Badges: Level Up your Webmaking Skills

Badges are huge topic in the digital media and learning world and something that I have been working with in some form ever since I have entered into the realm of educational technology. To be honest, I have struggled with my feeling towards badges, that is to say, assessment for skills that you aren't always given credit for.

The Mozilla Open Badges Project describes badges on their wiki:

Badges give you public recognition for your skills, achievements and learning beyond the classroom -- unlocking job and educational opportunities.

The reason that I struggle is that I am concerned that badges allow you to formalize something that is blissfully informal. One example of my fear around this was when I was in Barcelona at the Learning, Freedom and the Web festival. My colleague Jack Martin and I participated in this local learning incubator where we told a story with twitter. It was a fantastic and fun day and we loved what we made just as much as we did making it. However, after the activity was over, a learning assessment team came over during our presentation of our story and gave us badges for our story. It somehow cheapened the experience that Jack and I had and sort of reminded me that, yeah this was about learning and grading-not the fun experience.

Ok, now that I have that off my shoulders- I find the idea of using badges to assess web design skills intriguing. Many web designers and developers learned webmaking skills in informal settings- hanging out with friends, navigating the web on their own, tinkering with blog sites. However, theses skills equate to real life work competencies that often need to be proven in some form when you are applying for work (for example). What if there WAS a way to say, bring along some form of street cred and accreditation into your interviews along with your portfolio?

So with all of this enthusiasm, and mild trepidation- I started to look at the learning objectives for Hackasaurus and, with the help of Matt Thompson and Atul Varma, started to answer the question: if Hackasaurus had a system for badges what would the badges look like?

Essentially I came up with 5 core badges and then 3 "level up" badges. The level up badges are really geared towards refinement and mastery, whereas the core badges are a compilation of hard and soft webmaking skills. These badges can be mapped to a structured and scaffolded curriculum, or be achieved in a more organic (non-linear) way. What will be an interesting mechanic for the project is the dissemination of the badges. Right now, we are thinking that a learner can acquire a badge physically in a design jam or online through some sort of self guided experience

The badges I came up with are described here. It's just a barely baked idea, and Atul, Matt and I are really just starting to tinker with how badges could support the learning experience. We won't be actually implementing this online for a little bit, however, I would love to hear your thoughts on how this maps to the learning outcomes and if you have any other ideas. The Tuesday Hackasaurus community call will focus on badges. Join us if you have the time.

Learning Objectives for Hackasaurus

While many people speak about how Hackasaurus is an open source development project, I think that it is important to note that this is an open educational resource project (OER) as well. What is particularly challenging and stimulating about the work that I do is that I am integrating ideas and creative thinking of both technologists and educators on a daily basis.

The project was birthed out of conversations between Mozilla and The Hive Learning Networks in New York and Chicago. Some of the initial test beds for the project were the New York Pubic Library, The Chicago Public Library YouMedia and the New York Hall of Science. The Hive involvement in the project is still strong and we have more contributors including the Digital Youth Network, Eyebeam, The National Writing Project, the Institute of Play and Mouse, as well as many international contributors, including Brussels, Barcelona, the United Kingdom and Nigeria. The strong involvement of these organizations as well as individual educators who have volunteered their time and energy towards Hackasaurus helps to strengthen the design of the tools as well as the curricular aspects of the project.

The development team of the project and the learning experience team worked together to iterate on defining the learning objectives for the project. I am sharing with you a bit of our thinking around this because I feel that it is truly interesting to see how our project has evolved over the past year as well as where we believe that we are headed.

We initially came up with a set of learning objectives that we know we are currently satisfying with our tools and design jams. The objectives sketched out here more or less fit into three categories: browser basics, web making basics and tool basics.


We then started to develop out what our aspirational learning objectives are for the project. This included everything from being able to code websites to understanding what ethical web making means. One area of particular interest was defining what we mean when we talk to teens and tweens about the open web, which one participant on our open web etherpad described as:

"It's better to teach kids how to tie their shoelaces (an "open" skill needed for making knots, useful for many other purposes) vs just making them use shoes with easy Velcro fasteners (which is also much less challenging for developing fine motor skills)."

