We’ve recently begun work on a new website that will serve the mentors in our Webmaker community—a gathering place for anyone who is teaching the Web. They’ll find activity kits, trainings, badges, the Web Literacy Map, and more. It will also be an online clubhouse for Webmaker Clubs, and will showcase the work of Hives to the broader network.

Our vision for the site is that it will provide pathways for sustained involvement in teaching the Web. Imagine a scenario where, after hosting a Maker Party, a college student in Pune wants to build on the momentum, but doesn’t know how. Or imagine a librarian in Seattle who is looking for activities for her weekly teen drop-in hours. Or a teacher in Buenos Aires who is looking to level up his own digital literacy skills. In each of these scenarios, we hope the person will look to this new site to find what they need.

We’re in the very early stages of building out the site. One of our first challenges is to figure out the best way to organize all of the content.

Fortunately, we were able to find 14 members of the community who were willing to participate in a “virtual card-sorting” activity. We gave each of the volunteers a list of 22 content areas (e.g. “Find a Teaching Kit,” “Join a Webmaker Club,” “Participate in a community discussion”), and asked them to organize the items into groups that made sense to them.

The results were fascinating. Some grouped the content by specific programs, concepts, or offerings. Others grouped by function (e.g “Participate,” “Learn,” “Lead”). Others organized by identity (e.g. “Learner” or “Mentor”). Still others grouped by level of expertise needed.

We owe a debt of gratitude to those who participated in the research. We were able to better understand the variety of mental models, and we’re currently using those insights to build out some wireframes to test in the next heartbeat.

Once we firm up the information architecture, we’ll build and launch v1 of the site (our goal is to launch it by the end of Q1). From there, we’ll continue to iterate, adding more functionality and resources to meet the needs of our mentor community.

Future iterations will likely include:

• Improving the way we share and discover curriculum modules
• Enhancing our online training platform
• Providing tools for groups to self-organize
• Making improvements to our badging platform
• Incorporating the next version of the Web Literacy Map

Stay tuned for more updates and opportunities to provide feedback throughout the process. We’ve also started a Discourse thread for continuing discussion of the platform.

http://hannahgrams.com/2015/01/27/a-new-online-home-for-those-who-teachtheweb/