Community Spotlight: Mark Shillitoe

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Please join us in celebrating this month’s community spotlight, Mark Shillitoe, who is making an impact in his local community and beyond.  Mark is currently leading digital learning innovations and creativity at a new international school in Switzerland. Outside of formal classrooms innovation, Mark has helped indigenous students in the Amazon with mobile storytelling and has extensive makerspace experience as he leads the very first Mozilla Club in Switzerland!

Mark Shillitoe

Mark Shillitoe


We asked Mark to tell us more about his exciting journey with the web. Here’s what he had to say:
What is your background with the web? With Mozilla?
I introduced students to blogging as a primary grade 4 teacher back in 2008 as a way to share learning stories to an authentic audience. From these early beginnings, we developed a more complete way of documenting and sharing these stories for specific units, or topics, of inquiry.
The blogging project with grade 4 was used for us all to document and share our learning journey. This particular unit was around inventions and it allowed us to become experts in our personal areas and hence learn lots more about inventions and the connections with the process. The blog enabled learning to continue way beyond the classroom and connect with the local community and families in more meaningful ways providing an authentic audience for the students. This example includes a rules, rights & responsibilities unit, in which students and families were particularly engaged.
I shared this experience, and a slightly remixed project, at Social Media week in Berlin, Germany: Exploring a learning journey of digital media in schools:sharing, connecting, reflecting,  I ran a workshop where participants built clay characters and captured them in and around the event location, then posting their images to a social media space- EyeEm.
During this time, I connected with Stefania Druga of Hackidemia and Michelle Thorne of Mozilla Hive Berlin. With these two inspirations, I facilitated workshops to complement the technology integration programme I was leading as Curriculum coordinator in an International School: shillsipadproject and The iPad, The Witch, And the Wardrobe.
1st Mozilla Club participants in Switzerland. Photo courtesy of Mark Shillitoe.

1st Mozilla Club participants in Switzerland. Photo courtesy of Mark Shillitoe.


I joined Mozfest online in 2012, 2013 and in London 2014, 2015, founding the first Mozilla Club in Switzerland this January. Our club, MakersJam, is jamming nicely as we mix up and remix some of the learning experiences provided within the Mozilla Learning space. The club has started to jam with Raspberry Pi, creating a web server with Coder where they are now applying their Webmaker skills to build web projects whilst exploring the mechanics of the web.
Thimble remix from Makersjam. Photo courtesy of Mark Shillitoe

Thimble remix from Makersjam. Photo courtesy of Mark Shillitoe.


What is your most noteworthy #teachtheweb accomplishment?
Founding and leading the Mozilla Club at my school. I have integrated Mozilla tools including X-Ray Goggles and Thimble for the last two years into areas of our IB curriculum, specifically science and design. The club allows for greater freedom to explore and connect ideas further and opens further opportunities for hands-on making experiences in our MakerSpace, which I co-designed. I led Europe Code Week initiatives, the highlight being our Family MakerFaire.
Last summer I co-organised and led, Project Ceiba, a mobile learning initiative to empower local indigenous students in the Amazon Basin to tell their own story. We provided each community with mobile creation devices and a series of creative, hands on, experiential workshops. This initiative came at their own request and need to utilize their existing computers and develop digital literacy whilst embracing new mobile technologies.
Maker movement class
Photo provided by Mark Shillitoe, left, with Project Ceiba participants.
Alongside mobile learning creation projects we held informal ‘MakerParties’ each afternoon with the goal of ‘Making Thinking Visible’. We utilised ‘Technology Will Save Us’ Kits  to build with technology, creating synthesisers, a penalty shoot out football game, conductive dough earrings and much more.
How are you inspiring others to #teachtheweb/join in the Mozilla cause?
Besides the Project Ceiba campaign, next month I’ll be taking my ideas to Milan to Learning2, leading Precon workshop entitled, PopUp MakerSpaces. The idea is to stage accessible, remix-able engagements in visible, inviting places around the venue. I generally want participants to hack the conference and engage fellow participants by creating pop up learning experiences.
DIY Animation. Photo courtesy of Mark Shillitoe.

DIY Animation. Photo courtesy of Mark Shillitoe.


