Tag Archives: webmakers

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 →

Building the Hive NYC Learning Network Archives

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Dear Hive NYC Learning Network,

Did you hear that Hive HQ hired an Archivist? You may be asking yourself, Arch-WHAT?

Are you picturing something like this? Three levels below ground. A musty odor. Floor-to-ceiling steel shelves filled with stacks of papers and files accumulated over many lifetimes. And somewhere in those piles, if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a document that unlocks a mystery from the past…

man in paper archives

Image via elizabeth-inkyhands.blogspot.com/2012/03/in-archive-fever-derrida-suggests-that.html

Well, archives have come a long way in the digital age. But at its core and via whatever platform, an archives is still about the collection, preservation, organization, and access of information and records.

As the Archivist/Historian of Hive NYC Learning Network, my job is to set up the systems and guidelines for us—Hive NYC Learning Network member organizations and partners, Hive NYC HQ, The New York Community Trust, Hive Digital Media and Learning Fund, youth educators, youth participants—to collaboratively build the archives to better share the story of Hive NYC.

When I think of documenting Hive NYC’s past and present, I picture a set of living documents on project methods, materials, and outcomes that can be used and shared…

HiveNYC Archives 2-2

Through the collection and organization of records (grant proposals, final reports), media assets (photos of youth programs, videos of youth work, digital curriculum), ephemera (flyers, post-its) and narrated memories (meet-ups, share-outs), we can map out and make accessible a multimedia narrative of the Hive NYC Learning Network community that shows who we are, what we do, where we’ve been and where we are, in the hopes that it will help us make informed decisions about where we would like to go.

The innovative model of the Hive Learning Networks means that the narrative is non-linear, non-traditional and features many players, connections and environments. The “how” of each Hive project is just as critical to the narrative as the finished product. Most importantly, crafting this evolving story is an ongoing and interactive endeavor co-authored by each of you.

Student work from New York Hall of Science’s Collection, Construction and Change, one of the earliest Hive NYC Learning Network projects.

Student work from New York Hall of Science’s Collection, Construction and Change (C3) an early Hive NYC Learning Network project.

I am working to ensure that this shared authorship will be useful and meaningful to you as you continue the amazing work you do with youth on digital media learning. This sharing and transfer of your knowledge will allow other members in the network to learn from you, build on that knowledge and remix it for the needs of the youth they serve, then pay it forward by sharing/resharing that knowledge.

If you have Hive NYC Learning Network documents, best practices, or reflections collecting dust somewhere, send them over to hivenycarchives@gmail.com!

Thou shalt not let the Hive NYC Learning Network Archives collect dust on your digital shelf.

Here are a few snapshots of the Hive NYC Learning Network story based on the contributions you’ve already made to the Hive NYC Archives thus far.

A quick by-the numbers guide to Hive Digital Media Learning Fund grants:

HiveNYC Archives 3

How are we connected? Here’s a map showing Hive NYC Learning Networks’s project partnerships:

HiveNYC Archives 4

Check out all of the connections you’ve already made within the 40 member organizations of Hive NYC Learning Network! These don’t even include the connections forged among the partner organizations of the lead grantee.

Think about all the exchange of information, ideas and knowledge that occurred during those (seemingly endless) planning meetings, educator debriefs, youth workshops, evaluations, culminating events, etc.

The Hive NYC Learning Network Archives is the first step in documenting and putting all of these assets— created and tested by you, your peers and your youth—out in the open. We’re building a living and accessible archives, so sharing your materials and your process while your project unfolds is key. The final version of a curriculum is great, but when I get to read and share an early iteration and a final version, the learning value amplifies.

Zoom out of NYC for a moment, and you’ll be able to find similar networks in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Toronto with many more set to launch in the near future. Remember Chris Lawrence’s post on the Mozilla Mentor Community and Michelle Thorne and Laura Hilliger’s post on Mozilla Webmaker Mentors?

Your and your youth’s experience, ideas and knowledge of teaching, learning and making in a digital age will help inform this ecosystem and provide concrete examples of what this work looks like on the ground— in local and relevant contexts. Boom, your sphere of influence just got global. Just last week, educators from Athens, Greece, looking to develop a Hive Athens, requested archival materials on museum-based Hive NYC Learning Network projects so in order to figure out how best to develop collaborations with Greek museums.

From your documentation of Hive NYC projects thus far, you’re already begun to mentor a new Hive community across the pond. But this is only the beginning! As mentors of Hive Learning Networks, how can we share, reflect and document our knowledge and experience of each project in a way that would be meaningful to other people and organizations who care about connected learning?

The Mozilla team is building the infrastructure and scaling a DIY instructable for youth, but you hold the content, be it a curriculum on filmmaking, ways to retain youth engagement in their projects, or strategies to strike the balance between youth-driven interests and best practices in youth development. And you know, content is king.

The Hive NYC Learning Network Archives is a work-in-progress and it ought to be relevant to you on a day-to-day, as well as on a “big picture” basis. While this post is mostly about the creation and sharing of your content, the archives and its larger contexts of Connected Learning and the Mozilla Mentor Community, also strives to facilitate your learning and making around innovative education practices. So please do share your thoughts, your ideas and suggestions will help make the archives relevant and applicable to you, the users.

Stay tuned for some Hive NYC-style DIY archiving.

Yours Truly,
B

Beatrice Chen is Hive NYC’s Archivist/Historian. This is her first post!

Seeking Educators Who Get the Web

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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!