Category Archives: Guest Post

Radio Rookies DIY: Educator’s Guide to Teaching Interviewing Skills

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Cross-posted from WNYC Radio Rookies blog:

Rookies DIY: How to do vox pop

The first in a series of videos we’re creating in partnership with the Hive NYC Learning Network, teaches people to produce their own stories using digital media. This animated short, along with the accompanying resources, will help educators teach interviewing skills to students of all ages.

One of the first skills Radio Rookies learn in our workshops is how to conduct interviews with people on the street, aka: “Vox Pop”, short for vox populi, a Latin phrase meaning “voice of the people.”

Approaching total strangers can be very scary, but in this do-it-yourself (DIY) video Radio Rookies graduates give tips and interviewing techniques that will help you be successful at getting people to answer your questions.

Educators can use this video to teach a interviewing skills — you don’t even need recording equipment!

The most important thing to emphasize is that an interview is really a CONVERSATION between two people. 

Here are some suggested activities based on what tools and technology you have access to:

Paper and Pencils:

+ Have students brainstorm a list of questions they’d want to ask each other
+ Role play mock interviews for the class and have students popcorn out praise and suggestions

  • Give your students these tips and tricks for getting a good interview:
  • Be open to possibilities, but prepare questions before you begin.
  • Stay in control of the situation.
  • Introduce yourself and get the interviewee’s name, age (and contact info, if you can).
  • Don’t be afraid to ask someone to repeat something.
  • Ask open-ended questions.  Avoid Yes-or-No questions — they lead to boring answers.
  • Ask for explanations/ follow-up questions.
  • Don’t talk over your interviewee.  Let them finish completely before you jump in with the next question.Don’t be afraid of silence.
  • Try to ask a question several different ways if you’re not getting a good answer.
  • At the end of an interview always ask: “Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to say?” “Do you have any questions for me?”

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Simulating Inequality – P4K Gamers at Hungercraft 2.0

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This is re-posted from the Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program blog, written by Sara Vogel.

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What happens when resources are unequally distributed? Do citizens learn to cooperate and trade? Or is violence inevitable?

Those were some of the questions pondered by Global Kids’ Playing For Keeps youth leaders at Hungercraft 2.0, an event at the Main Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on Saturday, March 30. Using a special world created by Minecraft Edu inspired by the popular books The Hunger Games, they faced off against the teens in Brooklyn Public Library’s T4 program (Today’s Teens, Tomorrow’s Techies).

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Click here for more photos.

In those books, the central Capital region of the nation Panem is flush with opulent wealth and exercises control over the Districts, the outlying, poorer areas. The game Hungercraft imagines Panem 75 years before the first novel took place, when a failed rebellion left the nation devastated. GK’s P4K leaders assumed the role of Capital inhabitants — equipped with stronger building materials and the ability to make food. The T4s became the citizens of District 12, a desolate region with not much to brag about beyond its coal mine.

Both teams began by rebuilding their territories and mining for resources. When Joel Levin, from Minecraft Edu, the creator of the world, turned on the avatars’ health and hunger meters, the struggle to survive began.

Game play was full of surprises. The T4s in District 12 figured out how to make food without the Capital’s resources. The P4Ks in the Capital figured out how to make coal to cook their food without trading. And both teams had stockpiled so many weapons that it seemed like a battle was the only alternative — many students wound up in “limbo,” the place where players take a penalty time out when they die in the game.

During the debrief, participants drew connections between gameplay and current and historical global events. They talked about the fear that had developed once the two sides were labeled as enemies, the lack of communication within and between teams, and the itchy trigger-fingers that resulted from their growing arsenals.

All agreed that video games, when designed well, have the potential to teach us about complex human interactions.

We are grateful for the support provided by the Hive NYC Learning Network to run this program for a second consecutive year. Thanks to Joel Levin and Pat Hough of Minecraft Edu, Jennifer Thompson and Jackson Gomes of BPL. Special thanks to photographer Owen Long of Minecraft Edu for taking the incredible photos of the youth in action.

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.

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