Category Archives: Badges

Webmaking as Connected Learning

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This is re-posted from Matt Thompson’s blog.

Connected Learning wants to revolutionize the way people learn. How can Webmaker be a part of that movement?

Connected Learning: A New Synthesis Report Blog Image

These new resources on Connected Learning are highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the future of education and “learning by making.” As Mimi Ito’s accompanying post explains, the Connected Learning Research Network has tested their hypotheses with a series of case studies, design experiments and a national survey — all culminating in a new report synthesizing the latest theory and research.

What is Connected Learning?

(paraphrasing from the report’s introduction)

  • pursuing an interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults
  • in ways that are socially embedded and oriented toward educational, economic or political opportunity
  • linked back to academic achievement, career success and civic engagement

What is Webmaker?

  • digital literacy through interest-driven making. empowering people with skills to build the web (and world) we want.
  • pursuing an interest or passion with the support of friends and mentors
  • linked back to achievement, career opportunities and civic engagement through badges

Connected Learning & Webmaker share…

  • Principles: Interest-powered. Peer-supported. Learning by making.
  • Design: Open. Production-centered. Shared purpose.
  • Values: Equity. Social connection. Full participation.

Webmaker as Connected Learning: 5 community stories

Here are five examples of how Webmaker’s first year experimented with bringing connected learning principles into practice, told from the perspective of of real community members:

  1. UNATTI — Interest-based making through openly networked learning events
  2. ZAINAB — From maker to youth mentor to career paths
  3. EMMA — Adult mentorship and youth-run projects
  4. JON — Mixing physical making with digital making. Spurring social innovation in product design
  5. MEREDITH — Talking back to TV: challenging media stereotypes through webmaking

1) UNNATI

code party

“i taught my parents! my brother and also few of my friends in school…..

here is  a thimble web page my father made….

My father is a coder now!!:)

My Mother too!!!”

  • Unnati is a 13-year-old from Erode, India. Last summer she signed up to take part in an openly networked, community-powered learning event called the  Summer Code Party.
  • When no one signed up for the event she wanted to organize in her town, she wrote to the Webmaker community asking for help.

Mentor-powered learning through digital making

  • Gauthamraj Elango, a 21-year-old volunteer Mozilla Rep, saw Unnatti’s message and decided to help, using Webmaker tools and community.
  • Gauthamraj picked webmaking projects geared to Unnati’s interests, beginning with a multimedia storytelling project called “Inanimate Alice,” showing her how to remix it using Webmaker tools like Thimble and Popcorn.

My love for web started with the Inanimate Alice Project.I loved it but it wasn’t a cake walk….i got stuck somewhere in the middle…and to help me Alice sent me Help!

  • With the help of her mentor, Unnati was quickly able to start making her own web pages and projects. These grew her confidence in digital skills like HTML and video remix, and gave her something fun to share with her family and friends.
  • Unnati was then able to bring her new skills into the classroom, creating a web page exhibit for social studies on the role of technology in education.
  • This lead to interest from her teachers and classmates. Unnati organized her own code party events at school, teaching her fellow students and later her parents.

ma and me!

Building social support for new interests

  • Unnati now identifies as a “proud webmaker,” and has become an active part of new community-led projects like Gen Open (see below). This provides ongoing social support for her new interest in digital making and the web.
  • She also advocates taking an interest-based approach to helping others like her gain digital skills, building off popular interest in music, for example.

One day I was watching a video based on the Popcorn project… it said the project was made to attract kids who love Film making to come and learn some code…. and I thought that was a great idea…And that we could apply the same idea for people who love music…. there are millions who love music… I am a music lover myself! :)

2) ZAINAB

Technology isn’t something I really expressed an interest in until recently. Gradually, I started getting into creating and designing technology, which led to webmaking.

  • Zainab is a 16-year-old high school junior in NYC, and a member of her school’s “MOUSE Squad,” a tech literacy program and member of the Hive NYC learning network.
  • Zainab participated in a series of Summer Code Parties last summer, from small  skill-shares with other Hive network teens to larger hack jams.
  • As part of that process, Zainab began running “train the trainer”-style events, showing other youth facilitators how to use the Webmaker “X-Ray Goggles” for workshops with middle school students after school.

Earlier this year, I was trained on how to use and teach others about X-Ray Goggles…. This was when I first started thinking about how to not only use the web, but to start making the web. From then on, I just basically started grabbing every opportunity I could to develop and gather more skills as a webmaker.

Social advocacy through webmaking

  • Zainab also used Webmaker’s Thimble to create her own social advocacy project for other youth.
  • Her “Take a Stand” template makes it easy for youth to create their own web page about a social issue or cause they care about, learning digital skills as they go.

