Here at the Hive Toronto Learning Network, we started the new year by welcoming 20 new member organizations into the network, growing our membership to include more than 60 youth-serving organizations.
As Mozilla’s initiative to help youth become creators with technology and not just consumers, Hive is a network of educators and organizations transforming learning by advancing digital skills and web literacy through connected learning at both a local and global level.
Membership: Value & opportunity
To support youth learning, Hive supports member organizations by providing opportunities for educators to develop skills, share knowledge, and collaborate through the following mechanisms:
Cultivating a community of practice: Community calls, meetups, online communication platform, consultation on program and curriculum development
Facilitating professional development: Digital literacy trainings, cultivating and sharing training opportunities
Acting as a conduit: To other organizations, to funders, to opportunities for youth, promotion
Seeding collaborative partnerships: Informal partnerships, pooling funding from outside funders for cross-member Collaborative Community Projects to develop new digital learning opportunities for youth
By joining Hive Toronto, members commit to contributing to a collaborative community of practice. We often explain Hive as a potluck: members have different needs, or “appetites,” but like any good potluck, you take what you need while contributing what you can.
With this being our third membership application process, Hive Toronto strives to curate a network of diverse members that serve and are reflective of Toronto and the surrounding areas. Based on member feedback, this round of membership application was open to for-profit organizations with youth programs. The reasoning behind this was twofold: These orgs are offering quality programming to youth and/or educators and current Hive members were already collaborating with several of these for-profit orgs, indicating that they have skills and expertise that could benefit the network.
Hive Toronto: A timeline
Hive has come a long way since the 2009 origin of the model in 2009, expanding to Toronto in 2012 and currently growing in 11 locations, globally.
2009: Hive NYC was launched as New Youth City Learning Network
2012: Hive Toronto in pilot phase; 20+ members; 3 events
2013: Monthly meetups & calls; 40+ members; 12 collaborative events; 5 funded Collaborative Community Projects, Maker Party 2013, 2 members represented at the Mozilla Festival (MozFest)
2014: 5+ digital literacy trainings, 6 collaborative events; 4 Collaborative Community Projects, 2 Remixable Open Educational Resource grants, funding from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) to co-design privacy education resources and open badge prototypes, funding from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) to develop appmaking resources and Webmaker functionality based on educators needs, new website, launch of Hive Global, Maker Party 2014, 3 members represented at Mozfest LINK
2015: 60+ members, professional development, more projects
Watch this 2 minute video to learn how the Hive model is transforming learning in Toronto and around the world: http://hivelearningnetworks.org/wp-content/themes/hive-learning-networks/media/Hive_Video.mp4
Hive Toronto: A key part of Mozilla’s Hive Mentor Network strategy
Hive Toronto is part of Mozilla’s growing global learning strategy. Chris Lawrence, Vice President of Learning at Mozilla, outlines Hive’s role in this strategy for 2015 in his recent post,
“As a distributed learning lab, Hives develop new practices and tools for learning. Hive has also been a key driver for Mozilla initiatives including Maker Party and MozFest. In 2015 it will continue to fuel our efforts: Hive community members may lead skillshares based on their own areas of expertise during Teach the Web weekly calls; they will continue to host Maker Party events that introduce other organizations and youth to our work; they will also be a major platform for developing Webmaker Clubs, both in terms of providing deeper web literacy learning experiences in cities around the world, and also feeding innovative content into the pipeline for other club leaders to facilitate.”
Read more about Hive’s connection to the greater Mozilla learning strategy here: http://www.clawrence.org/2015/01/06/2015-mozilla-learning-network/.
Hive members’ shared vision
Hive Toronto member organizations range in size, subject focus area, and number of youth served but the factor that unites members is Hive’s shared vision of equipping youth with the skills needed to survive and thrive in today’s evolving world.
Hive is a network of member organizations but it is also a network of individuals who contribute to the Hive community, collaborate, take risks, share their organizational and personal knowledge, all with the goal of building capacity of youth. Thank you to new and existing members and individuals for your commitment to exploring, creating, and sharing with Hive Toronto.
Please join me in welcoming our new 20 members who will be adding to our existing network of 40+ members:
- Action Potential Lab
- Arts for Children and Youth
- BYTE
- Children’s Peace Theatre
- CoderDojoTo
- EverFi Canada
- Exhibit Change
- hEr VOLUTION
- Icewire Makerspace
- Innisfil Public Library
- Latin American Canadian Art Projects (LACAP)
- Logics Academy
- Oakville Public Library
- Ontario Justice Education Network
- Pathways to Education Canada
- Pickering Public Library
- Prepr Foundation
- Spark Makers
- Technovation Academy of Science and Technology (TAST)
- WorldVuze Education
- Youthlink