master webmaking tools, develop your own educational resources, and take what you learned back to your communities and classrooms.http://webmaker.org/teach
• Laura, Michelle and Matt shipped the Mentor badges brief

DAY 3
Our focus on Thursday was all about making connections and interacting directly with webmaker constituencies: Hive NYC members, Super Mentors and Parsons New School students investigating Webmaker futures.

We took a break from the Brooklyn office and made an excursion into the city, starting the day at one of the city’s most venerable institutions, The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), for the April Hive NYC meet-up. We heard from Ruth Cohen, Oscar Pineda-Catalan and Barry Joseph about their previous Hive-supported projects, and learned about some of  their current youth programs that range from melding Minecraft with museum exhibits, creating next-gen audio guides, building virtual dioramas, recreating iconic artifacts using 3-D fabrication, and of course, assessing work using digital badges. Next, Vee Bravo from Tribeca Film Institute,  reflected  on some of the challenges and lessons learned while planning and implementing the Rikers Island Digital Media Lab, an Oct 2012 Hive Digital Media Learning Fund collaboration, with a focus on teaching digital storytelling to incarcerated young women using video editing, letter writing and other simple strategies.

Kathryn Meisner from Hive Toronto and Leah Gilliam from Hive NYC shared some quick updates from their design charette with Hive Toronto members earlier in the week. Stay tuned for a separate blog post with more details coming soon!

Then we officially kicked off Mozilla Open Online Collaborative (MOOC) planning with 40+ Super Mentors! It was such a thrill to have this engaged community of folks from Bank Street College of Education, Mozilla Reps, EPIK and others around the world, who are so enthusiastic about helping us and others teach the world the web. We took advantage of this unique opportunity to try to get to know one another’s interests and to discuss goals, logistics and roles for the MOOC. We’ll have another call this week and the official course begins next Thursday, May 2. We put together this Super Mentor Twitter list so you can follow these brilliant minds, and of course, if you haven’t yet, please sign up to participate at webmaker.org/teach. Full details about this will be coming to this very blog very (very!) soon.

We then headed downtown to Parsons The New School to provide feedback to students in the  Designing Webmaker Futures Collab taught by Hsing Wei and Lisa Grocott. All semester, they’ve been examining Webmaker.org and webmaking as a phenomenon, specifically thinking about products and communities, designing solutions and exploring areas of interest. Most importantly, they’ve been “futurecasting”—identifying what Mozilla does now and how they might improve upon it in the future. Our team paired off and met with each of the four groups of students discussing projects, ideas and providing feedback. We participated in activities ranging from card games to expand user concepts of problems and solutions, to making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a way to measure soft skills.

It made for a fun and lively discussion, and our team was pretty impressed by the group’s conversations—particularly in terms of the depth of their research and designs. We left the students with lots of feedback to consider and specifically requested that they look for connections between their projects and ways that they could help inform one another’s work. With over seven Mentor team members assembled, it was important to impress upon them how Mozillians work together while also working apart. We look forward to having them present on an upcoming Webmaker call! Until then, you can see some of the documentation from their course here.

That busy day called for a visit to Shake Shack! Then we had a mini-caravan to the Catskills complete with cross-caravan sms-based gaming. We reached a gorgeous lake house in Ferndale, NY, where we’d spend the next day and a half maintaining our momentum in mentor-making land. Needless to say, we brought our task board and scrum methods with us!

Guide to Thursdays Makes:

• Super Mentor Twitter List
• We created outreach text and partners for the MOOC, this outreach begins in earnest today (Tuesday, April 22)
• MOOC Topic 1 Content planning

DAY 4

Friday morning we woke up early so that we could do some emailing before speaking with Brett Gaylor of Product Management and Popcorn Maker fame. We then beamed his head onto a wall and discussed Mentor Community Team needs and wishes for the next iteration of Webmaker. org and the Webmaker tools. All in all it was a super productive conversation in which we had the opportunity to fully explain our vision for Mentor Makes and how it ties in with the development of the product.

We also had a meta discussion and breakthrough on the idea of Hackable Kits. Leah, Julia and Laura began the discussion of how they, as educators, create various types of learning plans, curriculum, activities, resources, etc. They confused each other with differing use of various words. So Laura and Julia went into a back room and focused on speaking the same language. In their session, they decided to ditch the use a bunch of different words and streamline the process for making a hackable kit. Then they decided to MAKE the mechanism that will allow Webmaker Mentors to easily create hackable kits. A series of templates was born.

Laura and Kathryn were the first to try out the paddle boat meeting format. Gliding around the lake, they figured out the basics of a train the trainer workshop happening for Toronto Hive members in mid-May. Their successful and productive meeting led to more paddle boat one-on-ones including a Hive Mega Mindmeld with Chris, Leah and Kathryn.

We also chatted with Erica Sackin about the job description for a Maker Party campaign manager (to come) and planning for yesterday’s White House Science Fair, where two teens from Hive NYC and Hive Pittsburgh showcased their projects, AND where we officially announced the Maker Party campaign!

