The idea is to run events that train people who go on to train others how to teach the web. We focused on practicing an open and participatory ethos, adapting lesson plans, and facilitating events.

This is a post to share what we did and encourage people in designing their own train-the-trainer events.

How to run a Webmaker Train the Trainer

Our prototype, the Reps Training Days, ran for four days in Athens, Greece with 40 Reps from around the world. The agenda was based on Laura Hilliger’s research and insights on successful TTT program and on Allen Gunn’s participatory event methodology. It was made possible by the amazing Mozilla Greek community.

Our participants were Mozilla Reps, a fantastic ambassador program with some of the most active and thoughtful Mozillians. Reps have been early adopters and innovators with Webmaker. They organized nearly 50 events during last year’s Summer Code Party and are leading the way in developing tools, tutorials, and localization for Webmaker. It seemed like a natural fit to run our first TTT with them.

1. Participate in a Webmaker event

The first day of Training Days was spent observing and participating in a Hive Pop-Up, organized by Hive Athens. This was an opportunity for the participants to experience a webmaker event firsthand, to see the tools and activities in action, to learn about the logistics, and to understand the vibe.

We then circled up to discuss what we saw. Participants shared their reflections on what worked well at the pop-up and what they would change if they did their own.

2. Build the training agenda

Then we opened up the training days properly. While we had topics in mind we wanted to hack on together, it was more important that everyone in the room thought about what they want to learn or discuss. So we had an agenda brainstorm.

To do this: we split into groups for 3 people. On post-it notes, we wrote down topics. 1 topic per post-it and the encouragement to write it as concretely as possible.

Then everyone pasted the notes on the wall. We read them all and then clustered them by themes. This collaborative board formed both critical event documentation as well as agenda fodder for the coming days.

3. Teach someone something

To warm up to the idea of teaching, we then got into pairs. The task: teach someone something in 5 minutes.

One person would go and then switch. Even if you knew what was being taught, you were encouraged to play a good learner, asking good questions and prompting the teacher.

After this exercise, we circled up and discussed what we observed from this experience. For many, it was a great way to think about how to explain something clearly, using metaphors and knowledge building blocks. It helped bring people into a teaching mindset.

4. Make a learner profile

Now that we’ve been thinking about teachers and learners, we made small groups and hacked together a learner’s profile.

This goal of this activity was to think about who our learners are. We used Webmaker tools to make these profiles, which was also a fun, maker-y way to be introduced to these tools. Participants were encouraged to think about real people they want to teach.

5. Hack an event invitation

After we’ve made our learner profiles, we thought about the kind of event we wanted to run. Most of the participants have already organized Webmaker events in the past, so there was already some familiarity with the format.

Nevertheless, it was helpful to hack together an event invitation. The idea was to think about your target learner and to make an invitation that would speak to them. Again, we used Webmaker tools to quickly pull these invitations together on the web.

6. Deep dive into lesson plans

With a learner profile, an event invitation and some familiarity with Webmaker tools, we then introduced the hackable kits. These are remixable lesson plans that help mentors, trainers, etc. to teach the web. The idea is that they are adaptable to different contexts and that people can share new ways of teaching in a shared format.

Participants poked around in the kits and asked questions. We also did some fun icebreakers so they could see the activities in action and get some energy going.

7. Playtest lesson plans

Now came the fun part. We had to plan for a real live event the next day. So participants got into groups of five with one group facilitator.

They had to design a four-hour agenda for local youth. Using three recommended activities from the kits, they adapted the lesson plans. Then they walked through a script for the next day, including having people role-play as learners. It was a lot of fun to see and a great way to prepare for the big day.

8. Put training to practice at a live event

So with some nervousness, we got ready for the live event. About a hundred youth were coming. We split into different rooms, each group of five trainers getting about 20 learners.

While there were the inevitable challenges (the internet is down! one kid won’t listen!), the Reps did a terrific job. They rolled with their scripts, adapting them as they saw what was working. They also taught well in smaller pairs with their learners, sometimes adding new challenges or tools to fit their needs.

It was a beautiful and fun thing to see. All the training the days before paid off: the youth had a lot of fun and so did we.

9. Reflect on event, lessons learned and where from here

We ended the event with a closing circle. We talked about what we saw that day, what worked well, what didn’t. We each shared one thing we appreciated about the experience, and what we’re excited about doing next.