This process was really interesting because it was a mix of the technical side of building for the web with the emotional side of creating- that is, acknowledging that humans are crafting the web and thus, have a responsibility to themselves and others to understand the power of their medium. Finally, and this was probably the most difficult part for us, we started to list what are NOT our learning objectives. Yeah, this list is probably too short, but I think that it is a good place for us to begin. Ultimately the learning experience that we are interested in supporting is that of a web maker, someone who is thinking of the web as a place for designing, crafting, challenging and coding, which allowed us to remove some of the other areas that are tangentially associated with the work we do, but are not our direct focus.

The initial frontier: Hackasaurus Training Missions

Last week, Atul Varma, David Humphrey and I took some time to think about crafting specific missions or quests that were directly mapped to initial interactions or skills that can be acquired when using the Hackasaurus X Ray Goggles. These training missions are being thought of as a way to introduce a new user to the "Hackasaurus" experience (no relation to the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Here is a little summary of our prototyping session.

The first thing that we did, was list the basic kinds of interactions that we know teens either have or that we would like them to have with the goggles:

Some of these interactions are really for advanced users. For example, ascending or descending to parent/child elements is something that really gets users to start to explore the Document Object Model (DOM), however isn't learned on the first day or hour with the tool. We also thought about more "hackable" interactions, or ways that teens could start to explore code- without actually knowing any code (ie- hacking javascript code without know how to program). As a result we came up with 4 concepts for training missions using the X-Ray Goggles.

Prototype 1:
Skill: Learn how to read and edit links
The idea for this sketch is that you can edit a link. So here, you have three animal links that connect to wikipedia entries, except the link for cat goes to an ugly dog- so the user will have to change that link using the goggles

Prototype 2:
Skill: Learn how to delete an element
The idea here is that the ball is moving around the frame (which has kind of a Super Mario Brothers set) and the goal is to get the ball into the basket which cant be done until you delete the div of the bar that is blocking the basket, using the goggles of course.

Prototype 3:
Skill: Learn how to edit javascript
This sketch shows this idea about kind of creating a "pinball" effect by increasing a value in javascript. The idea is that even if you don't know everything about javascript, you can hack it to make it work for you. When you increase the value to the correct amount, the ball will fly to the "pow" or portal button that takes you to the next training mission.

Prototype4:
Skill: Learn how to use CSS
This sketch shows that a user can use css to create an avatar . The idea would be that using the goggles with the CSS functionality (and even html editing) you can either reposition the objects to cover the avatar body and/or add your own elements to personalize it.


In the future at some point, we will prototype these using the repository on GitHub that Atul made for Hacker Parcours and game like creations.

Storyboard for Hackable Comic

As I mentioned, last week I worked with Anna Debenham and some local tweens from Toronto on this hackable comic idea. We prototyped a simple storyboard for what could be the intro to the comic- how the main character (currently Sue) acquires her superpowers of hacking the world wide web for the good of the world.

I drew up the comic and played around quite a bit with navigation (horizontal vs vertical vs ZOOM). Additionally, we started to think about how we could incorporate actual hacking in the comic. There is a moment for activating the goggles and a sketch about how one of the characters is saved by the deletion of an element using HTML.

Here is my mock up (pulled together using Photoshop stitching):

Click on the image and go to Flickr for the best viewing. I annotated the flickr version with tons of notes to explain both the story and the interactivity.

What the Hackasaurus team does on our day off

Atul, Anna and I are in Toronto for a Hackasaurus team design sprint to beta. Yesterday we took some time to relax. Wondering what the Hackasaurus team does when we have a day off? We went to the Royal Ontario Museum- and spent some time with the dinosaurs (of course)

Atul loves looking at fossils!

This is the icon on the displays to show when to use the audio tour. Pretty awesome, right?

Anna and I were quite fond of the big dinosaurs. Rawr

Although there were no Hackasaur sightings, we have informed the paleontologists that they should start researching around the new Mozilla office stomping grounds- just in case.

Hackable Comics

This week at the Mozilla offices, we have been participating in a game design sprint to explore using the Hackasaurus tools as controllers for game play as well as building some games with integrated learning experiences. My colleague, Atul Varma, has already created a prototype for what I think could become kind of a mad libs + a choose your own adventure. It is a fantastic vehicle for us to teach learners how to use the tools as well as guide them through some very basic lessons in hacking html. Ever since I saw his Parable of the Hackasaurus, I have been inspired to create a hackable html5 comic.