“A manifesto for making, a provocation to redesign classrooms, learning spaces, schools entrance lobbies to foster inquiry, curiosity and wonder. Be the Urban Exploring maker in your school, the Guerrilla technologist, the Graffiti Artist tinkerer. Be ready to provoke & inspire!” – Learning2, Mark Shillitoe
In summary, it is an exciting time, mostly inspired by experiences from Mozfest and the approach the festival takes. Bringing these ideas back into a school environment can be challenging as we continually push the boundaries of school structures, subjects and curriculum. Luckily, I have a supportive team mostly consisting or Arts and Design colleagues and incredibly creative students.
To learn more about Mark, follow him on Twitter and on his blog.
Do you know someone that has made tremendous strides towards spreading global web literacy or has made an impact through a Mozilla Club, classroom, or the #teachtheweb community at large? Share their story with us.

Making Friends with GitHub

Mozilla

One of the areas of challenge we see most frequently in bringing new folks onboard to “open science” is the learning curve involved with open tools, particularly those who are not well-versed in the world of coding and open source.

A couple weeks ago, we had the opportunity to work with one of our Mozilla Fellows for Science, Joey Lee, on developing a “Friendly Intro to GitHub” workshop at the University of British Columbia.  The workshop assumed no experience on the part of the participants and is designed to be taught in one day.  While there was some mention of how GitHub works with Git, we tried to stay focused on the online interface with some dalliance in GitHub Desktop just to keep it simple.

Friendly Intro to GitHub Workshop

“Friendly Intro to GitHub” workshop hosted by University of British Columbia Library

We started with essentials such as what GitHub actually is, a glossary, and some examples then let folks get down and dirty with GitHub by setting up their very own first project.

What makes GitHub so great as a tool for working open is the ability to preserve version control even while collaborating with multiple people.  After lunch we had participants really experience the collaborative aspect by creating issues, making pull requests and forking. (Not sure what all that means? Check out the glossary.)

Collaborating on GitHub

Collaborating on GitHub

The workshop finished up with a discussion on the essential pieces of a repository such as READMEs, Codes of Conduct, Licenses, and CONTRIBUTING docs.

Our post assessment survey gave us some great feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

Rating on pace of workshop

Feedback on pace of the workshop

There was strong agreement that participants learned something valuable from the workshop (4.5 on 5 pt scale) and the pace of the workshop was good for learning (4.6).  The comments were where we found gold, however.

On the value of the workshop:

“It for sure made GitHub more accessible and understandable. I tried learning it before by myself, but found that very difficult. I feel now that I have a much better understanding of the concepts and main work flows, and using that, it will be much easier and hopefully more straightforward to use github!”

Regarding comfort with GitHub after the workshop:

“I learned lots but there is still so much more to learn! So many different things github can be used for, I want to learn more.”

“I learned the important concept – Github is not only used for coders! It’s good that the activities in workshops are not related to coding.”

Tweet abt workshopThe best part of our post-workshop assessment was that 100% of respondents said they would recommend this workshop to others!

Pie Chart of responses

GitBooks and GitPages were requested by several people for follow-up workshops, so look for those to come in the future!

Workshop materials including exercises, schedule and etherpad can all be found here: http://joeyklee.github.io/friendly-github-intro/

Feel free to fork the repository and make it your own!

Celebrating Women & the Open Web: March Mozilla Learning Community Call

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We recently relaunched the Mozilla Learning Community Call, an opportunity to connect in real time with Mozilla and to interact with others in our network who are doing their part to #teachtheweb.
For the March call, in conjunction with International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we explored topics related to teaching women and girls about technology and the Web. We were honored to have Anthony Negron from New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), Sarah Pooley from the Girl Scouts of Greater New York,  Jennifer Velez from Arizona State University’s CompuGirls program, and Baratang Miya from GirlHYPE in Cape Town, South Africa, share experiences, tips, best practices, and challenges with us as they pertain to running programs for women and young girls.
A few highlights from the discussion:   

  • Anthony Negron from New York Hall of Science shared about Girls First Studio program, a 30-hour program that engages female youth in the design process using an open source virtual world platform called New World Studio. Anthony provided great insight into why it’s important to have female role models available as facilitators in the program.

“I feel that the experience we created could be done with an all male group or co-ed environment. Knowing that the program was going to be led by two males, we wanted our explainers (high school and college aged staff that work on the museum floor and assist in workshops and camps) to be females relatively close to the student’s ages so that they can be examples of strong female role models.” – Anthony Negron, NYSCI

  • Jennifer Velez from Arizona State University spoke about CompuGirls, a culturally responsive technology program for adolescent girls (grades 8-12) from under-resourced school districts. Through experience with this particular environment, Jennifer relayed important information about the need for not only great mentor-mentee availability for the girls, but also strong training and professional development for those mentors.