With that, we headed out into the city to enjoy the day and the rest of our time together.

10. Go forth and teach!

Each participant left the Training Days with a local plan. It was a short list of possible collaborators in their hometown, a date for a small team huddle to bring those people together, and then a date for a larger Webmaker event to organize with their new collaborators.

We also started interest groups in topics like localization and offline tools. And now, a few months later, the participants from Training Days are now “Webmaker Super Mentors”, mentoring people in an online course to learn how to teach the web.

In the coming months, we hope to keep remixing and improving these agendas, as well as work with people who are interested in TTT in their own cities or communities.

Let us know if you’d like to get involved! #teachtheweb

Last month I was kindly invited by Supermarkt’s founder and curator, Ela Kagel, to speak about my perspective as a woman in Berlin’s media + tech scene. We were asked to share our influences, mentors and key life moments that shaped who we are.

The talk was part of an event called Berlin’s Media Art Community: A Female Perspective with ten female speakers.

Despite this large female contingent, and in a city where the workforce is generally evenly distributed, it is at odds that the theoretical discourse on media art and net activism, executive roles and directorships, as well panelists and participants at events and festivals, are still male-dominated. In a forward-thinking city like Berlin, this ongoing gap should be addressed so that the wider fields of media arts and activism are fully inclusive of the multitude of female skills and viewpoints on offer.

I quite enjoyed hearing the journeys of the fellow speakers, as well as the lively discussion afterwards. (What does feminism mean today? Is gender equality about an attitude or are there systemic forces that need changing? And “If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution!”)

In particular, it was interesting to reflect and share what moments I found pivotal in my life and to learn about the motivations in other women’s lives.

Here are the slides and notes from my talk.

Soccer

We were asked to discuss what motivates us, who supported us and what were decisive moments in our career. I suppose like most journeys, mine started before my adult career. For me, the most influential activity growing up was playing soccer

From age 5 til now, I played a lot of soccer. And it’s biggest lessons to me were 1) team work and 2) confidence. Team work was hugely important in the adult world, and soccer helped you understand how each person plays their role, and how it comes together to something greater than it’s individual parts.

Soccer gave me that collaborative, psychological framework — and also physical confidence. A lot of young women have body issues. But what I loved about sports was how it made you feel confident and powerful in your body. Soccer showed me another kind of aesthetic. One that emphasized athleticism, strength and its own kind of sexiness.

This is Brandi Chastain, who scored the winning goal in the Women’s World Cup in 1999. There’s a beauty in her confidence, in her joy and accomplishment. Watching this moment live on TV made me want to be like her, to celebrate with her + her team.

So as I grew up, I kept playing. Even when I was the only woman on the team. I learned not to question why I was there. I learned that if I wanted to play, I had to be confident in who I was and that I belong on the field just as much as the guys.

Liberal Arts

Beyond just playing, I learned about encouraging other women to get on the field, and to celebrate them when they did well. I attended Mt. Holyoke College, a women’s liberal arts college in New England. It focuses on a generalist’s education, on interdisciplinary thinking. And socially, it really taught me about being supportive and inclusive.

It was a bit over the top, but the women there were so committed to helping each other. At every public event or class, you’d have someone shout “Go, girl!” and cheer each other. Of course there was competition, but the goal was not to discredit or undermine other women, but to celebrate each other’s successes. If felt like if we supported one another, there would be more successful women in the world. And that means there will be a better, more equal society.

Academically, at college there was one professor who was particularly inspiring. Prof. Hartley taught a survey course on the Great Books, reading things like Dante, Plato, and Descartes. We live in an era where the Western Canon is heavily criticized but the original works are seldom ever read. Prof. Hartley encouraged us to read the source material, to build up an historical foundation that we could respond to — and to understand how these thinkers shaped our world today.

The Great Books show us that we’re not the first generation to face deep change — be it technological, social or otherwise. And reading these books, freely and uninhibitedly, should not only be a right, but an intellectual need for humankind. And having access to source material is essential for our education, discourse and self-improvement.

