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Webmaker TLDR Update 03.01.13

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This is re-posted from Matt Thompson’s OpenMatt blog:

Webmaker TLDR: cloudmashing, WebLit and goats vs. sheep

TLDR = your summary of what’s happening with Mozilla Webmaker this week, focused on mentors and builders — the community making Webmaker

Prepping for blast-off: Help test sequencing for Popcorn Maker

Dave Humphrey calls it “web media sequencing.”  Jacob calls it “cloudmashing.” We like to think of it as “web-based video editing,” or video editing in the cloud. It lets users weave multiple video and audio clips from across the web into a single experience — then seamlessly publish and share with a click. Like copy and paste for web media.

Help test it out by making your own mash-up

We think sequencing is going to be big. But we need your help testing it first. The Webmaker product folks humbly request you try to make something with it now.  Take one video from You Tube, for example, and layer it on top of another. Tell us what you think.  Is this too hard?  Don’t get the point?  Missing a feature?

  1. Try it out for yourself now. Fire up Popcorn Maker on our development site.
  2. If you find bugs, report ‘em here.
  3. Share what you made. And let us know what you think. Chime in on this thread in the Webmaker newsgroup.

Need inspiration? The web is full of fun:

Help build an open web literacy standard for the world

Their mission: create an open web literacy standard for the world. Following lots of great response on the Webmaker List and other channels, the Web Literacy Standard team is starting a new open community call. Their goal: work with you to launch a beta version at the end of this quarter.

Web Literacy Standard | new community calls. open to all. Thursdays at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT

Get involved

Webmaker metrics presentation

Stats! Stats! Stats! JP and others have established an infrastructure for measuring Webmaker statistics.  This presentation from JP and Ross walks you through it. As of the most recent Webmaker update, we are now tracking:

  1. Number of projects published, deleted, saved, created, and remixed.
  2. Number of user logins, crashes, feedback reports, errors.
  3. More coming soon.

Planet Webmaker round-up:

OpenNews Learing will be a regularly updated section of case studies that dig deep into the thinking, design, ethics and execution of code in journalism, written by the people that know this world best.

Lots from Planet Badges this week:

“As [badges] mature, have the potential to disrupt formal education in a way that none of the technology innovations we’ve seen in the last couple of decades have.”

 

My Expanded Role and Opportunity for Hive

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Photo by REV-

Photo by REV-

As some astute readers of email signatures might have detected, I have a new job title. Starting January 1st I became the Senior Director of the Mozilla Mentor Community. Within the Mozilla context this means I help the team think about how Mozilla looks to grow, seed, work with and convene mentors (educators, teachers, parents, etc) around what it means to teach and learn in a digital age. The Webmaker tools and brand obviously are a part of that, but only a part. We are at our core dedicated to helping people navigate the literacies, pedagogies, practices, issues and opportunities that technology and the web have meant for learning.

But what about Hive you might ask–is this my exit post? I can answer that with an emphatic NO. Hive NYC and the Hive Learning Network idea sit firmly in the conceptual center of the work.

I’d like to thank those of you involved in Hive NYC for being so awesome. You have taken this thing Mozilla wasn’t quite sure what or why it acquired 18 months ago and made it the bedrock for how they see the opportunity to impact the world. The plan is that Hive NYC will contribute to and draw from this larger, global community. Already, Hive has expanded to Pittsburgh (more details on that to come) and is set to launch in various stages in Toronto, London, Athens, the Bay Area and Berlin. That doesn’t even catalog the locales who are thinking, planning and asking for Hive in their city. Hive NYC is the example, it is the flagship…and the results of our efforts led to this grander desire to scale the model globally so that’s on YOU!

So what does this mean? It means that our work is more connected, more people are paying attention and it means this is a platform. It means growth. It means that I may be less involved with some daily operations of Hive NYC, but I am still a Hiver and continue to be committed to its growth and success. It means in addition to Leah Gilliam and Lainie DeCoursy, our team expands to include awesome Mozilla staff like Laura Hilliger (who some of you know through StoryCamp) and Michelle Thorne (who has made MozFest the can’t-miss tech event of the year) as well as colleagues in the leadership of additional Hives who are now forming a stewardship group to guide the global Hive Learning Network movement while also creating better pathways for cross-city collaboration.

Over the next few weeks I will be using this space to publish some of this thinking in more detail. I need the Hive Mind on this with me. I need your feedback/pushback/additions and subtractions. I need your good ideas and your madcap schemes. I need the cacophony of energy that is Hive so that we can continue to do what networks do: expand, add nodes that create hubs that produce flurries and blurts of energy while they also methodically work to impact an ever-expanding landscape. To quote from Obama’s recent inaugural address:

“For we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together.”

Is it to grandiose to think that might apply to us and the work we do? It is my hope that Hive and Mozilla can give us the infrastructure and platform to operationalize the President’s call-to-action.

Senior Insight Regarding How Kids Learn Today

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The excerpt below is a reflection by a senior involved in the Intergenerational Media Literacy Program, a Hive Fund-supported project run by The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project), OATS (Older Adults Technology Services) and the Museum of Moving Image. Thirty teens and thirty seniors met throughout the fall of 2012 to talk back against ageist stereotypes in media by analyzing and remixing commercials that subtly promote the image of seniors as being weak, out-of-touch, unintelligent and more.

The program involved a series of workshops. First, the Museum of the Moving Image curated commercials and excerpts from television shows with depictions of seniors. Then, in pairs (one senior and one teen), they ‘broke’ at least one commercial using iMovie, inserting critical statements about how they saw senior stereotypes being used and exploited. They also posted reflections and insights throughout the process on this Tumblr.

As one participant stated:

We started working with iMovie, which I’ve never used before. I was expecting a group, formal lesson on the software but there was none. I was surprised, then realized that the young people are to be our tutors. We are going to be learning technology the way I imagine they do—from friends, shoulder-to-shoulder, informally. I always see groups of young people huddled around their gadgets, spreading knowledge within the pack.

The young program participants are familiar with the software program but they don’t know everything. It doesn’t faze them a bit! They all just jump in, start clicking, looking around confidently until they find how to do something. They are used to this method of learning. They have no fear. I think we seniors don’t have that habit of just clicking around to explore. I think most of us are afraid of getting stuck in some kind of trouble, and that holds us back. I resolve to try to be more daring with software. I am going to try to utilize the “exploratory clicking” method more.

The learning definitely was a two-way street. I may not know how to get started with iMovie, but I do know how to explain to a young person why the ageism jokes could be hurtful. The concept was completely new to my partner; I saw the lightbulb turn on.

One team also produced a documentary about the program and the process. Program participants and their families will have an opportunity to see the documentary and the final video remix projects at a special screening at The Museum of the Moving Image on Dec. 14th.

Here’s one example of their work:

We’d love to hear more examples about your “two-way street” learning experiences. Tell us about them in comments below!