But, maybe I should take this back a notch and talk about me and my relationship with comics. I love stories and in particular I love stories that are told in visual form. I read and collect children's books. I liked comics that I saw in newspapers, but it wasn't until I was really about 16 that I found them meaningful to me. As a grown up, I am an avid reader of graphic novels and I love anime and thus, can often be found attending comic con or geeking out at comic book stores. Whenever I was asked as a teenager what I wanted to be when I grew up- I said a children's book illustrator. Eventually my aspirations extended into comics. However, as I matured as an artist, I really started to become involved in designing interactive spaces and I just couldn't figure out how that factored into my comic/childrens book dream. I always keep around a sketch book, where I doodle little comics and drawings about my life- but I have never felt that it was a place for me to really share with others. I think that I made this distinction because to me, comics are personal spaces that you explore on your own and appreciate in the quietness of your own world.

doodle from my Israel sketchbook

However, my thinking about this started to change as I saw the possibilities of HTML5 and comics. Disney's Tron: Legacy interactive comic is absolutely beautiful and for me, it was a moment where my two worlds collided. Working on the computer, is a personal thing for the most part. You have your screen, and keyboard, and the path in the world wide web that you choose to explore is yours alone. The intimacy of reading the comic in the bookstore corner was somehow retained in the html5 experience. In the past when I have tried to get into reading comics online,the scrolling, the screen display, everything just seemed like it was just copying and pasting the comic from print to online and it wasn't translating. However, with these new HTML5 comics, like Tron and Never Mind the Bullets, the medium of the comic have been taken to a new level. While these initial experiments with html5 are really dabbling with interactivity, I think it is worth noting some of the interactions that make the experience unique to the medium.

With a web- based comic, you have the ability to expand on what it means to represent a non- linear narrative. This can be done in a truly clever way, by zooming into and linking to elements and really exploiting the nature of the web. I can think of endless possibilities in terms of breaking frames and giving the reader/user the opportunity to engage with the crafted comic world in a new way. Finally, something that is uniquely exciting about HTML5 (as opposed to Flash) is that content being developed can be remixable and hackable, allowing you to essentially insert yourself into the story and in effect, connect with the content in a more meaningful way. This possibility highlights the potential for the reader to become not just a user- but a player, conspirator, a dreamer and a maker.

I am working on creating a hackable comic prototype this week. So far I have just drafted a few frames of the narrative and in collaboration with my colleague Anna Debenham, have sketched out a few scenarios that give you the power to exploit the unique affordances of this interactive medium.

This week we tested the idea on a bunch of tween game designers who were helping the Hackasaurus team come up with game like ideas for the project. The feedback that we received about the comic was fantastic and I am really motivated to move forward.

If you are interested in learning more about Hackasaurus, or are interested in our work around gaming, and play- please visit the Hackasaurus website

Hackasaurus Cheat Sheet

Sometimes you need a little something something to remind you which keys do what when you are using the Hackasaurus goggles. I pulled together this little cheat to have beside you as you are remixing websites with the Hackasaurus tools.

The Earth Day My Carbon Footprint 3D Design Hack Jam for Youth at the New York Hall of Science

This post is co-written with guest-blogger Chris Lawrence, Director of Formal and Informal Learning at the New York Hall of Science

"The Earth Day My Carbon Footprint 3D Design Hack Jam is easily the most rewarding day at NYSCI I have had in a while" Chris Lawrence, NYSCI

On April 22, 2011, tweens, teens and families celebrated Earth Day at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) My Carbon Footprint 3D Design Hack Jam. If you have any hesitation about hitching a ride on the "design jam" bandwagon, then you just need to witness the array of projects and hear the experiences that were had by participants at this event.

The event brought together youth from two NYSCI Schools Out Innovation camps that were running during the New York City spring break. Both camps were made up of middle school age youth who had been exploring in detail themes of the Jam such as 3D design, climate change and digital tools. While the camp was a structured informal learning experience, the Hack Jam allowed the youth to showcase their expertise in a much more free flowing and interest driven environment. In addition to the NYSCI campers, there were also NYSCI Explainers and Explainer Interns who work at NYSCI and are involved in both in leading the camps and participating in digital design projects with NYSCI Education staff. These Explainers ranged in age from 15-20. The Jam was orchestrated by the staff at NYSCI and the New Youth City Learning Network, and made possible by the Mozilla Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, The National Science Foundation and the Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors. However what made it successful is that the teenage NYSCI Explainers took ownership in the event and acted as peer mentors for all of the activities taking place.

