Technical Working Group : Education

General
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Hello everyone,

Some of you may have previously met me through the Motoko Bootcamp or dSquad. I’ve recently joined Code & State which makes building and earning on the Internet Computer easier.

We believe that education is an important part of making it easier to build on the Internet Computer - that’s why we’ve decided to launch a first of several initiatives that are focused on this topic : I’m excited to announce a new working group focused on education.

Goal

The Internet Computer is a novel and complex platform. This novelty comes with challenges in understanding how the platform works, how to build on it, or even how to use it.

There have been attempts at educating the broader community and there are currently several initiatives led by individuals, the Dfinity Foundation or other entities in the ecosystem: Motoko Bootcamp, Code & State, Internet Computer Fellowship, Internet Computer Association, and more. Most of those initiatives would greatly benefit from open collaboration.

The goal of our new working group is to provide a place for collaboration, discussion and planning of initiatives that serve the broader goal of educating about the Internet Computer and its ecosystem.

Scope

Education is a big space and there’s various approaches to what education can look like. From tutorials and training courses for developers all the way to community meet-ups where interested retail users can get a first sense of the tech behind their favourite decentralized apps. In addition to the format, there’s also so many levels where we can do a better job at explaining the Internet Computer: Governance, Token Economics, the Consensus Protocol, Node Provisioning, etc.

The working group can explore all these different mediums and focus areas.

We’re keeping the scope of this working group broad on purpose to allow creativity and exploration. We will regroup and narrow the focus as we learn and gain experience.

Leadership

To be fully transparent: I’ll be leading this working group as a member of Code & State and as a community member generally interested in education. Changing roles can be discussed by the group, but strong commitment will be required.

Moritz Fueller (@cryptoschindler ) will be supporting us with coordination from the foundation’s end.

Workspace

As with other working groups, we’ve decided to use GitHub as a place to document and organize the working group. We will also have a dedicated channel on Discord to have more informal discussions.

First Meeting & Cadence

The first meeting will take place on Thursday, November 17 at 3:30 PM UTC and we’ll meet bi-weekly after that. This meeting will be used to introduce the different participants & define the scope of the working group.

If you are interested in participating, please add your informations in this document. If you don’t want to share your contact informations publicly, feel free to send me a direct message instead.

You can also start contributing by making proposals for the focus of the working group by replying to this Github issue.

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Educating more practical and market-responsive technologies！
Must take care of people with 0 programming base as a way to attract more and more new people.
It is best to have more accurate and detailed video operation tutorials, and can be updated and maintained in the future when the relevant technology has changed！
Write more and more detailed and accurate specifications for best practices and error handling methods, and update and maintain them in a timely，so as to reduce the trial and error costs of developers as much as possible！
Bounties and other incentives are the key to forming a virtuous cycle of sustainable development!
We can cooperate with some projects, organizations, DAOs ,etc(including but not limited to other chains,ecosystems, WEB2), and other things conducive to long-term development！

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This is great initiative @Seb, I’m looking forward to getting involved!

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Reminder that the working group will meet today at 3:30 PM UTC !
Looking forward :slight_smile:

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Here are the notes for this first meeting: Working group education : meeting 1 - Google Docs

Thanks to everyone who joined!

Will work with other folks on structuring this group to get more efficient :man_construction_worker:
Updates will be posted on this topic.

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Finally. Something I can reasonably rally behind. Education. Thank you @Seb those of us here to actually learn really appreciate this initiative.

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Thanks to @aiv and @northman for their amazing suggestions to help this working group moves forward.
For a full introduction to the education WG, see: README - Start here

Introduction

Welcome to the working group dedicated to education. :wave:

The goal of this group is to provide a place for collaboration, discussion and planning of initiatives that are connected with education about the Internet Computer and its ecosystem.

If you are an individual or representative of an organisation who feels aligned with this goal, then this is the place for you!

This initiative was started by Code & State, for more context see: Technical Working Group on Education.

Values :scroll:

The working group values:

  • Transparency: the recordings, documents and any work of the working group will be available to the public. The public will also be made aware of the progress made by the group.

  • Collaboration: the working group will work together to achieve goals.

  • Openness: the working group is always open to new participants and contributors.

  • Efficiency: the working group makes clear progress, meetings are not spent in chatting and planning but in working towards a clearly defined goal.

  • Clarity: the working group has a clear structure, meeting notes are concise, the goals of each subgroup are defined.