I was motivated by the documentary “Bully,” and the purpose of my web project is for people to take a stand and make an impact on an issue that they really care about by creating a simple web page about it.

From mentorship to educational and career opportunities

  • Zainab wrote about her experiences on Huffington Post in posts titled “Don’t Be A User, Be a Maker” and “On Becoming A Hacker.”
  • Her longer-term goal: study electrical and computer engineering at MIT.
  • Webmaker and Hive have provided her with resources to help level up her skills, plus practical leadership experience and references that can help.

Some people might argue that it is not important to learn things like HTML and CSS, but in a world where we are being introduced to new technology every day, it’s a part of your world and you don’t want to be blind to what’s going on in your environment.

Continue reading →

Y-MVP Pilot Kicks Off!

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This is a guest post by Maibe Ponet, Senior Director of Digital Fitness Innovation at the YMCA of Greater New York.

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The much-anticipated (at least by us!) Y-MVP pilot program is finally up and running. We kicked off this digital-based teen fitness venture on April 27—the day YMCAs across the US celebrate Healthy Kids Day.

Y-MVP —which strives to create many young valuable players, but stands for Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity— is now being tested at two YMCA branches in the city: the Bedford-Stuyvesant Y in Brooklyn, and the Harlem Y in Manhattan.

Quick refresher: Y-MVP is a fitness app created for teenagers that participate in YMCA programs. The app, being developed by Learning Times, incorporates game elements such as badges, leaderboard, timeline and social media sharing to excite users about being physically active, and with that drive behavioral change to increase physical activity levels.

Nearly 60 teens signed up to Y-MVP the day of the kick off, which means that they logged in to Y-MVP for the first time, received an introduction to the program and were invited to participate. Since then, our staff has been furiously working on user engagement, making sure that all teens that visit our branches for fitness or non-fitness purposes know about and try out the program.

In this eight-week pilot, we are capturing data on a range of topics including physical activity levels, perceptions of Y fitness programs, social media and badges. This data is of interest for the YMCA, and our supporters Hive Digital Media Learning Fund and the Aetna Foundation.

Above are a few photos of the kick-off event. They show activities at both branches, our interactive kiosks and some of the promotional materials we’ve created to support implementation. We also had performers from Hip Hop Public Health with us, helping us get teens excited and moving.

If you happen to visit the Harlem or Bed-Stuy YMCAs in the next two months and see our kiosks, please send comments or impressions our way.

Stay active and healthy!

Related reading:
Can Digital Media Move Teens Off the Couch? by Maibe Ponet

Hive Fashion House

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Hive Fashion LogoHive Fashion House recently hosted two fabulous Curate. Style. Capture. workshops for youth at Chicago’s YOUmedia teen space in the Harold Washington Library Center and at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Studio in NYC. Both events were led by Hive Fashion Mentors Cheryl Pope & Avri Coleman and focused on a series of design challenges for the youth participants:

  • Figure Freestyle (Chicago only)—youth select and wear garments on their body in any way they choose, except as the garments were meant to be worn.

  • Dress-Form Freestyle—creatively pin button-down shirts or other garments on professional dress forms with no restrictions.

  • Focus—borrow inspiration from a photograph to recreate the ideas in unique designs on the dress forms, again with button-down shirts or other articles of found clothing.

  • Reflect—share your final designs and describe the decisions that brought the creative ideas to life.

    Hive Fashion House at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC

Hive Fashion Mentors made an assortment of clothing and fabric available for the participants, and in teams, the teens had to select and style the garments to reflect a given theme (e.g. “rebellious,” “creative,” “statuesque”). The youth were then asked to step back and reflect on their experience. They photographed their looks in a professional studio-like setting and one person from each team documented the process and provided live blog updates.

They explored design and sculptural concepts like draping, how to create volume in a garment, and how to add surface treatments like embellishments or color to transform the look. They also were encouraged to look at (and photograph) their garments from all directions, to examine materials in unconventional ways, and to be aware that small actions could yield big impact.

When creating looks based on nature and architectural images, they paid close attention to shape, structure, line, color, scene, temperature and character, and considered how professional designers find inspiration for their own designs. In their reflections of these looks, having the images really seemed to help them articulate their designs in a way that was different from explaining their free-form looks. It gave them a point of inspiration and meaning through which they could visualize and hone their ideas.

Digital and analog badges were issued at both events to recognize that these events were more than just fun, but that the teens also gained new skills, from collaboration to creative design!

The events were a huge success. Special thanks to the teens from Hive NYC and Hive Chicago, including YMCA and Cooper-Hewitt in NYC and YOUmedia and Street-Level in Chicago.