“We cannot assume that every teacher will automatically “get,” or recognize the need for, culturally responsive teaching practices. [We need to] help teachers/mentors delve into their own identities as part of the professional development process.” – Jennifer Velez, ASU CompuGirls

  • Baratang Miya shared about her experience as founder of GirlHYPE, a non-profit organization in Cape Town, South Africa, which aims to empower women in STEM. She elaborated on best practices for managing obstacles participants may face in their home lives, such as creating a safe space for girls, opening up as a facilitator and mentor to those in your program (beyond the curriculum), and exuding patience.

“We have a cultural barrier as there are certain issues you can’t talk about…for example, women’s health issues. We have to teach women how to become comfortable with speaking about such things.  Although we are teaching literacy classes and computers, we also try very hard to build confidence.” – Baratang Miya, GirlHYPE

You can watch the full recording below, or on teach.mozilla.org where you can also see the complete agenda including notes and links to relevant resources.

Let’s continue this important discussion!

  • Join us for an all-day Tweetchat about women, girls and the Web on March 31 via @Mozteach. Follow us on Twitter and read this discourse thread for details.
  • This forum thread is a great place to add, suggest, or obtain tips, curriculum and resources for planning STEM-based programs geared towards women and girls.

Other Resources
This month, we’ve focused on sharing resources, practices and curriculum for women and the open web.

Join us for next month’s community call on Wednesday, April 20 – 11 AM ET/ 4pm UTC/ 5pm CET/ 9:30pm IST for a discussion on the Internet of Things.

Global Sprint 2016: Site and Project Submissions Open!

Mozilla

Join us as we collaborate on projects helping further science on the open web!

We’re back with our third annual global sprint – June 2-3, 2016.
We could use your help to make this year’s event bigger and better than ever.

We’ve just opened our call for project ideas and site hosts (you’re welcome to sign up for both!):

Project ideas:
This year, we have four tracks you can submit your project to:

  1. Tools
  2. Open educational resources
  3. Citizen science
  4. Open data

Projects must:

  • further open science,
  • have ways for sprint participants to get involved and
  • have someone available to lead the work before and during the sprint

You can browse our growing list of featured projects or propose your own by completing the project submission form. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working with project leads to help get your ideas ready for contributors at the Global Sprint.

Site hosts.

Want to host a sprint site in your city? It could be for 3 people or 30 – you tell us.
All you need is to provide a space for people to gather and work, a strong wifi connection, and perhaps some coffee. We’ll help with the rest. The sprint only runs through normal business hours, so no overnight coverage needed.

Sign up to host by completing the site host submission form.

You can read all about the projects from last year’s sprint, here in our wrap up post and hear from our participants here.

Interested? Submit your project ideas, offer to host a site, or drop us a note at sciencelab@mozillafoundation.org. We hope you’ll come and collaborate with us as we help research thrive on the open web.

Exploring the Internet of Things with Mozilla

Mozilla

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Tomorrow’s Internet is going to be everywhere. Connectivity will be embedded in your transportation, your home, your places of learning and work, your clothing and probably even in your skin. It is estimated that by 2020, 41 billion devices will be online, driven by an Internet of Things (IoT) market worth $7.1 trillion.
The Internet is a global, public resource that should be open and accessible to all. As the Internet evolves, it must remain a public resource. It will also offer opportunity for creativity and innovation beyond the screens of our computers and phones.
The rules aren’t yet written. We believe strongly that everyone should be able to read, write and participate in their connected environments on their terms. What is needed to ensure the future Internet is open and accessible to all?
With a proud history of protecting and contributing to the Internet, Mozilla invites you to engage in these questions with us.

Exploring the Internet of Things

To explore these questions through action, the Mozilla Foundation is cultivating a professional learning community who can shape the Internet of Things with Mozilla’s values in the decade to come.
In 2016, we will convene leading thinkers, designers, researchers and makers to collaborate on provocative prototypes that make these core values–such as privacy, open practices and participation–accessible and feasible for the Internet of Things.
We will be guided by these principles:

  • Learning by making. We don’t know yet how to influence IoT. Mozilla is exploring its role in this new space. The best way we can figure that out is by trying and learning from these efforts alongside inspired collaborators.
  • Participatory and inclusive. We’re only going to make truly innovative things by inviting a diverse set of people to be part of the process. We have to include new voices and foster creativity at the edges. This means a deep commitment to open practices and participatory design and having humility about our role.
  • Strength in networks. We can’t do this alone, and many others are already active in this space. We’re stronger when we take action together with allies. We will augment Mozilla’s existing leadership network, while engaging new kinds of leaders and practitioners to know more and do more with the Internet of Things.