Structure :classical_building:

The working group meets online every two weeks. During a meeting, everyone will join the main room before being dispatched to smaller rooms corresponding to each subgroup. We believe that smaller groups are more efficient to work together towards a specific goal.

The working group is divided into subgroups. Subgroups are responsible for tackling a specific topic/initiative and have defined goals for each meeting. Defining the goals of the meeting is the responsibility of the coordinator based on inputs from his team…

(ex : A subgroup could be dedicated to the organisation of the Motoko Bootcamp and a goal for one meeting would be to define the curriculum for the 7 days of the Bootcamp which includes defining lectures/challenges/projects.)

Each subgroup will have a coordinator that will be responsible for leading, coordinating and sharing progress of the subgroup.

The subgroup presents its progress in the main group before the end of each meeting.

Subgroups are free to meet more often than the main working group but progress will be shared by the subgroup’s coordinator during the main meetings.

Roles and responsibilities :construction_worker_man:

All roles are voluntary and limited in scope. However, once a role has been selected by a participant there is a level of commitment that is expected.

For a complete overview of all roles (commitments, authority, responsibilities), see: WG roles.

To apply for a specific role, see: registration for active participation in the education WG.

Participants can apply for multiple roles, as long as they are able to fulfil the associated responsibilities.

Coordinator :pilot:

The coordinator is responsible for the overall success of the subgroup that he is leading.

Tasks:

  • Distribute tasks to members of their team.
  • Communicate the progress of their subgroup to the rest of the working group.
  • Take final decisions to move things forward (all decisions should be based on the inputs of other members).

The coordinator role should be asked for publicly during a meeting and will be granted based on a majority vote (60%).

Record keeper :writing_hand:

The record keeper is responsible for making sure that meetings are properly recorded and that records are available to other members.

There is one record keeper for the working group and one for each subgroup.

Tasks:

  • Making sure that records are logged for each meeting and made available.

Builder :technologist:

The builder is responsible for providing technical expertise and/or development work. The builder might be assigned to contribute to technical content (such as educational material). They are free to decide what assignments they will accept and determine the necessary technical details related to the execution.

Tasks:

  • Build stuff.

Marketer :mega:

The marketer should drive external awareness to this working group and his progress. The marketer needs to share the progress and summaries of the working group on social media.

Tasks:

  • Share progress of working groups on social media (DSCVR, Distrikt, Twitter, Taggr, Seers…)
  • Drive external awareness by creating content for the working group depending on the participant’s skills (writing content, graphic design, videos…).

Translator :capital_abcd:

The translator will help drive the inclusivity of the working group by providing translation for key contents created by the working group (social media posts, announcements, educational material…).

Tasks:

  • Translate contents when required by the working group.
  • Help drive awareness and be a relay in the local Internet Computer communities.

Contributor :mechanic:

The contributor is ready to help the working group based on his skills and opportunities that will appear. This is a perfect role for those that desire to contribute but are limited in time or skills.

Public attendee :boy:

Everyone else that participates without any assigned role. All meetings are open.

Records :minidisc:

Each meeting has a record that consists of 2 different documents:

  • Video recording of the meeting.
  • A written meeting summary (responsibility of the record keeper) that contains:
    • General information (date, topic of the day, list of attendees).
    • Summary of the important information and progress of the meeting.

All records are publicly available inside this folder.

How can you join? :raising_hand_man:

First: Thank you for your interest!

Here a few instructions to make your onboarding process easier:

  1. Join our Discord server and say hello.
  2. Add your name and basic information to the list of participants.
  3. Join the next meeting and introduce yourself.
  4. Optional: Apply for a role

How and when to start a subgroup? :vertical_traffic_light:

If you have an idea on what the working group should focus on, you can suggest a subgroup.

A good way to suggest a subgroup is to come to the next meeting and announce your intentions. Write an introduction and share it with the group. Here’s a template: Template subgroup.

Tips: The more people you get excited for your initiative, the more likely your subgroup will get traction.

Tools & language :hammer_and_wrench:

The working group uses English as the main language.

The working group uses the following tools:

  • Zoom for meeting & recordings.
  • Google doc for notes.
  • Google drive for document sharing.
  • Discord for less informal discussions and roles attributions.

Switching to on-chain alternatives might be considered in the future when mature tools will be available.

Useful links :link:

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Hello everyone I can’t join education dedicated Discord server group. could somebody provide me a valid link?

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The link has been updated. This should work again now :slight_smile:

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Not sure if this is worth a dedicated subgroup, but this is what I think might really contribute to IC growth and dev adoption.

