Webmaker/Teaching Kits

Key Docs

• Public Spreadsheet of teaching kits in progress. Have a new collaboration to suggest? Let us know via teachtheweb at mozillafoundation.org.
• [kit Bugzilla List] of curriculum and kit actions to be shipped.
• Best in Show list of kits we already have for each competency to go on new /explore page. Question? Ask Kat or Chris for help.

Kits that Teach the Web

The Web Literacy Map is a flexible specification of the skills and competencies that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web -- and the main way we guide learners and teachers through these skills is through Teaching Kits housed on Webmaker.org's Thimble web-editing tool.

A Teaching Kit is a remixable collection of resources and activities that guide a user through the teaching process for a web literacy competency or competencies. Rooted in the concept of making as learning, teaching kits encourage hands-on activities, peer-to-peer learning and open exchange.

Teaching kits are also highly modular. Users can change the ordering of activities, swap out one activity for another, add or delete activities, and otherwise rearrange the modules to develop courses or lessons that are suitable for their own target audiences. Teaching kits are not only about Webmaker tools -- they can be built to teach any tool or method that aligns with the culture, citzenship and mechanics of the web. Our aim in ensuring kits are modular, open source and easily remixable is to allow users of all backgrounds to engage with kits and make them work for their own contexts.

We also aim to ensure kits are discoverable across the web. By building on the MakeAPI, users can "discover" teaching kits on webmaker.org and then embed them on nearly any other website. Ideally, a user's contributions to a kit will show up in their Webmaker user profile and be acknowledged by an open badge. We are also working on a process to ensure kits can be read and modified across hundreds of local languages through community contributions to the continuous localization tool Transifex.

The process of teaching kit creation, adaptation (ie, "remixing") and use is an essential contribution pathway for the Webmaker community and its partners. Want to get involved? Let the #TeachTheWeb team know via email!

Definitions

Kits, Activities and Resources

Here is a quick glossary of some of the ways our community describes the working parts of a kit. Due to the ever-evolving nature of this project, the terms each individual uses are myriad and based on a variety of contexts -- but a good rule of thumb is to remember that each of these terms can be seen as a type of kit, activity or resource. Feel free to browse the full run-down on our /Terminology page.

Kit

A kit is a web-based collection of resources and activities that guide a user through the teaching process for a web literacy competency (or competencies). Kits are usually housed at Webmaker.org.

Our community often adds modifiers for clarity:

• Teaching Kit: Explained as a guided experience to teach a web literacy competency or competencies
• Event Kit
• User Testing Kit
• Co-design Kit
• etc.

Activity

An activity is a something you do with other people together. Activities are linked together within Kits. Many of these are documented and tagged on Webmaker. Want to try making your own? Here is a template to get started.

Here are some example activities:

• A thematic spectrogram (like this spectrogram for an interactive video activity]
• A sprint
• A jam (like this Remix Jam for cultural heritage professionals)
• An event
• etc.

Resource

A resource is something that supports teaching or learning in an autonomous context. Resources may be one-off webpages, or they may be more complex, such as a tutorial. Resources are added to support the activities within a Kit.

Resources might be:

• Tutorials, templates, Starter Makes or user-created makes
• Discussion Guides, reading materials, cookbooks (ie a Hive Learning Network Cookbook)
• Images, links or videos

Roadmap: Summary

Our goals for Teaching Kits in 2014 are shared across community, mentors, partners and the Mozilla Foundation's Teach the Web team.

Together, we will aim to fill the Web Literacy Map with outstanding teaching kits, open educational resources and activities that are creative and fun for learners to use. Mozilla Webmaker already has a wonderful community of mentors who are co-designers of these materials, so this year will be all about highlighting community involvement while also building a set of exemplary kits in-house that can be easily used, remixed and shared across the globe.

Sample activities

• Community contribution campaigns. Co-design and curriculum building sessions in tandem with our Training activities that help us create exemplary kits focused on one Web Literacy skill / competency at a time, starting with "Remix". Working in the open with our lead users.
• Engaging a set of contracted professionals. Include domain experts who can build out exemplary pieces of content relevant to specific Web Lit skills. Work in tickets and deliver public-facing outcomes.
• Curation systems. Peer review and QA. Systems for reviewing and up-levelling the best work from the community.
• Robust preparation for global participation. Ensure kits are ready to share, remix and build around the world. Redesign for v2.0 of kit templates. Prepare for Transifex translation.
• Internal resourcing. Build bespoke tools, content, and apps that team members from both Product and Community teams build. (e.g., building a specific app, video, or widget to help support a given teaching kit or activity.)

Roadmap: Q1

Goals

The first stage of our roadmap is focused on reflection and preparation. In this stage, our goal is to ensure the canonical teaching kits we build are ready to be used and remixed by many communities around the world.

Deliverables

To achieve the above, by the end of March 2014 we aim to:

• Test-run best practices by building an exemplary kit on the Web Literacy "Remix" pathway (see Bugzilla Bug for details). We'll start this process by facilitating a Content and Co-design Sprint at the Webmaker workweek to create intial prototypes for the kit and gather the existing best-of-breed resources for "Remix" from across the web.
• Contract a set of respected community leaders to help scope the future of our kits, write design briefs and determine best practices.
• Prototype new tools to make existing kits easier to read, translate and remix, including easier back-end code and conversion to Node for Transifex translation (see Bugzilla Bug for details).
• Redesign version 2.0 of our Teaching Kit templates for better modularity (see Design Brief and Bugzilla Bug for details).

Important Dates

Late February: Facilitate Content and Co-design Sprints for exemplary "Remix" kit at Webmaker workweek

Early March: Prototype, wireframe and redesign v2.0 of Teaching Kit templates (see Bugzilla Bug for discussion + details)

Early March: Prepare design brief for kits, written by lead educators, to determine what works and what doesn't in our existing interface

Early March: Prepare v2.0 of Teaching Kit templates for global translation and use (see Bugzilla Bug for discussion + details)

Early March: Prepare content for exemplary "Remix" Teaching Kit concurrent with kit brief/redesign/translation efforts

Planning Documents

• Design Brief for Teaching Kits v2
• "Remix" Teaching Kit content - draft, in prog
• Sumo article on Teaching Kit process
• Paper prototype of "Remix" kit components

Roadmap: Q2

Goals

The second stage is about testing, localizing and training around that first batch of curriculum, built on newly redesigned kit templates prepared for global use. We'll also use that momentum to gather more new great curriculum from community.

Deliverables

To achieve the above, by the end of _____ 2014 we aim to:

Important Dates

In prog.

In prog.

In prog.

In prog.

In prog.

Planning Documents

Teaching Kit Bugs

To Make

• STATUS = UNASSIGNED. "We want to do these things, but nobody's assigned to actually do them yet."

No results.

0 Total; 0 Open (0%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);

Making

• STATUS = ASSIGNED. "I'm working on this right now!"

No results.

0 Total; 0 Open (0%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);

Made

• STATUS = RESOLVED. "So done! Much made!"

No results.

0 Total; 0 Open (0%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);