This is a new field for Mozilla and the world. The norms and best practices of IoT are not yet established. Nevertheless, as Mozilla, we have strongly articulated beliefs about the Internet. The tenets of the Mozilla Manifesto and efforts like the Web Literacy Map and Mozilla’s policy and advocacy initiatives will provide a foundation for where we should go as the Internet finds its way more intricately into our physical lives.

Our Approach

There are three main elements to our work:

  • Provocative prototypes. Create tangible expressions of how things could be, should be and shouldn’t be for IoT. The prototypes will provide the “collaborative substrate” that supports community leaders in learning and making together, while putting our values into action. The prototypes will be grounded in user research and user testing.
  • Convenings. Gather smart, interdisciplinary practitioners to prototype and innovate with open values. Building prototypes is better, faster, and more impactful when people are together. We want to invite new partners to take action with us–designers, technologists, activists, educators and more–as well as collaborate with Mozillians such as the Connected Devices team, Participation team, and others in the Mozilla Leadership Network.
  • Cultivation. Foster partnerships and funding opportunities to grow and sustain the initiative. Insights can be shared that inform future Mozilla efforts. We will leverage and contribute to the larger Mozilla network and document processes in the open so others can learn from and participate in them.

Importantly, our explorations of IoT will advance Mozilla’s 2020 strategic plan by taking action in the key topic areas of privacy, inclusion and web literacy.

What’s next

In the first half of 2016, we’re going to set a thematic focus and test our process. The first topic we will focus on is around privacy in IoT, namely: “User Control of Personal Data in the Connected Home.”
It’s clear that our thinking and experimentation have to be grounded in reality. We need to affect the lives of people and situations they face. So, to better understand what this topic means and to guide participants to make meaningful prototypes, we’ll try out the following process:

  • Conduct research. Driven by human-centered design principles, our efforts will be grounded in data from user research. We plan to learn from people who live in different parts of the globe, to reflect their different perspectives about user control of personal data in the connected home. We’ll conduct field research, interview experts and read existing reports. Diverse voices will be at the center of anything we design.
  • Produce design briefs. Our research insights will be woven into design briefs that guide what prototypes we make. the production of prototypes. We’ll pose specific problems that can be explored via prototypes. The design briefs will be open for anyone to respond to, as well as provide the framework for in-person events.
  • Convene to build prototypes. Based on the design briefs, we’ll meet to create physical prototypes. We’ll focus on using open practices, design thinking and participatory research to improve how we make things.
  • Exhibit and engage public. Once we have some things to show, we will place our work out in the open. We will welcome diverging opinions and feedback as people interact with our prototypes.
  • Test and document. As we exhibit, we will gather feedback, record stories, and provide inspiration for iteration.
  • Evaluate. Afterward, we will carefully scrutinize our findings, ensuring that we still cover the values and problems that we set out for initially as well as debrief on the whole process.
  • Iterate and repeat. Continue to try and refine this approach until we have something impactful.

With this implementation strategy and the principles that guide it, we hope to leave 2016 with a solid understanding of how to research and contribute to IoT—demonstrated by some powerful prototypes—and a diverse network of IoT thinkers and practitioners to provide a foundation for growth and leadership in the future.

How to Get Involved

Tell us about what resonates (or doesn’t) about this approach, and give us feedback on the methodology.
Let us know about any related projects you’re working on and suggestions on how we might work together.
Help us develop design briefs that ask important questions about the Internet of Things as it relates to Mozilla’s values.
Share your experience in IoT, privacy, or design research as part of our expert interview series.
Contact us by email at iot@mozillafoundation.org or in our Github issue tracker. Say hi on IRC and Twitter by pinging Michelle Thorne (@thornet).
 

What does privacy mean?

Mozilla

1 response

But I have nothing to hide.

It’s a sentiment that drives privacy advocates crazy and is a huge barrier that stops a lot of people from engaging with our movement. Here’s the thing though: we, — advocates of privacy — are the ones that created this problem.