My experience

For the past few months I’ve been learning and experimenting with the IC, mainly in Motoko. It is my first experience with web3 development, so I can’t compare with other projects and while not terrible, my experience hasn’t been great either. My main frustration is there are many walls you hit while learning and trying stuff out, some small and can be solved by searching through the docs, dev discord or this forum, others are bigger and require creating a thread or asking in public chat/DMs hoping to get an answer. To make a long story short: we lack learning material and those who know what they are doing are busy building and don’t have much time helping others.
The learning material situation has gotten slightly better over the past few months, with the docs improving, more sample code being released and @kpeacock tutorials, the next iteration of Motoko bootcamp will be a great addition too, but we can do better.

What I’m proposing

Dfinity should hire 2 devs: 1 for Rust and 1 for Motoko, with the only purpose of aiding the dev community, specifically:

  • Provide support in the dedicated channels (threads, dev discord, etc…)
  • Gathering feedback on the biggest hurdles devs face, e.g F.A.Q, common bugs, issues, desired features, etc…
  • Compile a list of the above and either work directly to improve the situation by releasing tutorials (written and recorded) and/or improving the docs or indirectly by communicating with the relevant teams.
  • Participate in offline workshops and/or IC related events in Universities.

Such a figure would be a great addition to the IC ecosystem, I come from a gamedev background and those who have dabbled with Unity most likely know who Brackey is. He was a content creator who inspired and helped many newcomers getting accustomed to the engine, the amount of tutorials he and similar peers made were one of the reasons why up until a few years ago Unity dominated the Indie scene. Eventually we might get many IC related content creators too, but for the time being I believe it’s much more proficuous for skilled and knowledgeable devs to be builders, so Dfinity should intervene and fill the gap.

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I can understand your story and see it like you does. That is exactly the reason why I have planned a couple of tutorials and a course as well in the upcoming year. “IC from the web-developer point view” or something like that.

We are still early and everything need’s time, stay tuned, there will be more content coming.

Cheers Roland

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The next meeting will take place on the 1st of December at 3:30 PM UTC.

The focus of this meeting will be: “Bounties for the Motoko ecosystem and follow up for the Bootcamp”

Make sure to add this calendar to stay updated (contains all the WGs).

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Previous meeting

This meeting took place on the 1st of December at 3:30 PM UTC.
The recordings (video + summary notes) are available here.

Next meetings

The next meeting for the entire Working Group is on the 15th of December at 3:30 PM UTC.
Make sure to add this calendar to stay updated (contains all the WGs).

Motoko Bootcamp (Subgroup)

The subgroup dedicated to the Motoko Bootcamp has decided to meet every week (instead of 2 weeks for the rest of the WG).
The next meeting will take place on the 8th of December at 3:30 PM UTC.
This meeting will be fully dedicated to the organisation of the next Motoko Bootcamp.
The coordinator of this subgroup is @aiv

How can I join the party?

For an introduction to the education WG, see: README - Start here

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No meeting this week due to the holidays and rush for the upcoming Bootcamp.

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The next Education Bootcamp will be held on 5 Jan 2023 and will be dedicated to the Motoko Bootcamp.

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Looking forward to exploring the infinite possibilities of development and innovation of SNS1 and Education！

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Update for the Education Working Group

  • Over the next several months, my priority is to enhance the Motoko Bootcamp to provide the best possible introduction to the Internet Computer and the broader Web3 ecosystem. With this in mind, I will be hosting Working Group (WG) sessions exclusively focused on the Motoko Bootcamp for the next three months, at a minimum.

  • The objective of the Working Group (WG) sessions is to foster transparency, exchange updates, and gather feedback from the community. One of the most exciting aspect of Motoko Bootcamp is the active participation of the community, who have already contributed in various capacities such as as translators, mentors, and administrative support. The aim in the coming months is to clarify the different roles, outline their requirements, explore potential benefits and identify areas for improvement. I will share the schedule for the upcoming sessions. Each session will focus on defining and discussing a particular role and creating relevant documentation and guidelines for those roles.

  • Education is a wide-ranging subject and this Working Group (WG) is capable of addressing various aspects concurrently. If anyone is interested in starting a separate group focused on a different topic, they are welcome to contact me, and I will do my best to support and facilitate their initiative.

More updates to come :saluting_face:

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This working group is no longer meeting, maybe @Seb can share some more details?

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looking forward to it really appreciate your work

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yeah it no longer work