Connecting the Creative Sparks of Young Makers to Supportive Communities of Practice

Kicking off an exciting new collaboration in support of youth interest-driven making, we introduced two participatory social networks for makers, announced our upcoming challenge, and shared educator-facing resources to support connecting interested youth to these networked opportunities. This hangout was the first in a 3-part series called “From Heroes to Villains or Back Again: Setting Off Creative Sparks for Young Makers with a Wattpad/DeviantArt ‘Twist Fate’ Challenge,” which was co-streamed at connectedlearning.tv.

From this Series:

• Part 2—Storytelling and Making Redefined: Get to Know the Wattled Community
• Part 3—Meet the “Deviants”: Networked Artists and Makers of DeviantArt

View the Conversation
During the broadcast, the conversation also took place on Twitter using the hashtags #connectedlearning and #twistfate.

Guests for this webinar included:

• Mimi Ito (host), Cultural anthropologist, research director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine, and co-founder of Connected Camps
• Christina Cantrill, Associate Director of National Programs at the National Writing Project
• Candice Mack, Senior librarian and system-wide coordinator at the Los Angeles Public Library and current President of Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)
• Jing Jing Tan, Community Engagement Lead at Wattpad, where she works to help more storytellers be successful in reaching an audience. Jing Jing has experience in online community strategy and management, and has a Masters degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Josh Wattles, Advisor in Chief, DeviantArt. He also currently teaches Advanced Copyright as part-time faculty at the USC Gould School of Law.

Resources for this webinar:

• Wattpad
• Wattpad Contests
  • The Wattys (mentioned in hangout)
• Wattpad Writers Page
• DeviantArt
• Connected Learning Alliance
• Teen Tech Week
• Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)
• National Writing Project (NWP)
• LAPL Writes: Los Angeles Public Library’s Guide to Writing and Author Community in LA
• Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles
• Teen Ink magazine’s Writing Resources
• Schooling the Directioners – Research report on learning to write through Wattpad
• Twine (mentioned in hangout)

Photo/ benco42.deviantart.com