Most of us talk about being for privacy, openness and transparency all in the same breath. We assume most people understand that the concept of privacy is meant to apply to individuals while transparency and openness is meant to apply to institutions. I don’t think most people instinctively understand that distinction.

My hypothesis is that most people innately understand the value of transparency because of their experiences witnessing government scandals or coverups, a classic example being around ‘weapons of mass destruction.’

The problem with the classic refrain ‘I have nothing to hide’ is that people apply the value of transparency to individuals and as a result ‘having nothing to hide’ becomes a virtue.

Here’s where things get even harder: we need to get better at explaining why privacy is important to individuals. The arguments, including ‘it just is’ or ‘slippery slopes’ or ‘what if everyone could see everything’ aren’t working and in some ways reinforce the frame of ‘I have nothing to hide.’

That’s why I think it’s critical that we start talking about privacy in a way that is consistent with the concepts of openness and transparency but that can be applied to individuals and not institutions.  That is the idea that privacy helps build authenticity.

None of us are cardboard cutouts — we have contradictions, failings, and raw moments that are what make us fundamentally human. Privacy safeguards that. It ensures that you can separate challenging personal moments from your work life, so that you can develop ideas without fear. Privacy enables you to experiment with contrarian ideas when you’re in your teens that help shape your politics without those ideas defining who you are in your 50s.

We put this theory into practice with the first video of Mozilla’s encryption campaign. We — reframed privacy to be about authenticity — or in other words: letting you be you.

Love or hate the video, it’s a first step in a longer conversation about why privacy is something that sets us free. Free from a world where no one can say anything other than tested sound bites and inane comments. Privacy is important because it helps us evolve as individuals, to reflect and to be authentic — and that is crucial in our increasingly digital world.

Thimble: Now in 16 New Languages

Mozilla

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We’re delighted to announce that Thimble, our open-source online code editor can now be used to teach the web in many more places around the world. Thimble is now available in 16 new languages (you may have already noticed a new option in the navigation bar).
Thimble Language Picker
After two months of development and many hours of localization effort from our volunteer translators Thimble is now available in – Czech, German, Lower and Upper Sorbian, Spanish, Spanish (Chile), French, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Slovenian, Swedish, Ukrainian and Simplified Chinese (China). Don’t see your language in this list? Feel free to suggest it and help translate by clicking here to subscribe to our mailing list and send us an email at thimble@mozilla.org.
This achievement would not be possible without our amazing translators who worked tirelessly to get Thimble up and running in their languages. We are grateful for their efforts, which will make Thimble useful to thousands of people who want to become creators, not just consumers, of the web.
Here’s what Thimble looks like in French:Thimble in French

What has changed?

The short answer is – A LOT! From the buttons that allow you to create a new project to the default name given to the new project, we aimed to make the experience as intuitive as possible for people using Thimble in any language.
Even features in the editor have been translated. For instance, take a look at what adding a file from your computer into Thimble looks like in Russian:Thimble - Upload files through an interface localized in Russian

What are we looking forward to next?

While translating Thimble is a big step, this is just the beginning. Lots of new language translations are still coming in and we are continuing to translate some of our other features in the editor. We also can’t wait to localize our curriculum and starter projects so that we can share amazing remixes of culture-specific projects. Have an idea for a good learning project in your language that we can feature on our homepage? We would love to hear from you on our Discourse Forum for Thimble!
We’re thrilled to see the different kinds of content people will make with Thimble, now that it’s in more languages. If you’d like to be involved, please get in touch!

Research Round-up: Interviews Edition

Mozilla

In the early stages of our Mozilla Fellowship program, we asked our fellows to interview each other, in part as a get-to-know-you-and-your-research exercise, and in part as a way to build knowledge share in their cohort. The way different people advocate for open science is predictably, different, and there is always opportunities to learn more about how to approach issues you care about from varied personal, geographic, and disciplinary perspectives.

With that in mind, we’re providing access to the transcriptions for these interviews, and pulling a few choice quotes from each to get you hooked! If you’re interested in the parallels between skate culture and urban planning, hip hop and scientific research, medicine and medieval surgery, or just open access and open science, you’re in the right place and you should read on.

For the following interviews, the fellows paired up, with the first fellow interviewing the second fellow listed. Read on to learn more about our fellows and follow their projects in the links below!

science

Christie + Joey

Quotes by Joey as interviewed by Christie:

“So I ventured out and eventually fell into geography, as is the case for most geographers. Geography gave me an opportunity to learn a little bit of economics, a little bit of urban planning and environmental science, which is what I ended up sticking to in the end.”