"Today was amazing! I came by the "build jam" today and it was really good. A lot of different events went on, and so far this is the biggest build jam i've been into. I just wanted to blog about what a wonderful time i had and how amazing this build jam was :)" blog post from NYSCI Explainer Intern and Virtual Hall of Science designer Yessenia Bautista

Like a music jam, participants at this event, worked on many different kinds of projects and then riffed off of each other to produce a collaborative online 3D exhibition space with the theme of human's carbon footprint on Earth. The event space was organized around work stations:

NYSCI's Virtual Hall of Science is a 3D world built in the Active Worlds software similar to Second Life. Teens had the chance to work with each other to develop interactive exhibits, scavenger hunts and virtual stories all building around the theme of Earth Day. In order to do this, teens used various technologies including Active Worlds, digital imaging software and Google Sketchup. The VHOS team placed the beginnings of two exhibits in the Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors "wing" of VHOS, a map of the United States and blank gallery walls. Hack Jam participants then researched various temperatures through geological time and placed pinned them to the interactive map. Contests were held to see who could place the most data points on the VHOS map, with 15 being the winner! The blank walls were where digital photos were currated and hung to demonstrate what youth were understanding about their carbon footprint both inside and outside the walls of NYSCI. Funding for the Virtual Hall of Science project is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Virtual Hall of Science (NYSCI)

View more presentations from nycln.

Hackasaurus- This station gave participants the opportunity to learn how to locally hack websites, so that they could remix the content and also learn how to develop their own websites. Hackasaurus is a Mozilla and MacArthur Foundation initiative that helps teens learn how to design and develop for the web. Teens who came to this station made hacks and shared them on Flickr like this:

and some, who really got into the project geeked out and made websites like this and shared it in the VHOS exhibition space.

"Jessica showed us how to use Hackasaurus and delete and change elements of a webpage (locally only). The Hackasaurus Firefox add-on is really cool. When we started out, I didn't know how it worked and actually "went backwards" and made my own website before I learned how to hack an existing one." blog post from Jam participant, Ishum.

Digital Imaging- Earth Day is a time to embrace the outdoors, so many teens left the Jam and took photos and videos outside while looking for examples of our carbon footprint. They then creatively integrated the best images into a photo gallery in VHOS, or embedded into participant created websites.

Paper Prototyping- Some participants wanted to sketch out concepts before taking their work online, others wanted to draw assets to be incorporated into VHOS after they were photographed, and some teens just wanted to use their hands and draw. This station accommodate all of the designers who were interested in mixed media in some form.

The event was intentionally designed to be messy, so that participants could float around from station to station to play, explore and create. The room was laid out with tables containing digital and analog materials. A LCD screen and two projectors were positioned so participants could share their work and see what other teens were doing at any given point during the event. At many times during the Jam the room was a hot wonderful mess of wires, laptops, butcher paper, crayons, cameras and snacks! The beginning of the event was scaffolded so that teens could move around and experiment with all of the tools available. Many of the youth took this opportunity to explore while others had a clear focus on what interested them. Interestingly within a few hours teens were in control and had both sampled at least a few of the activities while also getting down to some serious tinkering!

An unantipated joy was the inclusion of family members of the youth participants. We had teachers who had come to visit their students in the NYSCI Innovation Camps, parents excited to join the fun and many siblings (ages 2-12!) who saddled up to their brothers, sisters and cousins to learn about and participate in all the making. A head count of participants of all ages topped 75 people by the Jam's end at 6 PM.

The event was successful because teens had a multitude of tools and mediums to explore their interests in science, the environment and digital media and they embraced the casual atmosphere of the Jam as a moment to experiment and share. The Jam incorporated the programmatic work that NYSCI and the NYCLN are doing, however both organizations allowed their work to be remixed in the event so that teens and staff worked on different projects and could collaborate in a social setting. The result was that over 50 youth played in different modalities, self-identified as experts in a variety of thematic as well as technical areas, and established working relationships with peers.

What will you be doing for your Jam?

Youth Design Jams 101: Building Your Toolkit

I’m very excited to announce a new series of posts that I will be writing:Youth Design Jams 101: Building Your Toolbox . For the past 5 months, the New Youth City Learning Network in conjunction with Mozilla, have been hosting design jams focusing on developing a youth maker/ hacker culture. In our jams, we have been focusing on user-testing the Hackasaurus tools, learning about our core audiences relationship with computing and developing fun, casual ways for teens to connect while getting messy with code. As a result, we have had many requests from Learning Network partners and generally awesome community members who want to host a similar jam in their local communities.

