Quick Thoughts on the #teachtheweb "Club Call"

I enjoy the club calls as much as the web literacy calls. Whereas the web lit calls invogorate my mind the club calls spark my passion for teaching. Today was no different. We had a lot of fun taking stock of where the curriculum has come.

The Mozilla Learning team does fantastic work at a tough pace. It helps when you draw on the experience of MOUSE and other great partners and have such wonderful minds.

I was most fascinated by the discussion of the new "hub" or space that was mentioned in the  webmaker club roll out plan and the discussions of tools we use to tell our stories.

We turned to reactionary gifs as the current currency of meaning and this discussion (d)evovles of course into a gif showdown in order to drop the mic on the way out the door.

The Tools

Email sign on remains a contant barrier for many clubs, especially younger clubs and those in formal educational settings. 

I wonder if a system could be set up where a verified "club leader" could receive X number of authorization codes via SMS. Then club members could use these codes to set up profiles.

I have no idea what that means in terms of security or complying with laws like COPA but  email registration is a constant struggle for educators.

I played with the webmaker mobile tool. I really like it. When I think about a broswer experienced on making and remixing I salivate. 

The Hub

Follow the #DS106  and #CCourses model. Build the hub on a backbone of RSS. Every strategic plan I have read mentions stories as a unique component to Mozilla Learning. Make the hub the home of these stories. Provide links to the materials folks need to start telling and writing their own stories.

I remember something about wanting to see a map of all the clubs. What if the map was animated so circles grew as new items cames into the feed? There could be a curated set of posts by regional coordinators and other staff. 

Then you have the links to the curriculum, the tools, and the discourse forum.

If the team of crack coders and designers could build and encouraged the use of a common RSS reader among clubs that might be pretty cool. 

I just read the draft of the Clubs Best Practices and we are suggesting mentors blog, and set up websites. I know I put in a small  grant for my clubs. Going to spend it on hosting if funded, but we list plenty of existing tools folks can use.

We just need a decent RSS reader. I really like the Planet Webmaker feed and design. Can we bake similar features into the overall hub and provide an RSS reader to club leaders and members? It must be hard. The options are limited. I use Feedly others have great success with inoreader. If some crack squad could develop an RSS reader that could go from the hub>country>state province>city>club name it would be awesome. 

You combine that with Discourse, the new tools coming out, and we would have a cool hub.