Free Culture

From there, ideologically, it was an easy step to understand why Free Culture is necessary. Around the time I graduated, Lawrence Lessig, prof. at Standford, founded the non-profit Creative Commons. It’s a movement dedicated to making cultural works more accessible, more reusable with legal tools. Lessig was a philosophical mentor. And his arguments about Free Culture won me over so I began working for his organization, Creative Commons.

Working at CC was a huge opportunity to meet a tribe. A globally distributed group of people fighting for the same cause. A tribe that understood the value of collaboration and access to knowledge. But nevertheless, then as now, I would often find myself the only woman in the room.

That’s why I appreciate efforts like tonight’s event. Let’s get more women on the field and encourage them to keep playing. Let’s celebrate their successes together.

And especially here in Berlin, with people like you, we can make shape the world to our values. More free, more open, more participatory. More equal. I’m looking forward to learning from you all tonight and seeing what we can grow together. Thanks for listening!

Today we officially kicked off #teachtheweb, a massive open online course (“MOOC”) dedicated to helping people teach the web. It’s convening nearly 3,000 participants to share their practice, teaching materials and to learn and hack on the way.

A huge shout-out goes to Laura Hilliger, fellow MOOC conspirator, for her leadership and savvy to pull this together! And to the Webmaker Mentor team for the wisdom and support.

Here are a few lessons from the course worth highlighting so far.

The Makes

We’re firm believers that you learn best by making.

That’s why there’s no formal instruction or lecturing in this course. Instead, each week we share a prompt that you can respond to with a “make”.

To start, we invited participants to:

Introduce yourself Webmaker style by using Popcorn Maker, Thimble or the X-Ray Goggles and share your make with #teachtheweb.

Already there are loads of great hacks from the community. And in this way, people both learn how to use the tools and mess around with code, and they can also express themselves creatively while getting to know one another.

Check out some of them:

The Study Groups

The other thing about MOOCs is that they are massive. And fire-hose-y. There’s a lot of information on a lot of channels with a lot of people.

So one way we’re mitigating that is with study groups.

Groups are formed based on:

• interests: like toymaking, libraries, or mobile HTML
• language: like French, German and Spanish
• geography: like Webmakers in the UK, Indonesia, and the Balkans.

We also encourage people to organize physical meet-ups, so they can connect with fellow learners and build a local network.

And if they don’t see a group on a topic they care about, it’s all hackable. So they can go in and add one!

The Chatter

The communication channels of the MOOC can be quite overwhelming. We’re trying to meet people where they are, while also playing to the strengths of different tools.

So far, the most important channels are:

• the Google Plus community
• the #teachtheweb hashtag on Twitter
• and the Teach the Web website itself

We made this diagram to help explain how the channels work together and definitely welcome feedback on how to improve them!

The Super Mentors

The people that really make this course run are the Webmaker Super Mentors.

These are passionate people experienced in teaching the web, running events and/or creating teaching materials.

The Super Mentors are:

• shaping the course each week by developing and giving feedback on the curriculum
• leading study groups and surfacing great makes and conversations for the larger group
• providing tech support
• and in general being warm and friendly faces in the course

It’s been so inspiring working with these 90+ Super Mentors so far. It feels like they’re really the heart and soul of Webmaker.

Keep Learning

As a MOOC facilitator, I’m really learning a lot about helping people online and encouraging learning & making. Simplification is key, as is emphasizing how the experience is flexible and adaptable to participants’ needs.

I’m also keen to learn from legendary MOOC facilitators like Philipp Schmidt and Mitch Resnick from MIT’s Learning Creative Learning and other online learning experiences like #etmooc.

If you’re interested in joining the #teachtheweb experiment, hop onto our G+ community and follow the #teachtheweb hashtag!

Too often at team meetings there’s a lot of yakking and not much hacking. So we decided to run the week like scrum and focus all our tasks as clear “makes”, i.e. concrete things we can produce and ship.

Here’s our task board. Ooo! So many post-its.

Big things lie ahead, so our mind meld this week is an effort to finalize plans and sort out details for how we’ll continue building the Mentor community. We’re offering training, developing new content, designing badges, and formalizing ways to make it easy for people to connect and to showcase the successes and inspiring stories that result.

Of course, conversations stray into other, more colorful topics. Like which Dungeons and Dragons characters we like to play (OH: “When I’m feeling sexy, I like to be an elf. When I’m realistic, I play a dwarf.”) Or an existential debate after seeing this near-endless scroll of all the people in the world.