“I think in the end [open science] comes down to, access, participation and opportunity. Or like in any good murder mystery show, it’s about means, motive, and opportunity. I think open science and open source provide the means to do science.”

“If you don’t have access to the knowledge or the references or all those sorts of materials you wouldn’t be able to do the things necessary to push science forward. So I think open source and open science save you from reinventing the wheel and allow you to not only level the playing field, but to create some sort of equity.”

“I think there’s a lot of scope for bringing in artists and designers to participate in the scientific process. You know, the last step of the scientific method is “communicate your results” but very little of that is happening for the benefit of the public relative to the number of paper publications out there…”

Here’s the full transcript for additional reading!

science2

Joey + Richard

Quotes by Richard, as interviewed by Joey:

“I believe it is our responsibility as scientists, as people who want the intellectual freedom to study the world to make sure that (public) money (from taxpayers and grants) is being spent effectively and that it is spent in such a way that the public can get some kind of value back. I think at the moment we are failing completely to do that.”

“So something that is true in hip-hop, which is not true in science, is that really anyone can be involved in hip-hop. Science does not have that. Science has a very strong exclusivity about it. Science thinks it’s more important than it is, and the people in it think they’re more important than they are.”

“Hacking values knowledge, especially knowledge that has never been previously discovered. You have to do something fundamentally clever that astound people around you by how clever it is, you have to think of things that nobody’s thought of before, or at least things that nobody’s expecting. That’s really what we have to do in science as well and it can take an incredible amount of ingenuity and research.”

Here’s the full transcript for additional reading!

science

Richard + Jason

Quotes by Jason as interviewed by Richard:

“[w]hat first told me I didn’t want to be a doctor, a medical doctor, was when I was watching this back surgery, and there was literally a Craftsman toolbox in there…it was as if it were a mechanic shop. And the doctor, the surgeon, climbed up on the gurney and had a chisel and a hammer and was chipping bone out of this person…I was like, holy cow. This is…this is medieval!”

“…and so it was…so that’s when I actually got involved in open access. Because I was so miffed, and I felt like we were doing such an injustice in terms of creating an informed citizenry. You know, that people who cared weren’t able to read and participate in these amazing discussions that were happening in the scientific journal.”

“…[but] I want one of these DNA sequencing machines in my garage. I’m not a biologist anymore, but I want to sequence everything. I want to sequence the tomato plants in my yard. I want to sequence the microbes in my dog’s mouth. You know, I want to know what’s in my earwax. I want to go and sequence everything. And that’s when I was starting to think I could put together a special interest group or a local meetup of people who also wanted to be armchair biologists and do exploratory biology using these new tools…I got introduced to a guy named MacKenzie Cowell, who was working on iGem at MIT, and we started DIYbio.org together. And that was all just because…he was really interested in synthetic biology and I was really interested in exploratory biology using these tools. And then that really just sort of blew up all over the world and became a lot of people were really interested in the same kind of thing at the same time.”

“So pretty much every job that I’ve ever done, there wasn’t actually an application process. It was just me showing up and being like, I’m awesome. This project’s awesome. Let’s do it.”

Here’s the full transcript for additional reading!

science

Jason + Christie

Quotes by Christie as interviewed by Jason.

“Yes, I work with insects…I’d say that was entirely an accident.”

“I’m interested in understanding how lady beetle communities can suppress aphids in agriculture. How we can do things to the agricultural system in order to qualify that interaction…We mostly try to quantify landscape factors…our new work will be asking some climate change questions. How the climate is affecting and extreme weather events are affecting lady beetle communities.”

“Well, I always get very, very excited when I get to use calculus.”

“And so…I realized, oh, I can get a lot more done if I’m able to take data from other places. And then it just ended up being one of my things. People said, hey, I’ve got this data. Can you take a look at it? And it’s turned into a really productive niche for me…I first came to the idea of open science because people were willing to share these data with me.”

“[The alternative introduces] this really fundamental disconnect. We’re training practitioners and then taking away their resources [with closed-source restrictions].”

“I’m currently developing an open science and reproducible research course. And so the idea is to mix these technical skills with the philosophy and the ethical concerns and all of the environments that come with the technical skills.”

Here’s the full transcript for additional reading, including definitions for “over-wintering,” “precision ecology,” “true bugs,” and “muck farms!”