I will be creating a collection of tutorials and reference guides that will make the process of hosting a jam fairly simple. My hope is that as you read this, and embark on your own youth design jam adventure, that you will contribute tips and ideas that helped you to craft creative opportunities for youth engagement with technology in open design.

Today's Guide is a 10 Step Plan for Hosting a Youth Jam.

A successful jam takes some time to plan, but with a little elbow grease, your event could rock. At least a month prior to the jam you should have the venue identified, the date confirmed and the core planning team more or less in the works. At least two weeks prior to the jam you should have permission slips disseminated. This is particularly important if you plan on having teens engage in open design, where they are sharing their work on the web and documenting their process.

Invite youth and facilitators who have experience in the field and/or with kids and work with them in advance to develop a game plan or curriculum for the day of the jam. It's good to have some people with technical skills on hand to troubleshoot as well as act as a creative support system. Consider approaching local universities or tech organizations to act as on-site mentors. After the team is formed, assign tasks to all of the facilitators in the room. Documentation, Tech support, etc. Don't have anyone lingering- this needs to be established as an interactive/ collaborative YOUTH space.

Hacking for the sake of hacking, can be fun for some- but not everyone. This is an opportunity to think creatively about incorporating technology into the work that you already do. Is there a project already underway in your organization or neighborhood that you want to build enthusiasm or crowd-source data or content for? Remember, the technology or media should not be the theme of the jam, just a strategy for implementation. Some past jams have included: Hacking Citizen Science, Social Hacktivism and Entrepreneurship 101

The goal of every jam is to make something. Set expectations for outcomes so that both the youth and facilitators know the expectations coming into the jam. Reinforce this with publicity efforts and messaging happening around the event.

Working with your team of Superheros and H.I.T's (Hacker's in Training) - plan out the lesson or event plan. A jam is not a class, it is SUPPOSED to informal and playful. However, this kind of environment still needs to be structured- particularly when you are a) working with new technologies and b) planning for youth under the age of 18. Many of the event plans allow for some dedicated instruction combined with experimentation time. Check out hackasaurus.org and build off some existing curriculum or upload your own and get feedback from the Hackasaurus community of educators, techies and geeks.

Define space in the venue that you will be hosting the jam. Break up the space as much as possible. We don't want this to look like a classroom. Move chairs into a circle. Set up a projector connected to a laptop that everyone can have easy access to share their work. Make sure that laptops have Firefox 4, Safari, Chrome or IE9 installed. And if they are using Hackasaurus tools, have those tools up and running in advance.

Make every attempt humanly possible to define the jam space as interactive. Start out with some thematic ice-breakers to get people talking and defining their identities within the crowd. Go around have people say names and a noise explaining how they feel- something silly. Make a Human Hack Spectrogram: put stickies with positive and negative signs at either side of the room and then a neutral sticky in middle. Tell participants they should move about freely and feel that they can change their mind as people give responses. Some intentionally controversial statements could include:

• I think i understand how the internet works

• I think of hacking as a positive word

• I think of hacking as something I want to do

Explain ground rules for the space: 1. Respect- we define respect in this space- dont talk when other people are talking and honor the fact that people have different opinions 2.Inclusion- collaborating can be fun and creative, let's figure out how. Finally, throw in a curveball-if they have a question or there is a word that they don't know - tell them that they should interrupt that person.

Don't hold back! As soon as possible, start hacking away. Bust a hack- on the big projector with participants. Let participants start hacking away. Participants don't want to hear what cool things they can do, they want to get dirty and figure it out themselves- let them.

Let teens work together in teams, and throughout the jam encourage them to take on specific roles on their project (i.e., visual designer, coder, project manager, documentarian).Have the youth present what they did, encouraging conversation about process and techniques! Everyone should share something useful that they learned- only one sentence to answer and if there is someone who said something interesting, shout it out and let them know that you agree. Embed a light weight de-brief into the sharing out of useful things.

As soon as your jam is over, upload your pictures to a public repository like Flickr. Direct participants to resources so that they can continue making, hacking, building and connecting to peers who they met at the jam. Leverage social media whenever possible. Encourage teens to post their work to virtual spaces that they already populate, whether that be deviantart or facebook!

That's it! Now, with just a bit of elbow grease, you have the tools you need to getting started preparing for your jam. Please post your ideas, tips and suggestions in the comments field!

