Re-designing our online offering for mentors

TLDR: What do Webmaker mentors want to do?

  1. Teach
  2. Share
  3. Organize

(pulled from Michelle Thornes draft ladder of engagement)

How can we make our online offering for educators and mentors strong? As part of a larger re-design effort for webmaker.org, we’re re-designing the webmaker.org/teach page. This post is our creative brief for handing over to the design and product team. It tries to lay out:

  • Our target audiences
  • Feedback we’ve gotten and challenges we want to address
  • The main story we want to tell
  • Our main calls to action. What’s our ladder of engagement? How can people get involved — in ways the clearly communicate the value to them?

Who are we trying to reach?

  • Informal educators. Hive and “Hive-like” educators/mentors/teaching artists.
  • Teachers. They tend to be tech savvy, creative, and passionate about empowerment.
  • Mozilla Reps. And Mozillians more broadly. These are often techies who have never “taught” someone before — but want to share their skills.

These groups are early adopters for web literacy. They’re motivated by a desire to…

  • empower others. They like seeing others learn. They live for witnessing that “a-ha” moment when someone clicks on “remix” or “publish,” or realizes they just created something on the web.
  • get training and professional development. this is key! digital literacy, web skills, creative approaches to teaching tech, making and programming is a hot new field. they see opportunities to advance their own skills, professional development and career opportunities in an exciting new space.
  • rub shoulders with other leaders in the field. sharing knowledge and new practises with others like them. Through Mozilla’s convening power, ethos and brand.

What are we trying to improve?

Our main creative challenges, based on feedback we’ve collected on the page so far:

  • Telling the story better for newcomers. The current page is confusing to people who are new to what we’re doing. It leads with a “give ’em the kits” strategy — focusing on a gallery of content without really putting it into context or mission.
  • Highlight community contribution. “We’re a non-profit, open source project. Let’s build it together.”
  • Our target audiences don’t naturally associate Mozilla with education, or educational offerings. “Wait a minute — Mozilla is doing something in education? What is it exactly?”
  • Our audience don’t always know what open source is, or that Mozilla is a non-profit.
  • They don’t necessarily know what “teach the web” or “make the web” mean. They *are* people who mostly understand what we mean when we say: “teaching web literacy, digital skills and making.” But that needs to be explicit. We say words like “make the web” or “teach the web” — but many test audience have *no* idea what that means.
  • Organize the resources better. As the number of teaching kits grows, they need to be better sorted, searched and aligned with a larger pathway or frame.
  • Clarify the sub-page strategy. We want to take a holistic approach — not just focus on a single page. e.g., webmaker.org/teach vs. /mentor vs. new potential pages.

One early recommendation we’re hearing a lot of is to make webmaker.org/teach more of a storytelling page — instead of trying to immediately shove a gallery of resources at people. Maybe we have two distinct design requirements here: 1) tell the story, with key ways to get involved, and 2) provide a searchable gallery of resources. Right now it feels like we’re trying to shove both into a single page — and it’s not really working.

What’s our story?

Teach the web. We’re all about helping others teach web skills with a maker spirit. Free tools and learning activities to help you teach web literacy.

We’ve got creative new ways to teach web skills, digital literacy and making. You can use our free tools and lesson plans. Or make and share your own, and join a community of educators, librarians, techies and other digital makers like you. We’re a creative learning community.

Key *visual* components to our story:

  • Photos of our community events. Show instead of tell. These photos are one of our greatests assets for grokking what it’s all about.
  • Highlight mentor stories. “Meet some amazing mentors.” Faces and super brief captions that people can identify with. See https://webmaker.org/mentor (any way to rotate or update frquently?) could also be stories tagged “mentor” from the Webmaker blog?
  • Showcase *contribution*. Show that new contributions from the community are coming in all the time. (maybe connect with item above – show a face and what they taught or what they made)
  • We’re open source. Everything here is 100% free, open source, and powered by a global community.

 

Calls to Action

We’ve divided our calls to action into three core levels. These map to a ladder of engagement that looks something like this:

  1. Teach
  2. Share
  3. Organize

 

Primary CTAs

  • 1) Teach the web
  • 2) Learn how
  • 3) Stay in touch

We’ve got creative ways to help anyone teach web literacy, digital skills and making. Use our free tools, activities and lesson plans. Or make your own – with help from our global community of educators, techies and mentors like you.

or

Explore creative ways to teach digital web literacy and webmaking. (or Explore creative ways to teach essential 21st century skills aligned to the new Web Literacy Standard.) Use our free tools, teaching kits and curriculum. Let us know what you think and/or share your own (just think we need to uplevel request for feedback vs just using). You can get started in five minutes or less.

Assets:

  • Teaching kits. Aligned to the Web Literacy Standard.
  • Starter makes page.

2) Learn how

Get free training and professional development. Drop in on our free open online course, attend a training event, or share knowledge with our global community.

Assets:

  • Open online course (MOOC)
  • Training Days
  • Current:
  • G+ community
  • SUMO support links for mentors
  • Guides and teaching kits
  • Web Literacy Standard

3) Stay in touch

Sign up for udpates about new teaching tools, resources and events.

Assets:

  • Email list
  • @MozTeach

Secondary CTAs

Share your own teaching kits. Use our templates to create your own teaching activities and lesson plans (or create your own web literacy teaching resources). Make your own teaching kit using one of our easy web page templates. Then share them with others to use or remix themselves.

Assets:

Connect with other mentors and educators. Share knowledge with other educators, mentors, and Mozillians teaching web skills around the world. Find inspiration, share feedback and knowledge, and connect with others who are teaching web skills around the world.

Assets:

  • G+
  • Twitter
  • Monthly mentor calls

Learn more about Mozilla’s new Web Literacy Standard. What are the component skills we need to be web literate? Get involved with our new standard for teaching and learning. “Align your stuff with our stuff.”

Assets:

  • Web Literacy Standard page.
  • Host an event. Use our guides to host a hack jam, learning party or classroom session or workshop.
  • Assets:
  • Event guides (to be updated)

Third-level CTAs

Get more involved. Mozilla Webmaker is an open source project powered by contributors like you. Help us build Webmaker tools, teaching kits and curriculum. We’d also love your feedback on how we can improve. [Mentor program – levels of engagement] Context: https://teach.etherpad.mozilla.org/team-ladder

Assets:

  • Get involved page
  • Feedback page
  • Community calls

[Michelle’s ladder of engagement goes here]

Connect your city. Start or join a hyperlocal digital learning network. Brings groups together with a shared affinity towards making and learning in your hometown. [OR: Hive cookbook / “How to start your own Hive”]

Assets:

  • Hive Cookbook: How to create your own digital learning network (to be completed)
  • Hive landing page? A simple “what is Hive” page with a map plus supporting links? – I’m working on the new Hive NYC site and have a page similar to this – will share soon

Become a Mozilla Webmaker Mentor. Earn your Mentor badge. Earn your Mozilla Webmaker Mentor badge and help learners around the world. Teach other teachers, help level up their skills. [Teach teachers.] [webmaker.org/mentor]

 

 

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