Tag Archives: web literacy skills

A Hivesque Network of Educators

Posted on by
Reply

This is re-posted from Mozillian Laura Hilliger‘s blog, Zythepsary. You can also follow her on Twitter @epilepticrabbit.

This past week Doug and I attended the European Children’s Universities Network‘s conference (co-hosted with SIS Catalyst) #Technucation. Children’s universities, museums, YMCAs and other youth focused groups and organizations make up the very Hivesque EUCU network.

This is a network of over a hundred different organizations all over the world. It’s called the European Children’s Universities Network, but I met educators from Colombia, the United States and Kenya as well. This network shares resources and playtests each other’s ideas. They share and collaborate and navigate the tricky waters of EU funding together. These people enhance children’s lives through engagement and experimentation. They run live events in organizations all over the place. In the serendipity and good fortune that lead the EUCU to the concept of Open Badges, they’ve now been introduced to a much broader concept that they would like to explore, the concept of Web Literacies (and by extension Webmaker).

Misconceptions run rampant in a community of educators that haven’t learned much about the web. I don’t mean that they haven’t learned about the importance of digital literacies in the education of their students. They know that ICT and the responsibilities surrounding its use form more than integral learning objectives for their classrooms. But what they didn’t know is that making the web isn’t as hard as they think it is (in fact, it’s easy). They weren’t entirely aware of the wider implications that surround the open source community. They didn’t know that writing the web is just as important as reading and thinking critically about the web’s content. They are struggling with a variety of questions that they don’t have to struggle with. We, the technologists and educators that make up the Mozilla community, can help them. They are eager and willing to learn. And we can learn from them as well, and we should. Webmaker is in a unique position to narrow the gap between the academic community and the tech community.

Doug and I ran a workshop on Sustainability of the EUCU through badges. And like any Mozilla workshop, we channeled Aspiration guru Gunner for a truly inspirational and participatory experience centered on the needs of the participants. We were so interested in helping the EUCU envision a badges ecosystem for their network, that we hacked our own agenda when we realized that we could help in outlining that ecosystem. We’d planned to introduce them to Webmaker in a more in-depth make session. Of course we introduced Webmaker, but we didn’t demo tools or even click through webmaker.org. We made badges, and I talked about the rest of Webmaker outside the workshop (incessantly over dinner and in combination with the Mozilla Mission, open web, why I love open source. Oh yeah, and how sexy Popcorn is.)

It was in those dinner conversations that I realized that even a seemingly traditional network of educators is looking for the collaborative support and expertise that a community like Mozilla has to offer. The only reason they aren’t busting down our doors is because they don’t know about us yet.

Half the people I talked to didn’t know the name “Mozilla” until I said “Firefox”. And even then, they understood Mozilla as a global tech company, not a non-profit fighting for the good of the web, not a global community of idealistic do-gooders, not people, real people working to spread web literacies and help educators level up their own tech skills.

But I didn’t have to convince anyone that Mozilla cares. I only had to tell the truth. I am Mozilla. We are Mozilla. You can be Mozilla too.

Here, have some Kool Aid.

Related articles

Seeking Educators Who Get the Web

Posted on by
2

On the heels of the successful Mozilla Summer Code Party campaign – nearly 700 events in 80+ countries reaching over 5,000 people – and an all-hands meeting of the MoFo (Mozilla Foundation employee) minds two weeks ago, Mark Surman wrote a post yesterday that outlined what he believes are the key elements that will define and drive the next stage of growth for Webmaker.

Hive NYC embraced the Summer Code Party wholeheartedly, and hosted six events to help activate our ecosystem of educators and youth around the city. From peer-to-peer skillshares with less than 10 teen participants, to a Summer Quest event at the Bronx YMCA with 150+ middle school students, we lit a spark under a growing, local community of webmakers.

Although Summer has come to an end (welcome Fall!) we’re only just getting warmed up. Our members have already started to think about how they can use and remix Mozilla’s tools and project-based approach to coding for interest-based youth learning opportunities.

It’s this trend – educators as evangelists for continued creativity on the web – that Mark points out as integral to Mozilla’s mission.

Educators are also a key audience.

