Category Archives: Resources

5 Ways to Teach and Share on Webmaker.org

Posted on by
1
This is re-posted from the Webmaker blog.

Maker Party Valero with Mark Surman

Earlier this month, we invited you to teach and share using our new Teaching Kit templates on webmaker.org. The goal: make it easy for educators, mentors and techies around the world to share creative ways for teaching web skills, digital literacy and making.

Here’s five creative ways our community are using the new kits:

1) Teach web skills by making something fun
That’s what Christina Cantrill‘s great new teaching kit does. Christina and her colleagues at the National Writing Project have assembled a unit full of fun activities that explore what memes are and how they work. They then encourage students to dig deeper, tracing the origin of the meme concept to Richard Dawkins’ theories of cultural knowledge and the first-ever “lolcat” photos — dating back to the 1870s!

Teaching Kit examples.002

2) Train the trainers
Michelle Thorne made this teaching kit as a step-by-step guide for training other facilitators and mentors. She tested it out at a training event in Bangalore. You can remix and share it to train other facilitators, mentors and coaches for your next webmaking event or hack jam.

Teaching Kit examples.001

3) Introduce the basics of exploring, building and navigating the web
Doug Walters created this teaching kit for an adult education course. Borrowing from the Web Literacy Standard, it links through to several individual activities to create a larger overall unit and lesson plan.

Teaching Kit examples.003

4) Explore online privacy issues
Karen Smith, Patrick Wade and the Our Privacy Matters team have been developing a whole series of teaching activities around online privacy. Using an online documentary as starting point, their kits explore youth, identity, and online sociability. Karen is also going to be working with university students to develop a whole series of their own teaching kits this fall.

Teaching Kit examples.004

5) Send learners on a trip to Mars
This kit (still a work in progress) will introduces learners to free 3D resources they can use to build their own “Mission to Mars” experience. Created by Cizzle, one of the winners from the Mozilla Ignite program, their kit is a great example of how baseline themes in Thimble can be remixed to create something that looks and feels totally unique.

Teaching Kit examples.005

Make and share your own Teaching Kit

  1. Get started here. Choose a template and start remixing to add your own content.
  2. Have a look at examples. See what others are doing. Or if you see something you like, just hit the “remix” button to customize or adapt it.
  3. Stuck? Have a look at these tips and tricks. Or get in touch with OpenMatt or Laura — we’re here to help!
Teaching kit overview

These new templates make it easy to share lesson plans and learning activities

Teach the Web: Create Your Own Teaching Kit on Webmaker.org

Posted on by
1

This is re-posted from the Webmaker blog.

How do *you* teach the web?
How are you teaching digital skills, web literacy and making? What are your favorite learning activities, lesson plans and resources? What’s working well for you at Maker Parties, hack jams and in the classroom?

We’d love to learn from your success — and help you share it with others. To that end, we’ve got some new teaching kit templates at Webmaker.org that we hope will make it easy and fun. We’d love for you to…

  1. Try out the new templates. Just edit the HTML in Thimble to create your own personalized teaching kit. You can include things like learning objectives, an agenda, discussion questions and more.
  2. Have a look at some fresh examples of what other mentors are creating.
  3. Give feedback. Share ideas with our community on how to make the new templates better.

Kit template

Teaching and sharing with others around the world

When you’re done, you’ll come away with a nice-looking web page and personalized link you can share anywhere — including with other mentors around the world who want to benefit from your work.

The big idea: make it easy for you and our global community to share teaching activities, lesson plans and educational resources for webmaking. Together, we can create an awesome free and open collection of resources anyone can use to teach the web — backed by a growing Web Literacy Standard.

TechKim media stereotypes.001

TechKim created this teaching kit as a way to introduce Girl Scouts to hack jams. What do you want to teach?
Throughout September, we’ll be reaching out to teachers, informal educators, Hive members, Maker Party participants, Mozilla Reps and makers to teach and share together.

Here’s how to get involved:

Next up: sharing the best new teaching kits being created each week. We’ll be blogging and tweeting about your work as it comes in, so keep watching!

Q&A with the NYC Makery

Posted on by
Reply

This is re-posted from the Webmaker blog.

We love discovering Maker Party events that focus on innovative learning in the community and the NYC Makery pop-up makerspace really caught our eye.  Part shop and part workshop, this pop-up makerspace welcomes individuals to stop in to play and make with technology. They also run workshops on a variety of topics including 3D printing, flight and aerial photography, making your own audio speakers, toy hacking, game design, building an Arduino controlled gardening system and more.

The Makery Pop-up Space

The NYC Makery Pop-up Space

We had the chance to sit down with the co-founder of the NYC Makery, Hsing Wei, to ask her a few questions:

What is the NYC Makery?

The NYC Makery is a pop-up makerspace – part shop & part workshop.  A movable and temporary venue where youth and adults are encouraged to be curious, to tinker, to experiment, and to make with technology.  We transform art galleries, storefronts, and street spaces into pop-up community makerspaces where communities can gather to play with the creative power of digital design and fabrication, physical computing, and computer programming.

Why are you hosting this event?

While the NYC Makery has no permanent space…yet, we aim through a series of pop-up makerspaces, to experiment and design new experiences and workshops that explore the joy and power of making with technology.  This is one of our many on-going pop-up makerspaces.

Why is it important for youth and adults to make things with technology?

If you have a few minutes, watch this TEDx Talk and this short film about making Makerspaces and inspiring STEAM (learning in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math).

What is it like to be a mentor at events like this?

Everyone is given the space to try on their own and help each other out.

Inside the Makery Pop-up Space

Inside the Makery Pop-up Space

What is the feedback you usually get from people who attend your pop-up events?

Usually smiles, “ohhs” and satisfaction from figuring out and creating something.

Why is it important for people and organizations to get involved in Maker Party?

It’s always helpful to be a part of a community of people teaching and learning new skills.

Tell us what you’re most excited for at the event?

The people…the surprises as we make…a backyard to try launching devices…everything!

Get Involved: