Mozilla Foundation

Project Call – November 25 1ET

Nov 22 2016

Project call is back! For our November project call, we’ll be testing a new format together with the Mozilla Foundation demos call. Join the Mozilla Foundation demos call this Friday to hear about the work we’re doing to fuel the movement for the health of the Internet.

This is a great way for you to hear about open source projects you can contribute to! During the call, we’re going to see demos from:

The Mozilla Foundation Production team on their in-progress open source work, and
Project leads from various Mozilla communities who have recently completed Open Leadership Training.

There are some pretty stellar open source projects for science on the agenda. This is a great chance to see how you can get involved with Mozilla Science Lab and the broader Mozilla Foundation.

WHEN: Friday, November 25, 1pm ET (check your time)

PAD: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/foundation-demos

WATCH: http://bit.ly/2geij4F

Results from the 2016 Round 1 Pilot Period

Nov 17 2016

Mozilla

The 16 weeks between May 16 and September 4 were very busy for the nine Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund grantees. During that period, gigabit-related applications were developed to advance the internet and to help educators and students realize the potential power of gigabit internet connectivity. Applications were created with impacts ranging from increasing reading comprehension to understanding the environmental impacts of wastewater in architecture to creating virtual reality worlds to engage learners immersively. Some of the most significant outcomes can be found on the infographic below.

The most encouraging result of these projects was the fact that they all plan to continue to the next phase of development, scale and expansion to new communities, both within our Gigabit city network and beyond. You can read more about each of the grantees and learn how to get involved on our new website. While the second round of Mozilla Gigabit funding has officially closed, stay tuned for our next announcement of new grantees coming in early January 2017.

Standing together to promote digital and education equity

Nov 17 2016

Mozilla

Since the most recent U.S. election, our communities and schools have seen a sharp increase in open hostility towards people of color, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, women, and other traditionally oppressed and underserved populations. These are the very people we aim to create equitable learning opportunities for through our collective work across Mozilla Hive Learning Networks in Chicago, New York City, Toronto.

We believe that every young person needs safe, open, and inclusive learning environments to thrive. Regardless of our own political views, it is our responsibility as educators to create these environments so that the young people we serve have opportunities to engage in dialogue with their peers, develop their own values, think critically about the world they live in, and freely express their views and opinions.

Additionally, the influence and impact of social and digital media over past few weeks–and months–have shown us the essential roles that web literacy, digital media learning, and online privacy have in our education system and society as a whole. As we move towards an increasingly networked world, it is essential that we all teach and learn to critically consider how our technology, data, and media are constructed; protect our communities from online surveillance; both produce and consume online content; safely connect, communicate, and organize on the internet; and ensure that all communities have equal access to media and technology. At Mozilla, advocating for a healthy, open web means fighting against the segmented narratives, filter bubbles, and mass surveillance that are growing threats to our increasingly connected, online lives.

Many of you have shared educator resources for facilitating difficult conversations and processing current events within your local Hive networks, and have already created space for this work in your programs and classrooms. For the benefit of members across networks, we’ve compiled your resources, along with others we’ve come across, in the working list below.

As Hive Learning Network facilitators, we are committed to actively working to dismantle the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia that divide our communities. Our work to promote digital equity and an open web is only possible when youth and educators feel that they can safely contribute to it. We know this work is an ongoing process, and look forward to continuing to build in collaboration with all of you in our networks. As an immediate step, we invite you all to share any related personal stories, tips, and resources you may have to add to our list.

In solidarity,

Ann Marie, Brenda, Chrystian, Hana,Kenyatta, Meghan, Sam & Simona
Mozilla Hive Learning Networks

Tips & thoughts on facilitating safe spaces (sourced from Hive members)

Conversations in your programs and classrooms do not have to be conclusive. Sometimes all that’s needed is a safe space to process.
If youth are wondering what’s going on, take it as an opportunity to engage in conversation with them–open up the ‘stage’ for people to voice their fear and hopes.
Validate young people’s individual experiences. We all have different lived realities, and it is important that these realities are acknowledged and accepted in fostering safe dialogue.
Show young people that there are sources of support, including your institution and program, for them.

Resources:

5 things to remember when discussing election results with students, The Lamp (Hive NYC)
Race & Citizenship, Chicago History Museum (Hive Chicago)
What do we tell the children?, Ali Michaels, The Huffington Post
Supporting youth in the post-2016 election climate, Young Adult Library Services Association
Our mission is more important than ever, Tom Boasberg, superintendent, Denver Public Schools
Post-election letter from superintendent Tommy Chang, Boston Public Schools
A letter from superintendent Thein regarding the election outcome, St. Paul Public Schools
The Day After (facilitation tips and workshop links), Teaching Tolerance, Southern Poverty Law Center
Election processing community circle (facilitation guide)
A guide for administrators, counselors, and teachers: Responding to hate and bias at school (curriculum and facilitation guide), Tolerance.org
#IAMNOTAFRAID curriculum for all educators and organizers
Things to know about about web security before Trump’s inauguration: A harm reductionist guide, H, Medium
Repairing the fabric of democracy (curriculum guide), Global Oneness Project via Public Broadcasting Station
Trump and our election, Rethinking Schools
Someone made a guide for what to do when you see Islamaphobia and it’s perfect, Maeril via AltNet
Immigrant students write letters asking for ‘the opportunity to demonstrate that we are good people’, Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
A get started guide to email encryption, Matt Mitchell, Mozilla Open Web fellow
Speak up: Responding to everyday bigotry, The Southern Poverty Law Center
A time for refusal, Teju Cole, The New York Times Magazine
No place for self-pity, no room for fear, Toni Morrison, The Nation
Radical Hope, Junot Diaz, The New Yorker
Don’t feel hopeless, do something, Chatelaine
Helping Students Deal with Trauma Related to Geopolitical Violence and Islamophobia, Toronto for All
Yes, we still can, Sachi Ferris, Raising Race Conscious Children
What designers should do now, Meg Miller, Fast Company Design
Surveillance self-defense against against the Trump administration, Micah Lee, The Intercept
Help hotline for those with immigration inquiries (US)
- 1-855-HELP-MY-FAMILY; (1-855-435-7693) English/Spanish/Korean/Polish

Local opportunities:

Know your rights, ICIRR Resistance & Revision Campaign, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Chicago
Glass Room, a performance art space hosted by Mozilla and Tactical Tech Collective that explores online privacy and surveillance, November 29-December 14, 201 Mulberry Street, NYC
Building a Creative Campaign, Center for Arts Activism, free webinar series starting November 18th
Toronto launches campaign to eliminate anti-black racism and islamaphobia in the city

Book Club 12/19: Weapons of Math Destruction

Nov 9 2016

Mozilla

“[Weapons of Math Destruction] define their own reality and use it to justify their results. This type of model is self-perpetuating, highly destructive — and very common.” ~ Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction

Continued Support with Major Award from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Nov 7 2016

Mozilla

In 2013, we set out to build Mozilla’s first open science program with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Over three years later, we’re pleased to announce a two-year award from the Sloan Foundation to further support that work in advancing openness, adoption and reproducibility in science.

First Day on the Mission

Nov 5 2016

Mozilla

This project is supported by a grant from CIRA’s Community Investment Program. CIRA’s Community Investment Program gives back by supporting initiatives and programs that help build a better online Canada.

This post is submitted by Erum Hasan from the YWCA Girls Centre. Erum is an active member of the YWCA Girls Council, a long-time member of Hive Toronto. The accompanying illustration is done by youth facilitator and artist Lena Xu.

My name is Erum Hasan. I am a grade 12 student attending Sir Wilfrid Laurier C.I. and volunteering at YWCA Toronto’s Girls’ Council. I also maintain the role of Ca.pture’s youth council blogger.