During the last thee months, almost 700 people organized Mozilla Webmaker Summer Code Party events. Whether they gathered 100 people or simply brought a few friends around a kitchen table, these people have played a critical role in getting Mozilla Webmaker off the ground. And they have done so because they care about inspiring and educating others about the creative potential of the web.

Personally, I hadn’t really thought about this group as one of our key audiences before. But clearly they are. These are the first people to ‘get’ what we’re trying to do with Webmaker and to feed back in to help improve it. Like the early adopters who first installed Firefox on other people’s computers, these grassroots educators and evangelists could be the core of our global community. Over the next couple of months, we need to figure out ways to more actively help them and bring them into what we’re building.

Hive is a fundamental building block in this effort moving forward. Our community of activated, innovative educators is the seed for this larger movement of those who recognize the importance of the open web, and want to help others create things they care about while also developing digital/web literacy skills and guiding them towards more opportunities and pathways for growth and success.

To this end, we’re planning a “Hactivate Learning” theme at Mozilla Festival in London in November. There will be learning labs, workshops, discussions and lots of hacking between educators and youth, designers and developers, as we begin to catalyze this larger community of people who want to teach others to harness the creative and open source power of the web. Details are shaping up here, and we hope you’ll be able to join us!

Of course there will be other ways to participate and contribute. Please comment here if you’re interested in becoming a “hactivator” or have thoughts about what we are building. We look forward to webmaking with you!

Building a generation of webmakers: Hive style!

Posted on by
1

I wanted to loop you into a public and thoughtful discussion that we are engaged in with our Mozilla Foundation colleagues about what are essential digital literacies and how we might empower/build/grow webmakers from the youth we serve. Michelle Levesque is tasked with, amongst other things, identifying key web literacy skills that help scaffold our work. In a recent blog post (well not so recent, Michelle is prolific and you should be reading her blog) she described what she is working on and I couldn’t help but see how Hive could help her in the/our work. I emailed her some thoughts, but then also said, “Why not think aloud in public with the Hive folks?” So here is my stab of responding to her task list on where we coud peer-assist. Would love to hear your thoughts about how Hive NYC can contribute.

Michelle’s tasks in bold

My responses are in plain text

Finalize and test the first set of web literacy skills

We would be happy to be a test bed for these when they are in various stages of ready. We could test these in venues with high-skills youth at places like MOUSE, The Institute of Play/Quest to Learn Schools, and Global Kids and more general youth with various skill levels at places like the YMCA, NYC/Brooklyn/Queens Public Library Systems and New York Hall of Science. Is there a way to make this into a fun, digital “test your Web skills” quiz format like you might have taken in magazines?  I just took a cool one in HGTV Magazine (don’t laugh) about knowing your “Home Ownership Score” that was not didactic and taught me a good amount as I acquired new knowledge and skills. This could be a cool way to blast out to youth/professionals in Hive and capture some data in the process. Just a brainstorm.

Help our existing offerings integrate those skills

I am keen on helping to get these skills integrated into the projects that the Hive Digital Media Learning Fund at the NY Community Trust funds. These projects run the gamut from media production and digital art curation to social justice campaigns using social media. I would love to better embed web literacy skills in all of these without altering the essential activities of the projects.

Identify where our offerings fall short in skills we believe people should learn

I think we could help, but no real ideas other then by having the projects Hive members do be studied.

Hive community help me out here!

Develop scaffolding/activation strategy for non-MoFo instructors

This I think the educators/professionals at Hive NYC orgs could be extremely valuable in prototyping, writing and helping think through what these training wheels might be. The Hive education communities are great at low-risk opportunities to test things out and get feedback with. They are more dialed into web literacy theory and practice but still on the front lines about implementing programs and working with youth. They also have the delivery mechanisms to do programming on a faster scale then most institutions, certainly schools.

Develop a community for non-Mofo instructors to share best practices for teaching these skills (“hackable templates”), etc.

Develop a community for the learners (makers)

Help build a compelling story for why people (potential makers and instructors) should care

Develop a set of metrics for measuring success.  And measure it.  Iterate to improve.

This is the reason we’re now a part of Mozilla. I was recently told that Mozilla adding Hive NYC was an attempt to add an existing, activated learning community who were hungry for what MoFo had to offer and had just as much to contribute.