We’ve also made great progress on planning our #teachtheweb MOOC. This online course kicks off May 2 and runs for 9 weeks. We’re hacking on the lesson plans, communications infrastructure and ways to make it easy and fun for people to participate and get ready for the big Maker Party 2013 campaign.

Two of us were also in Toronto helping Hive Toronto “make” the parameters of their project RFP and best ways forward about funding and building Hive projects in this emergent new Hive.

Today we are diving deeper into different ways to surface Webmaker and Hive projects as key engagement ramps for the Maker Party 2013 Campaign. Stay tuned on how this all shapes up, and if you’d like to get involved in these efforts, sign up at https://webmaker.org/en-US/teach/.

What we made so far:

• A diagram of how to participate in the #teachtheweb MOOC (see below)
• Updated the #teachtheweb MOOC site
• Tightened messaging around the Maker Party 2013

This article is cross-posted in “Explore, Create, Share.“

An overview:

• Growing a leadership circle of Webmaker Super Mentors
• Running an online training for new Webmaker Mentors
• Helping mentors teach the web at a global distributed Maker Party
• Celebrating the community and planning for next year at the Mozilla Festival 2013

Leadership: Webmaker Super Mentors

There’s a fantastic group of people emerging as leaders of the Webmaker community. They are educators, techies, makers and other people passionate about teaching the web — and teaching others how to teach the web.

These “Super Mentors” have experience in:

• advocating for web literacy
• designing curriculum
• running participatory events

And they teach all sorts of learners: students, friends + family, colleagues, strangers in a coffee shop — whomever!

Right now, we’re convening these Webmaker Super Mentors to design, moderate and lead an online training course for new Webmaker Mentors.

If you have experience like above and an interest in helping others become mentors, let us know!

Training: Opportunity for new Webmaker Mentors

We care about teaching the world the web. To further that cause, we’re convening an online training for learners to become Webmaker Mentors.

Participants will learn to hack teaching materials, plan events, and support one another. The course is aimed at people who want to teach the web but would like some guidance and community support to get started.

Under the banner “Teach the Web”, the course will be run online as an open, collaborative learning format. It takes its inspiration from “MOOCs”, massive open online courses. Check out Laura Hilliger’s great post on how that will work.

The course will run from May 2 – June 30, with the goal of 500+ learners teamed up with 50+ Super Mentors. The curriculum will be drafted by the Webmaker Super Mentors, integrating their insights and experiences teaching the web.

If you’re interested in participating in the Teach the Web MOOC, sign up here.

Party: Fun events around the globe for Webmakers

Following the training (aka party prep), we’ll kick off a distributed, global party.

Anyone interested in making cool things on the web is invited to join. The Super Mentors and newly prepped Mentors will lead with fun, participatory events in their cities. They’ll help surface great stories, support one another and learners, and in general be excellent party hosts.

Similar to our Summer Code Party last year, the Maker Party 2013 is a “big tent” campaign. That means that many organizations and networks that share our vision will be joining in.

From exciting announcements at the White House and 10 Downing Street, to energizing events in places like Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Nairobi, Mexico City, Jakarta and beyond, there will be a lot going on!

The party runs from June 15 – September 15.

If you’d like to partner in the campaign, host an event or just hack and party with us, sign up here.

Celebrate: Bring it all together at the Mozilla Festival

Then to bring all the fun, learning and great people together, we’re hosting the annual Mozilla Festival in London from October 25 – 27.

As Mozilla’s largest public-facing event, this is the perfect place to celebrate the community and to plan together how we want to start next year.

This year, we want to put a bigger focus on the growing Webmaker Mentor community. That means Super Mentors and activated Mentors from the MOOC, the Maker Party and elsewhere are encouraged to bring their best hacks, lesson plans, and ideas to share and build upon it together.

We’re hoping that people help identify great activities and submit them in a few months with the call for sessions goes live.

If you’d like to stay updated about the Mozilla Festival, sign up here!

Can’t wait!

It’s a really exciting time — and all these pieces seem to be coming together. A huge thanks to all the Super Mentors for the leadership to get us this far.

If you have feedback or questions about all of this, don’t hesitate to contact us!

You can use the hashtag #teachtheweb or jump into our G+ group.

