Hi Doc/ All,
I was just about to send the same message notifying the list of this as well.
I would appreciate a
click on this link in support of one proposal this community may find interesting.
VRM angle:
What is "web literacy" in a world where virtually every segment of our socio-economic system is contributing data to and pulling data from the infrastructure of the net?
How do we 'cross the chasm' from early/advanced participants who understand how to build/use the net as a functional medium to the general population that consumes what is provided or suggested by their peers without much concern for their personal web literacy?
Where does the education/marketing of literate web users happen? How do we influence the network to be 'smarter' than it is by default.
I have some ideas that I have been putting in practice and would like to see expand at a rapid clip. In the past 8 months, I have organized live events educating both kids and parents, often side-by-side, on various aspects of web literacy. At the root of this effort is the idea that you/anyone can be the creator and programmer of the web, and not merely a consumer of it.
To this end, we teach kids as young as 5 to code and solve problems using computational logic. We help them write algorithms that compute data outcomes, and we help them engage programming languages of increasing complexity to accomplish self-defined goals. Our methods are having an impact, having reached over 2300 people via these live events in the past 8 months, with some events having over 100 people on the waiting list currently... and we are ready to scale.
Two important points for context sake:
1. We have 8 year old students successfully writing Java code in order to mod the popular sandbox construction game Minecraft. I presented on this at Minecon in November of 2013:
http://kidoyo.com/minecon2013.php
This is just one example... we are teaching kids 7-17 about html/css/_javascript_/jquery/python/php/websecurity/data visualizations/processing/arduino/raspberry pi/etc...
And we by no means are alone in this... this is a ground up movement.
2. In our rooms where kids and parents are learning side-by-side for FREE... I have participants all over the map... from stay-at-home-moms to scientists at National Labs, from employees of major software firms to FBI agents, from teachers to auto mechanics and more... including of course kids!
In these rooms we talk about "web literacy" in the context that matters to normal people... we talk about the NSA and personal data security... we talk about modern versus antiquated browsers... and YES, we talk about digital sovereignty, vendor relationship management, and how identity will impact our kids and our family's data activities.
It is all on the table. The future is in view in these rooms in very practical ways.
I would love to see some #vrm code produced that I could put in these rooms that kids could hack on... that parents could interrogate and play with... that regular people would be engaged by and find interest in using as empowered participants.
As I have said before and still believe... in our future marketing is really education... and education is in need of a new model because generally speaking, our schools are failing miserably to tap into the greatest platform of learning and information delivery the world has ever known.
I have some good partnerships coming online, but could certainly use more.
I appreciate the read, and thanks for the click above.
Here is a current link list:
more coming online soon...
Regards,
Devon