Drumbeat

"No one in this house is going to pick up the phone! ... and if you do pick up the phone, I am NOT giving you dinner!"

I remember the feeling of great joy and satisfaction that I had when my brother and I not only showed my mother how we would connect to the seemingly mythical Bulletin Board System in the early 90s- but how we would get her buy in to collaborate with us to make the experience last just a little bit longer than possible without her. We started up the computer, booted up DOS, ran our dial in program to access the modem, typed in the command line and told it to dial some magical number-then the fun of running around the house like a maniac ensued. We needed to tell everyone not to pick up the phone- out of penalty of death. When we finally did connect to some service, we would type in the user name and password combination and enter this secret world of the Bulletin Board System.

Everyone who was in this sacred space had some interest or skill in common, but for the most part, we would join the community without knowing we were talking to, or what we were going to be talking about. It took a leap of faith to enter this community, and an even larger level of courage and creativity to publicly put your thoughts out there into this void. But, when you did take that leap- it was exhilarating! Here I was, a 10 year old girl, talking to people about computing, comics and just anything that came to my mind. I felt connected to something that was much larger than my living room in Queens- now, I was talking to people all over the world and, even more amazing than that was the fact that they were talking to me! At the end of the day, we would part ways and possibly never talk to each other again, but we had a moment of connection. My family had this moment. These moments changed my perception of the world and allowed me to conceive of the potential for the future internet and my future life in computing.

Since the early 90s, I have grown up a little bit and become a full fledged designer. I now work at the Social Science Research Council on a project supported by the MacArthur Foundation called the New Youth City Learning Network. It was through this position that I was given the opportunity to go to the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona this Fall. Like my childhood experience of entering the Bulletin Board System, I came to the festival with little understanding of who I would be meeting, and quite honestly what exactly I would be doing. Channeling the courage of my 10 year old self- I entered this non- conference like space, and participated in a variety of projects and conversations with people from all over the world.

Since no one knew who I was coming into any given workshop or project, my actions defined me as a "hacker" or "maker". I became one of those people who was using her hands to figure things out. It's funny, because I guess in the Bulletin Board days, I assumed roles or identities as no one was going to remember my name. In the 90s, I was really activated by the ASCII art and making words into visual forms (while my brother found himself entwined in code). Today, I am a designer (and my brother is a programmer) and took on that persona at Drumbeat. The unique thing about Drumbeat was that it was designed to be almost a physical realization of the collaborative communities of the web. Here, programmers, designers, educators and enthusiasts work together to ponder the future of the open web.

I attended a jam session building temperature sensors with blinking lights with the arduino- while thinking about the classroom and educational opportunities for teens and physical computing. It was fun, empowering and super hands-on geekertainment.


I then attended a conversation with Dale Dougherty, founder of Make magazine, and Mr. Maker himself. It was a really interesting talk because we discussed making communities all over the world. I had been familiar with Dale and his DIY and maker enthusiasm from my work with NYCLN and his maker posse at Maker Faire NYC, however we ended up having a great conversation about the potential for maker or fabrication spaces. What kind of affordances do these spaces provide being outside of the school environment? Our group (who were mostly not from the U.S.) wondered if this need for alternative art spaces was an American problem. However, after listening to the full conversation- I believe that this is not about the lack of arts in schools but about forming your own identity through informal learning opportunities. Informal here, being out of the classroom and self-motivated- I like to compare this to the idea of a community garden.


So here I was, in the beautiful tactile Gaudi- crafted city of Barcelona, feeling my way through physical computing projects by hacking into the arduino with a gang of new friends- wondering how I was going to bring it all back to my real world and work in New York. I then attended the session that NYCLN and the Chicago Learning Network was running on local storytelling. It was an awesome session, with a mixture of people from our two networks as well as locals from Barcelona, and other educators from around the world. The premise of the session was simple- go out onto the streets of Barcelona- as a team or by yourself and come back and tell a story that represents your experience of the city. We left the interpretation open and the results were pretty awesome. One group made a poignant 45 second film of children playing soccer, another group used a google map to embed images and stories of their journey, and another team did a he said/ she said story of their time on the streets using twitter and facebook- which culminated in a crowdsourced experience of members from the drumbeat community helping one of the lost participants back to conference.

What was then an interesting turn of events- we then combined with a session on developing badges to discuss how badges could be applied to the activity. So, they used the twitter story to basically "badge".

