{"id":2921,"date":"2013-02-11T10:05:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T15:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/explorecreateshare.org\/?p=2921"},"modified":"2019-02-26T12:44:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T20:44:01","slug":"webmaker-mentors-in-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/mozilla-learning\/webmaker-mentors-in-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Webmaker Mentors in 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on Michelle Thorne <\/a>and Laura Hilliger<\/a>‘s blogs. <\/em><\/p>\n

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AN INFLECTION POINT<\/span><\/h1>\n

We\u2019re at an inflection point with learning and making.<\/strong> What was once simmering quietly in makerspaces and classrooms is now boiling. Makers and mentors,<\/strong> and all sorts of hackers and radical educators in between, are the key players.
\nThe maker movement<\/strong>, iconized by MAKE: Magazine but is much deeper and broader than that, has hit mainstream. Hundreds of thousands of people show up at Maker Faires, and contributions to sites like Instructables and YouTube tutorial videos are innumerable. Toy stores sell kits, and anyone from a scout to a senior citizen can take a workshop at their skill level. Makers bootstrap, and they hack. These are people with a DIY ethic and an affinity to sharing what they made and how they made it.<\/strong>
\nThere\u2019s also another movement reaching critical mass: a learning movement.<\/strong> It\u2019s teachers, educators, museum curators, after-school coaches \u2013 in short, mentors who cop a DIY attitude towards learning.<\/strong> Similar to the maker movement, they care about tinkering and interest-driven projects. They care about making, not rote memorization or other staid pedagogies of the past. They blend online and offline experiences, they focus on peer learning, and they are challenging traditional educational institutions with new modes of assessment, accreditation and collaboration.
\nThese two groups, the makers and the mentors, are coming together. And they\u2019re creating a smart grid for learning.<\/strong> If it all goes well, it will shake up education, it will shake up employment, and it will shake up the way we see and tinker with the world.<\/p>\n

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WHY MENTORS<\/span><\/h1>\n

At Mozilla, we believe that people learn best with others<\/strong> and that mentoring is a powerful, distributed way to connect learners with instructors.<\/strong>
\nBy social learning, we mean that learning happens effectively through social interaction among peers.<\/strong> It\u2019s learning that has an impact beyond an individual and becomes part of the larger society or community, in response to interactions and changes withing the community.
\nBy mentoring, we mean peer support and encouragement where someone helps another person learn or make something,<\/strong> and also to understand that effort in a larger context. Mentoring is social and open-ended, and it\u2019s certainly not just a one-way transfer of knowledge. We think a focus on mentoring is important, as it provides ongoing relationships for learners and a way to foster not only \u201chard\u201d web skills like learning code but also the social ones like collaboration or working in the open.
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WHY MOZILLA<\/span><\/h1>\n

Mozilla is a community that practices learning by making.<\/strong> We\u2019ve got an ethos of less yak, more hack, and of helping people hack on things they care about. We don\u2019t believe in \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d and instead encourage a playful approach to the web and the world. Peers are a critical part of the effort, and not only for Webmaker but across Mozilla in projects like Firefox and FirefoxOS. Merit and peer recognition mean more than titles.<\/strong>
\nWe\u2019re not doing this alone \u2014 it\u2019s a huge, distributed collaboration across many organizations and individuals.<\/strong> A \u201cbig tent\u201d,<\/strong> as we like to call it. From kitchen tables and small code clubs to edgy museums and international bodies, we see this as a group effort where many players have a role.
\nWith experience in \u201cbig tent\u201d models like the Hive Learning Networks<\/strong> (city labs where organizations cluster to share and create learning offerings, innovations and resources) and the Summer Code Party<\/strong> (a campaign to teach webmaking anywhere), we\u2019re excited to take this ethos to the next level.<\/strong><\/p>\n

WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO<\/span><\/h1>\n

The mentoring team at Mozilla will megazord two existing teams and add some amazing new folks<\/strong>:<\/p>\n