Let’s teach the web together!

Here are some quick recommendations:

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

We are imperfect mortal being, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves.

Didion shares a moving account about the death of her husband and her year of mourning. She’s so vulnerable and honest in the piece that it reminds of you how scared you are to lose the people you love. Modern society shies away from grief, preferring that mourners to “be strong” and unemotional. Yet Didion describes how we’re never fully prepared for death, that it hits you suddenly and deeply, and that losing someone is trying, complicated and of course irreversible.

The Room by Emma Donoghue

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.

This is a simply written but disturbing novel about a five-year old boy held captive with his mother in a Josef Fritzl-esque backyard shed. Donoghue uses the innocence of her narrator’s voice to slowly reveal the situation and discover that the world is bigger than the room. It was a gripping if claustrophobic read.

Homeland by Cory Doctorow

Cops and robbers all using the same screwdrivers, and civilians in the middle, getting screwed.

In the sequel to the young adult novel, Little Brother, Doctorow revisits encryption, data security and citizens’ rights. I admire him for working in how-to guides to set up TOR networks or disk partitioning. Since the surveillance state laced with torture is hardly fiction, it’s great to read a book that makes these issues immediate, urgent and hopefully defeasible.

The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara

I steel my body, ready to do battle, and prepare myself to be a sacred space within which the bestial howl of the triumphant proletariat can resound with a new energy and a new hope.

Well, no trip to Argentina would be complete without reading the account of Che’s journey across Latin America. I learned his name is a common nickname for Argentinians, who often refer to each other as “che”, meaning “friend”. It was fascinating to read about Latin America in the 1950′s and to see the spark of Che’s revolutionary spirit, especially when he described the terrible living conditions of miners, lepers and other unfortunates.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Britain no longer rules the waves, it just waives the rules.

The author of Cloud Atlas wrote quite a different kind of novel with Black Swan Green. It’s apparently semi-autobiographical and recounts the young narrator coming to terms with his speech impediment (“stamper, not stutter”). Mitchell writes well, although some of the fantastical / dream elements in the story seemed somewhat out of place. I’d recommend Cloud Atlas over this one, but if you’re keen to read more Mitchell, it’s a solid choice.

1. Acropolis.
2. Lamps in Athens.
3. Hackerspace.gr.
4. Chicago’s river dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day.
5. #freebassel postering in Chicago.
6. DIY game controller made from old keys.
7. Ice fishing early in the morning. No filter.
8. “Mozilla is so good it will literally melt your face.”
9. Webmaker USB with an offline mentor kit.
10. Cover story of German WIRED.

#teachtheweb

We’d like to try an experiment in a distributed “marketplace” for webmaking. The idea is simple: use the hashtag #teachtheweb to ask for and offer help.

Asking for Help

It works like this:

Say you’d like to organize a webmaking in your city, Athens. You’ve got a venue, you’ve got some learners, but you’re missing someone who can help you teach Javascript. You can use the #teachtheweb hashtag to ask for help:

“I’m looking for someone to help teach Javascript at a webmaking event in Athens. #teachtheweb”

A community is monitoring the tag, who can amplify the request or answer it themselves:

“I know someone who can help. @NAME knows Javascript. #teachtheweb”

“I can help! When’s the event? #teachtheweb.”

The hashtag isn’t just for events, either. It can be applied to anything that helps teach the web — with a focus on asking for and offering help on specific things.

Offering Help

In this way, you can also use the tag to share things that you can help with. You could say, for example:

“I work with youth at my hackerspace and am happy to share activities they like. #teachtheweb”

“I speak Spanish and would love to help translate learning materials about webmaking. #teachtheweb”

“I’ve run a hive Pop-Up in my city and can help coach new organizers. #teachtheweb”

Betatesting

Since this is an experiment, we can’t anticipate how well the tag will work.

But the hope is that with some decent traffic and an active group of people monitoring it, the hashtag will be a simple yet powerful way to connect Webmaker Mentors and others who care about teaching the web.

We encourage you to give it a try and to let us know what you think! If you’re interested in helping monitor and field requests, please dive in and start replying. You can also check out our newly launched webmaker.org/teach for more resources and ways to connect.

If you successfully team up with someone, tell the world about it: #webmakerwin!

from the Reps Training Days in Athens.