This is re-posted from Michelle Thorne’s blog. Please join us in exploring how we might use Twitter as a Webmaker Mentor marketplace. We’d like to help connect those who need certain skills or expertise with those who have it, so if you’re hosting an event and need volunteers to help teach HTML, or if you’re a programmer and want to help teach youth some new skills this summer, or if you released or came across a great resource to help others teach web literacy skills, please share and follow #teachtheweb on Twitter!

#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 event 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!