While this was an interesting experience to be having a conversation as both a maker, as well as someone who supports learning in some form, I have to admit it felt really weird. I had just had this amazing experience crafting the story using casual skills in a non-formal setting and then, it felt like they were just trying to formalize my experience and "grade it" in some form. I am willing to keep playing along with these nascent badge ideas but, as Tim Gunn would say, "I'm dubious."

Regardless, our twitter story won the "multi modal" badge amongst other things. I feel that badges are useless unless they are put out there into the world in some kind of social context. I think that the work that P2PU is doing in now developing out a universal open source badge backpack is really going to help this concept along and I am excited to see where that goes.

Since Drumbeat, I have incorporated this local learning "incubator" activity into one of the youth oriented design jams for our network. This jam is going to be hosted by the New York Hall of Science. Chris Lawrence, the Director of Formal and Informal Education at NYSCI helped to develop the initial concept for the incubator, so taking it back into our own local setting - in Queens! seems not only appropriate, but important.




Another way that we at NYCLN and CLN are bringing the Drumbeat experience back to our local community and world is by developing out a project called Hackasaurus. The Network's involvement with Hackasaurus was really birthed at Drumbeat. The goal behind this work is to create tools to help teens hack the web, and as a by-product learn web design and development. This is a project that is near and dear to my heart because experiences that you have as a teenager- connecting with the world through a medium that engages you, helps you to not only define your identity- but help establish your identity within the context of the world. This was true for me in the 90s, using the BBS, and even more true now with the web. We are working in collaboration with Mozilla, the New York Public Library and YouMedia Chicago, to develop the tools and the complimentary curriculum so that this experience can be easily implemented by any teacher, mentor, parent of teen. The goal for us is to be transparent about our process so that we can engage whoever from the community is interested in collaborating.



At this point we have user-tested in four hack jams in New York and Chicago and developed a small team of teen designers and developers who are going to do user testing as well as development with us. The jams have been an interesting learning experience and I will try to write about them more in another post.

Drumbeat was an engaging and eye-opening experience for me as well as my colleagues in the New York and Chicago Learning Networks, but really what it did was bring back the 10 year old spirit in me. It reminded me of the importance of ingenuity, collaboration and learning by getting messy and jumping in. However, it also reminded me of how as a family, or a community- learning can be even more fun and powerful. My brother and I learned to become designers and developers over time by engaging with the web through meaningful identity building experiences. It is my hope that with the projects that we are developing through the Learning Networks in conjunction with Mozilla that we can inspire a new generation of learners, ones who connect remotely with collaborators, take risks and inform the world of their unique existence using this flexible and definable medium of the web.

Presentation for Parsons

CUNY on Wheels, PS 43, Rockaway Waterfront Alliance and... OCEANLAB

Yesterday we had a great day at the beach with students from PS43Q. I ran 4 Oceanlab workshops and had the help of my mother, Rose Klein- DOE educator. The workshops went well. Each time I ran the workshop, I became a little bit more comfortable working with students and I felt that much more confident presenting the material. Not being an educator myself, I truly admire the way that teachers can calmly talk to children - without talking down to them, or being intimidated by them. Regardless, I introduced the oceanlab website to approximately 100 students and got some great feedback. I learned that students in this school tap into the social networks of facebook, myspace and twitter. Many use the cell phone as means to search the internet throughout the day.

In a formal setting- such as this classroom on wheels- students were most concerned about learning where they could go to learn how to swim. This makes me think that I need to add more links and informal "lessons".

I am thinking of modifying the Oceanlab site to include areas for research and representation of the informal activities- but then again, I could rely on a facebook page to communicate that content as well.

Here are some photos from the day. I really enjoyed the experience of this mobile learning vehicle and am already talking more with CUNY on Wheels to plan our next event.
Look how neat the bus was!


Water safety learning in action.
We parked the bus right next to the boardwalk.

This is Norma Coleman James, Assistant Director of CUNY on Wheels.

Locative Bike Tour

Here are some pics of the Oceanlab Seamonster Summer Bike Quest. Test 1 complete. Still trying to come up with a snazzier title for this bike game/ tour. Below is a qr code that when participants take a photo of it with their phones, they receive a text message story element. Here, participants are told to read the signs surrounding them and to decide whether Shelly Seamonster should stay here for her adventure at the beach or try another location, because she is not a strong swimmer.

web presentation

My symposium talk: Child's Play

Opening!