Hey there Training team

I hope you are all faring well through this trying season.  It’s been quite some time since we’ve met.  For those able to join in for a chat, come join in some open office hours at 11am EDT on Monday.  

We’ve got some big news.  So much effort by our team has gone into shipping a new Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site.. @man4toman @chetan200891 and @dufresnesteven have done a fantastic job at building out the site.  @juliekuehl and @jessecowens have led this team through the reorganization of our lesson plans moving to our GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository, and soon we’ll get to see them living on the Learn site as well. It’s possible that the Learn website will be able to soft-launch within one week. 

As WordCamps, Meetups, and other in-person WordPress related events have pivoted through the Coronavirus pandemic, the Community team has reimagined online events, with a new initiative to build community beyond events.  

Moving beyond synchronous events

Using a flipped-classroom model, the Learn site will soon be an organized way to find how-to lessons for a wide range of abilities and goals.  As we compile a series of lessons, contributors can record them and offer video workshops, reinforcing the content with optional real-time discussions.  That can happen online, and in the future as in person-events resume, could happen in the pre-pandemic method we have offered.

Possible Lesson elements:

• A video presentation about the subject, and a way to download this for offline use as needed
• Lesson plans for anyone to use when presenting the lesson in person
• Slides if applicable
• Links to Support and Developer articles that are relevant to the material
• A way to rate and review the lesson and content and presentation
• Participant assessment of confidence, familiarity, and understanding of the content before and after
• What workshop(s) does this lesson plan connect with?
• Details for the next online real-time event 
• Editor-level taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. in the admin dashboard to help us audit content readily as updates are available

What Training Team Contributors can do:

• Continue to revise and edit lesson plans
• Continue to form workshop plans
• Review applications for presentations (see the application process ideas at https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/06/proposal-workshop-submission-and-review-process-for-learn-wordpress/) 
  • Presenters must apply
  • Once their video has been produced, it will go through a review for subject matter accuracy as well as production quality before going on to the WordPress.tv team
• Create training resources for the workflow to contribute to the Learn site and Training team. 
• Audit lessons as updates become available, documenting what needs to be revised soon.
• Collaborate with all the teams (after videos are transcribed, lessons can then be translated and localized, with localized recordings available as well)

Where do we go from here?

The Community team is fast at work on organizing real-time online events to extend the lessons and workshops into spaces where participants can engage with instructors.  We’ll hear more about how that goes soon. 

We could set ourselves a goal, as a team, to facilitate one new lesson plan per week.  In time, lessons will culminate into workshops.

As a team, we have an amazing opportunity for cross-team collaboration, assisting instructors and other contributors, and ultimately, to empower others with ways to express their voices online.

Who’s interested? For those able to be present, at 11am EDT/3pm UTC, join me in the Training channel.  Share your ideas in the comments below. 

#learn-wordpress