We hope you enjoyed this peek into the peer interviews among our fellows, stay tuned for more research roundups in the weeks to come!

 

 

New Partnership with UN Women to Teach Key Digital Skills to Women

Mozilla

6 responses

The Internet is most powerful when anyone — regardless of gender or geography — can participate equally. A truly open Web should unlock educational, economic, and civic opportunity for everyone, everywhere.
Motivated by this core belief, Mozilla and UN Women — the United Nations entity devoted to the empowerment of women — are teaming up to teach digital skills to girls and women in Nairobi, Kenya and Cape Town, South Africa. Our goal: to improve the lives of women in Africa by leveraging the power of the open Internet.
Also driving our work is a troubling statistic: While more than 3 billion people are connected online, research indicates there are 200 million fewer women online in developing countries, and 300 million fewer women own a mobile phone. In beginning to change these numbers for the better, we can empower women in their own lives and as digital citizens.
To do this, Mozilla and UN Women will work alongside local educators, organizations and residents to built a network of web literacy clubs that promote peer-to peer-learning, teaching participants how to collaborate with each other and meaningfully participate online. These groups will follow the Mozilla Club model, meeting regularly and in-person. They will draw on a comprehensive curriculum that covers topics like Web navigation; content creation; coding; online rights, privacy and security; and connecting to opportunities linked to women’s leadership, civic participation and economic empowerment. There will also be the development of new curriculum on female-specific web issues, facilitation guides for engaging female-only groups and a mobile app to allow for participation and continued learning by participants across countries in the program. Mozilla will also train on-the-ground leaders to facilitate these clubs.
This pilot program will draw on lessons learned in India, Indonesia and Brazil over the past year as we’ve launched, tested and developed the Mozilla Clubs program to reach 170+ clubs in 25+ countries around the world. Since launch, Mozilla Clubs has seen success in bringing communities together around collaboration, professional development and the open web.

Mozilla community members in Kenya. Photo by Laura de Reynal.

Mozilla community members in Kenya. Photo by Laura de Reynal.


This pilot program will run through the end of 2016, and draw on the existing Mozilla communities of educators, learners, and open Internet advocates in the two regions. While also connecting the work and leaders to the larger Mozilla community, and engaging those in other African countries to start similar endeavours to continue growing the movement.
“Improving digital literacy among women is essential,” says Jennifer Breslin, Lead, Innovation and Technology for Development,  UN Women. “Web literacy can improve everything from personal well-being and education access to civic and political participation. Further, the more women we have participating and creating content online, the more relevant and stronger the open Internet becomes.”
This pilot project is the first in a broader partnership between UN Women and Mozilla to drive a more socially just and inclusive agenda based on a common set of values and vision between the two organizations. It links Mozilla’s leadership in digital literacy, participatory learning, and open practice with UN Women’s global leadership on gender and technology.
To learn more about Mozilla Clubs, visit teach.mozilla.org/clubs.
Mozilla community members in Kenya. Photo by Laura de Reynal.

Mozilla community members in Kenya. Photo by Laura de Reynal.

Project Call – March 24 12ET

Mozilla

Join our next project call, Thursday, March 24th at 12pm ET, to learn how you can get involved in open source and open science! Each month, we celebrate new contributors, hear updates on our Collaborate projects, and share tips on working openly and collaboratively on research software.

Continuing our run of amazing guest speakers, the witty and talented Ashley Williams will be sharing “Best Practices in Open Source”. Ashley is the Developer Community and Content Manager at npm, the package manager for JavaScript, and serves on the Node.js Foundation Board of Directors.

You can find more info on this month’s meeting in the agenda.

 

What is the Science Lab Project Call?

Featuring the open source projects for science in our Collaborate platform, this call is a forum where we:

  1. highlight new or outstanding contributors,
  2. share updates and invite new contributors to our Collaborate projects and
  3. learn and discuss best practices in open source.

Everyone is welcome to join in! Designers, developers, researchers, publishers — pretty much anyone interested in participating and learning about open science projects. We could use all sorts of input (beyond just code), so if you’re new to working openly, come join us! We’d love to have you involved.

Join us on the fourth Thursday of every month // 12pm Eastern .

Mozilla Science Lab Project Call Details

Fourth Thursday of every month
9:00 am PT / 12:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm BT / 8:00 pm East Africa
Email: sciencelab@mozillafoundation.org