Another +1 to loving this conversation.
It's a great example of the kind of thought leadership we need. And,
also includes lots of practical nuggets we can pull back into product
design.
I wrote some reflections here:
https://commonspace.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/tinkering-together-2-things-webmaker-needs/
Text pasted below so that it's also here as part of the thread.
- ms
PS. Text of blog post:
*Tinkering Together*
*'Making is learning' is a big theme for Mozilla this year
<
http://commonspace.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/makingislearning/>.* It's
at the heart of Mozilla Webmaker <
http://webmaker.org>. More
importantly, it's the north star idea guiding the grassroots mentor
community we're building
<
http://explorecreateshare.org/2013/02/11/webmaker-mentors-in-2013/>
around the world. We want millions more people to get their hands dirty
with the web. And we expect they'll learn something as they do.
I realized today that *we need to add two concepts into this theme:
tinkering and social*. This thought came from agood discussion
<
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#%21topic/mozilla.webmaker/4JCkGeIUPak>
on the Webmaker mailing that starts with the question 'is making
learning?' Rafi Santos
<
http://empathetics.org/2013/02/12/is-making-learning-considerations-as-education-embraces-the-maker-movement/>
both asked and began to answer this question:
The short answer: yes, but it�s complicated. The longer answer is
that the best maker-driven learning is never just about the making.
It�s about all the things that happen around the making. That
initial spark of curiosity, the investigation and early tinkering,
the planning and research that follow, the inspirations and
appropriations from other projects, the prototypes, the failures,
the feedback, and, perhaps most importantly, the iterations upon
iterations towards a better make.
He then went on to say:
I�m willing to say that someone is always learning something when
they�re making, but they learn best when it entails the sort of
process, community and well configured structures of participation.
In part, the discussion around Rafi's post is a debate about tag lines.
Should we rally people under a 'making is learning' banner? Or should we
be more subtle like 'making as learning' or 'make to learn'? We'll
probably do the later.
However, there are also two important substantive points worth pulling
out from the conversation**: a) it's *the process of making* that drives
learning and b) the best learning happens when the *making is social*.
Both of these points are *critical to the success of Webmaker*.
The process point may be obvious. It's not just what I made, it's the
journey of the making. But it's worth calling it out explicitly. Mozilla
Rep Emma Irwin <
http://tiptoes.ca/> writes in response to Rafi's post:
This spoke to my own learning in programming. I think I learned (and
got confidence) more from debugging and being stuck than simply
making. The sense of accomplishment of overcoming things that seemed
really hard at first have motivated me more than anything. I think
those experiences are why I am crazy enough to think I can 'teach' now.
*Designing tinkering and iteration into Webmaker is critical.* A first
step is creating content built from the ground up for remix. And, then
to support that with tools that let you tinker and play with that
content, and share it again with your friends. The idea is to use remix
as an onramp to tinkering with the web.
You see an early example in Jacob's awesome Valentine's video project on
Webmaker.org
<
https://webmaker.org/en-US/projects/show-them-some-love-internet-style/>.
The thing about this video: it is designed to be forked. It wants you to
add your own photos and change the text. It's an invitation to tinker.
It's an early invitation, to be sure: we clearly have a lot to learn
about how to do this well. But it's clear to me that this kind of
*design for tinkering is 'thing #1' of key things Webmaker needs to pull
in from this conversation*.
Rafi's other big point is about social: we learn best when we make
together. Making together can mean a lot of things. At events. In
school. With friends at home. In IRC. On Facebook. Etc. What all of
these things have in common is that I can see what you are making and
you can see me. We can critique each other. We can help each other. We
can fail together. We can iterate together. And we can laugh together.
Which makes learning funner, faster and deeper.
*Making it easy to 'make things together' is 'thing #2' that Webmaker
should pull from this conversation.* Making it easy to riff on content
on Webmaker.org and in places like Facebook will be a part of this. But,
as Rafi hints in his post, the most important factor here won't be tools
and web sites: it will be people. This is why thebuilding a global
mentor community
<
http://explorecreateshare.org/2013/02/11/webmaker-mentors-in-2013/> is
such a huge priority. Everyone needs a place where they can just show up
to make and learn. A place filled with people. And a place you can find
in 100s of cities around the world. Building on Hive
<
http://explorecreateshare.org> and ReMo
<
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/Teach/TrainingDays>, I think Mozilla
can create this place. It's what we want our mentor community to be.
Anyways: thanks Rafi, Emma and others for getting this conversation
started. It's the kind of leadership this nascent Webmaker community
needs. And it's a great way to dig into what do we really want to build
together with Webmaker.
On 13-02-13 11:26 AM, Laura Hilliger wrote:
> +1 to loving the conversation. Carla (in her very well articulated paragraphs) reminded me of this (loosely translated) quote from Humboldt (German educational theorist & linguist):
>
> �Learning a foreign language should in and of itself win you a new position in your past perspective.�
>
> Humboldt wrote about language carrying with it implications of a culture and that only by learning the language can you truly understand a culture. As someone who learned German as an adult (had to!), I'd say this is 150% accurate. There are things that simply don't translate, cannot be spoken, cannot be concretely explained in another language.
>
> I think that this applies to the language of the Web as well. The Web has a culture all its own.
>
> Making, for example, a digital story is a way of embracing that culture. And learning to make digital stories is a step towards learning the language of the web. Also, I'd say the people in Web Culture speak multiple languages - we speak things like Internet Meme and Digital Stories, and a variety of coding languages.
>
> Because web culture is built from a variety of "languages" (code, visual, communicative), I'd imagine many different people approach teaching and learning different components of those languages in different ways. Which seems like a good segue to the Mentor Community work, which will help us distribute and decentralize the different and creative ways mentors MAKE curricular content that involves MAKING as a core component in learning (whether that making be manifested digitally, physically or mentally).
>
> --laura
>
> Laura Hilliger
> Mozilla Foundation
>
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/Teach
>
www.zythepsary.com
> @epilepticrabbit
>
> On Feb 13, 2013, at 12:17 AM, Carla Casilli <
c.ca...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I love this conversation and very much appreciate the nuance invested in the choice of "as" rather than "is." We could have many conversations about the value of making (in the vein of learning by doing) versus simply watching and regurgitating. And yet value resides in both approaches.
>>
>> Let's remain mindful of context and its role in learning experiences. Sometimes foundational learning occurs through observation and pattern-matching. Indeed this is how we learn our native language��through aural observation. This perceptual learning may be radically different from the way we learn to express concepts and ideas through language��that process is very much about "making" with words. Nevertheless, the former technique is how we learn the construct that allows that latter type of learning��idea transmission using language��to happen.