Guide to Friday Makes:

• Hackable Kit Mostly Shipped!
• Concept pad
• Hackable Learning Goals Template
• Hackable Activity Template
• Profile Template
• Cheat Sheet Template
• Planned outline for Popcorn workshop in Hive Toronto with members – May 16th:

Day 5

While we were wrapping up the final day of our work week, Hive Toronto was in full pop-up mode running the NASA Youth Space Challenge at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum.) This member-initiated pop-up brought together six Hive members to create interactive stations for over 100 youth. For a first peek at how the pop-up went down, check out Maker Kids’ blog post.

Guide to Saturday Makes:

• Shipped updated copy and thinking to webmaker.org/teach
• Shipped/filed bugs in regards to our Hackable Activity Kits and Badges
• Had some great car ride home conversations about Mozilla, Mentors, Hive and general world domination

Much of this will be iterated on and announced before and throughout the course of the Maker Party campaign. Until then, we look forward to seeing you at the Maker Party!

We’re calling it “Teach the Web” and as is Webmaker custom, this MOOC won’t be like most MOOCs. Webmaking will play a central role, of course. Teach the Web is about connection and we’re hoping people connect through the things they make during the experience.

I think there will be something for everyone who wants to get more closely involved with the Making and Learning Movements. We’re asking our highly active community members to get involved in the planning, the organization and the moderation of Teach the Web. They, and others who get involved along the way, will help think up tasks for people, share experiences, facilitate connections. We’re also going to ask community members to help with the details like moderating a twitter chat or surfacing great stories.

We have three overarching things we’re thinking about in running this MOOC. Number 1, we want to see if it’s a good way to deliver and document train the trainer content. We’ve run a couple of professional development events, and we’ll be running more. But what about those people that don’t have access to Webmaker events, budding local communities. For them, we want to see if a MOOC-like experience can give them the information and the support they need.

Secondly, we want to get everyone involved in Maker Party 2013: Learn, Remix, Share. We’re hoping that the experience helps people understand why they should run participatory, collaborative events, and HOW to do that. We’re also hoping that the MOOC gives people the space and support to create their own Hacktivity Kits, agendas and resources. But moreover, we’re hoping that people feel connected to Webmaker and the Making as Learning movement as a whole.

Finally and most importantly, we think that the time boxed learning experience will create a space to strengthen connections and community ties. And if it doesn’t work or if MOOCs go out of vogue in July, we can fail gracefully, cap the whole thing June 30th and never speak of it again. We’ll still have made things together, we’ll still have formed connections and someone, somewhere will have learned at least one thing.

So, let’s talk about content. We’ve come up with a loose syllabus to serve as a jumping off point, and we have ideas on how to take that further, but as I mentioned earlier, this is about community, not content. We have 3 overarching topics: Introduction to Webmaking, Remix and Contextualize and Do and Share.

1. Introduction to Webmaker is all about community, openness and collaboration.
2. Remix and Contextualize is all about putting web literacy skills into other types of learning plans.
3. Do and Share is about experimenting with collaborative, participatory learning spaces and using the online community to improve your practice.

Within each topic are 3 subtopics – Those are the themes we’ll be focusing on weekly. 9 themes, 9 week MOOC – nice how that worked out, don’t cha think? For each theme, we’ll be MAKING things to explore ideas because, you know, you learn lots when you make. We’ll have a chance to look at each other’s makes, give feedback, and hack on ideas throughout the 9 weeks.

There will be several ways to follow along. Here’s what we’re thinking for communication channels:

• Sign up to the webmaker.org/teach list to participate
• Keep your eye on hivenyc.org/teachtheweb
• Submit your blog for aggregation
• Join G+ Webmaker Community
• Use #teachtheweb on Twitter
• Bookmark the Big Blue Button link for May 2nd, 23rd, and June 13th, 4pm UTC
• Check the calendar for Twitter chats and Big Blue Button sessions

Finally, do you want to help? It’s a big coordination task, and there’s plenty to DO. Let me know via a comment, a tweet, an email or a telegram :)

Click here for a pretty presentation version of this post!

Related articles

• This just in: MOOCs are all the rage right now (zythepsary.com)

Last year I started the /Teach wiki and filled it with a bunch of links out to resources, curriculum, descriptions and other useful tidbits of content designed to support the teaching of digital literacies and spread all over the web. The wiki became my own personal dumping ground to save resources authored by the budding Webmaker community. There were lots of different types of things – presentations, prototypes, blogposts and more – but they all had one thing in common. They were resources that didn’t fit.

They didn’t fit with the things we were putting on webmaker.org, they often didn’t fit in their own project sites. They were bonuses, extras, resources that went above and beyond. They were things that some people found useful, while others did not, and I just kept adding and adding.

As the months went along, the wiki became a bit…unorganized. There were too many things, and it was hard to wade through them and know what you were going to get when you clicked a link (particularly if you weren’t ME). And then came Beatrice. She’s an archivist who is working at Hive HQ in NYC. Read this post, it’s hilarious and awesome. Anyway, Beatrice came along and did a complete reorganization of the wiki. She also wrote up some quick and easy instructions on how to contribute to it. And Sayak helped out by making the wiki look pretty.

