On the face of it OpenCon is a conference for early career academic professionals who are passionate about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data. It runs for three days each year and in November 2016, around 250 delegates came together in Washington DC. You can read more about the main conference in science fellow Danielle’s blog post.
We’re only half-way through the month, but March has been a very busy time for the Science Lab: we hosted our study group learning call on journal clubs, just wrapped our second annual Working Open Workshop, and have a host of opportunities in our fellowships and (new this year!) mini-grants program to announce in the coming weeks!
By Chris Lawrence, VP, Leadership Network
At Mozilla, we believe in a networked approach — leveraging the power of diverse people, pooled expertise and shared values.
This was the approach we took nearly 15 years ago when we first launched Firefox. Our open-source browser was — and is — built by a global network of engineers, designers and open web advocates.
This is also the approach Mozilla takes when working toward its greater mission: keeping the internet healthy. We can’t build a healthy internet — one that cherishes freedom, openness and inclusion — alone. To keep the internet a global public resource, we need a network of individuals and organizations and institutions.
One such partnership is Mozilla’s ongoing collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Ignite. We’re currently offering a $2 million prize for projects that decentralize the web. And together in 2014, we launched the Gigabit Community Fund. We committed to supporting promising projects in gigabit-enabled U.S. cities — projects that use connectivity 250-times normal speeds to make learning more engaging, equitable and impactful.
Beginning in May 2017, we’re providing a total of $300,000 in grants to projects in both new cities. Applications for grants will open in early summer 2017; applicants can be individuals, nonprofits and for-profits.
We’ll support educators, technologists and community activists in Eugene and Lafayette who are building and beta-testing the emerging technologies that are shaping the web. We’ll fuel projects that leverage gigabit networks to make learning more inclusive and engaging through VR field trips, ultra-high definition classroom collaboration, and real-time cross-city robot battles. (These are all real examples from the existing Mozilla gigabit cities of Austin, Chattanooga and Kansas City.)
We’re also investing in the local communities on the ground in Eugene and Lafayette — and in the makers, technologists, and educators who are passionate about local innovation. Mozilla will bring its Mozilla Network approach to both cities, hosting local events and strengthening connections between individuals, schools, nonprofits, museums, and other organizations.
Video: Learn how the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund supports innovative local projects across the U.S.
Why Eugene and Lafayette? Mozilla Community Gigabit Fund cities are selected based on a range of criteria, including a widely deployed high-speed fiber network; a developing conversation about digital literacy, access, and innovation; a critical mass of community anchor organizations, including arts and educational organizations; an evolving entrepreneurial community; and opportunities to engage K-12 school systems.
We’re excited to fuel innovation in the communities of Eugene and Lafayette — and to continue our networked approach with NSF, U.S. Ignite and others, in service of a healthier internet.
“Why should we all take a leap of faith into the world of trust? Ulrich Boser provides the profound answer in this thorough, insightful analysis of the psychology of social connectedness where we weigh communal interest over self-interest, selflessness over selfishness, giving to others over being a taker.” — Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at Stanford University
Mozilla Science Lab is thrilled to announce a new partnership with Siegel Family Endowment (SFE) that includes a multi-year award in support of Open Science Fellowships and a Network Manager to expand and unify our programs across Mozilla’s Leadership Network (MLN).
If you follow the activities of the Mozilla Science Lab, you’ll notice that we participate in and coordinate a TON of events. With the help of our science fellows, we’ve expanded our calendar of community calls, working open workshops, global and local sprints to include projects with partners like Docathon, BrainHack Global, CSV Conf, Bioinformatics Open Days and many more! Part of constantly expanding our activity portfolio centers around conference attendance and contributing our event models to broader discussions around coordinated community events for open science.
Last week, at the 20th annual CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing) in Portland, Oregon, the Science Lab participated in a workshop to crowdsource and share methodologies, tips and tricks for stellar event design. Read on to learn more, and feel free to share our assets widely :).
Authentic Cultural Experiences in Virtual Reality Classrooms
To many Americans, Pakistan is one of the most misunderstood countries on Earth. We often form perceptions about Pakistan based on what we see in the evening news: a two dimensional filter offering little insight into the country’s rich history and culture.
A student from Beaconhouse Newlands school in Lahore, Pakistan enjoys a preview of the VR Field Trip
This latest grant reunites PenPal Schools and Mozilla at an exciting moment; enabling the globally successful learning platform to reach young people through their captivating Web technology. PenPal Schools’ initial seed funding actually came through a grant from Hive NYC in 2012 for what was then called, PenPal News.
Today, PenPal Schools calls Austin, TX home and while their mission is to reach students worldwide, they are especially committed to serving learners in their community. With support from Hive Austin, PenPal Schools is providing their service free of charge to educators and learners in the Austin area who sign up in 2017.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeG_8DlPPKc?ecver=1]
A teaser trailer for the VR field trip experience, produced by Austin local, Chocolate Milk & Donuts
On the invitation of the Pakistani Government, PenPal Schools has filmed Virtual Reality video content throughout the ancient city of Lahore, in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Through incredibly immersive VR “field trips,” students from around the world will experience the bustling streets, ancient forts, and stunning mosques of Lahore. They’ll also get a glimpse of Pakistan’s rich culture, arts, food, and traditions — all while improving their reading, writing, and technology skills.
Of course, no PenPal Schools course would be complete without PenPals, so they’ve teamed up with the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation so that students around the world can learn with PenPals from across Pakistan! The federation represents over 197,000 schools and 20 million students from every province in Pakistan, so there should be plenty of Pakistani PenPals to go around!
Teachers can sign up for the English version of the course beginning on March 6 (the Urdu language version will be available this Spring). Teachers will even be able to order inexpensive cardboard VR headsets (pictured above) through the PenPal Schools website too!
This weekend is a kick-off to a lot of cool hackathons I’m involved with such as the BrainHack Global, the first-ever Docathon, and a Working Open Workshop (WOW), all related to Open Science.
I thought it would be a great time to repost we did at OpenBCI a few years ago that was inspired and spearheaded by Sarah on Why Open Science.
To read the full post, click here.
Each month, we feature an update from a Study Group Lead. This month we hear from Bianca Peterson (@binxiepeterson on Twitter), who manages a Genomics Study Group at North-West University in South Africa.
In March 2017, we’ll be about half-way through the parallel tenures of our current class of Mozilla Fellows for Science and 2016 Open Web Fellows, which culminates in June 2017. That same month, we’ll also launch a new application for next year’s fellowships across both programs and including other opportunities to engage with the Mozilla Network through leadership in art, science, policy, and technology.
To commemorate this, to celebrate what our fellows have accomplished, and to document what we’d like to build with them over the next few months, we hosted a workweek in San Francisco (Feb 6th-10th). Read on to learn about how we structured the week, what we learned from the experience, and how you can engage further with our #mozfellowships moving forward!