There are lots of great resource banks and by cross posting your favorite materials, people can find, remix, reuse and reshare no matter which community they’re participating most heavily in. So I invite you, no matter where you normally share webmaking, creative and digital literacies resources, to start contributing and cross posting to the Mozilla Teach Wiki.

The main thing is Hacktivity Kits are MODULAR. You can rip them apart, remix them, do different constellations of hacktivities. It’s up to you! There are three types of Hacktivities, and they’re ordered based on a specific educational model:

1. Icebreaker – A FUN activity to INTRODUCE the topic of the day.
2. Diving In – A MAKE activity to EXPLAIN tool usage or a procedure.
3. Hands on Hacking – A MAKE activity to EXPLORE all topics and tools.

An event agenda takes the Hacktivities and wraps them with an introduction and a closing at least. An agenda might also include some other things, like a presentation of the sponsors who donated volunteers or the event space. Eventually, the Hacktivity Kits will be full fledged event guides with agendas and logistics and the whole nine yards, but I’m still working on that.

In the meantime, I thought the best way to explain how to run an event and how to integrate a Hacktivity Kit would be to create a Sample Agenda. Now there are no hard and fast rules for running learning events (other than to have fun, of course). Being a workshop leader is hard work! You have to be flexible and respond to your participants needs.

Still, I hope this Sample Agenda helps!

As always, feedback is completely welcome and desired.

Train the Trainer

1. Webmaker Mentors should be offered tailored, blended learning experiences. Opportunities for both online and offline training need to exist, and we should help engaged community members design both.
2. Every Mentor that comes into the community should be able to connect with other like-minded peers and feel supported in their local activities.
3. Mentors should want to and feel empowered to create, remix, and share content, and they should have the opportunity to level up their skills both as webmakers and as mentors.

#ETMOOC

#WebMOOC

Hackable Kits

Resources and Documentation

Related articles

• Webmaker Mentors in 2013 (zythepsary.com)
• Mark Surman: Tinkering together (commonspace.wordpress.com)
• Webmaker/Teach/TrainingDays (wiki.mozilla.org)

Some thoughts on a Webmaker MOOC:

• Obviously, it would be a Maker MOOC – Interestingly, while writing this post, I did a quick search for “Maker MOOC”, which turned into a longer search and then a rather large shock when I realized that the term “Maker MOOC” hasn't been used yet. MOOC Maker was a MOOC about making MOOCs, but that's not what I'm talking about. So I guess I get to define “Maker MOOC”. I'd say it's a MOOC in which participants make stuff centered around their interests (as the name implies).DS106 is a Maker MOOC, and it's an inspiring story. The creators of DS106 were looking at it as an experiment. They wanted to see what would happen if they created a framework for storytelling using new media. They used Twitter to garner participation. They used their networks and existing audience to ask for contributions to the assignment and resource library, which led to participants dumping hundreds of ideas for assignments, and then building off each others ideas. It became a hub of creativity - #DS106 #4life.This shouldn't sound like a new idea, the Mozilla community is based on peers contributing ideas. So the Webmaker MOOC would be just another place where contribution will be key.

• It would be expressly open – I know that everything we do is open, but a Webmaker MOOC would have to be very expressive about that fact so that mentors coming in without any knowledge of Mozilla other than “They build Firefox, right?” understand that not only are their contributions and ideas valuable, they're integral to the success of everything we do. We need to figure out a make centered around the ethos (we've talked about that being missing for people).

• We will have to let go – Once we've figured out an engaging baseline, we'll have to let go. People will use their talents, share their thoughts, and if we try to control the conversation or the makes, we'll be disappointed. There will be no rules, no class hours, no requirements. People will come to learn how to embed webmaking in educational practice, and they'll do that through making.

• Moderation will be key – One of the problems with truly massive MOOCs is that it's very hard to make sure that each and every individual learner is getting the attention they need to motivate them to continue. It won't be possible to moderate a gigantic group single-handedly, but there will need to be a group of people dedicated to checking in, responding, posting, tweeting, retweeting and otherwise spreading the word about the makes. We'll have to work together to ensure that thousands of participants feel like they're being heard.

• We have an audience for this – no need to explain. We have an audience, and we can invite many, many other audiences to join in and become our audience. Using Twitter and some of the MOOC madness hashtags will find us plenty of people who are interested in the story a Webmaker MOOC would share. The one thing I shy away from on this front is creating another new thing for people to join. I'm thinking that we should invigorate some of our preexisting channels with content for mentors and encourage them to feedback into those channels (I'm thinking the Webmaker list and the Webmaker G+ Community).

• We don't know anything – It's really important that we be open to not knowing. We can't anticipate what will come out of a Webmaker MOOC. We can't know if something magical will happen. We just have to try it and see. That was the intention of the ETMOOC and it's exploded into a vibrant community of thinkers having conversations in and around edtech.