I am deeply interested in promoting social equity in the technology field. The youth council will be working with Hive Toronto, a network within the Mozilla Foundation, that makes technology accessible to young people like myself. I believe in the nonprofit work they do and have benefited from using their webmaker tools.

When I first heard about the Ca.pture project and the opportunity to be on the youth council, I was filled with joy and excitement! The Ca.pture project is youth-driven, digital storytelling project that addresses cyberbullying. Working with educators and Mozilla staff, my peers from the YWCA Toronto, together with Youth Empowering Parents (YEP) will design resources to support teens and allies in preventing, navigating, and intervening in cyberbullying.

Our first co-design workshop was on Saturday, October 22nd 2016, which took place in Mozilla’s Toronto office. One thing that struck me was seeing other teenagers volunteering. Although we were a mixed group, everyone came from a different schools and had different aspirations but share the same passion for this type of work. For most of the session we talked about defining cyberbullying. What I enjoyed most was working together and listening to all our ideas that were contributed by YEP and the YWCA girls council. Towards the end I learned more about other members’ personal goals and found that we all shared something in common. Some of the goals included meeting new people, gaining knowledge and experience as well as learning coding and getting more opportunities to code. One of the goals of the project is to create materials that can be used in high schools to guide educators in approaching cyber-bullying with more of a youth-focused perspective.

One of the exciting activities was the icebreaker. It was an engaging activity because we got to decorate our name tags while giving both youth and facilitators a chance to connect and ask questions about other members of the council.

I am looking forward to working with YEP. Similar to my peers on this Council I would also like to receive more opportunities to code. Our council has used Mozilla’s Thimble program in the past and I am even more excited to see this used for digital storytelling.

Help Us Teach the Web in Your Language

Nov 4 2016

Mozilla

This November we are kickstarting a campaign to localize the Offline Icebreakers teaching kit and we need your help! Head over to this website to get started.

Following the success of the campaign to localize the Web Literacy Basics I teaching kit last year, we are excited to continue this effort in our November campaign. This time, however, we are trying something new.
The Offline Icebreakers module has six different activities that help students learn about the web in an interactive way without requiring an internet connection. We hope to have this module localized in 12 languages (and we welcome other languages as well), namely Bengali (বাংলা), Dutch (Nederlands), Filipino (Pilipino), German (Deutsch), Gujarati (ગુજરાતી), Hindi (हिन्दी), Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), Portuguese (Português), Spanish (Español), French (Français), Swahili (Kiswahili) and Swedish (Svenska), by the end of November.
html-puzzleboxes
In this campaign, we want our local Mozillian communities to take charge. You get to choose how you want to localize the activity – as a Github page, a Thimble project or a Google Document. You can choose whatever tool you are comfortable with and work with it to create a localized activity in a format that you think would appeal to your community. You can choose to collaborate with others in your community and engage them in this effort as well.
If you love to teach our curriculum in your community, or are experienced at translating content, or just want to help spread our curriculum, we can use your help. You can find out more information about this campaign and how you can contribute by checking out our website. We value your contribution and enthusiasm, and to show our gratitude we are offering a special reward to the first 20 participants to submit at least three or more fully localized activities.
Thanks in advance for helping us bring important web literacy skills to more communities in more countries around the world. We are incredibly appreciative of your contributions!

2016 Mozfest Recap!

Nov 4 2016

Mozilla

As many of you know, last week we hosted our annual Mozilla Festival in London; an event that spans three days with talks, sessions, workshops, and activities designed to question and promote the open internet. Each floor in the Mozfest 7-flight facility, a local college called Ravensbourne, hosted a “space” themed around a topic that Mozilla is passionate about, including “Open Science” on the 9th floor.

In three days, we curated tables at the opening Science Fair party, hosted over 65 sessions related to open science practice and projects, and coordinated multiple games, shared-space talks, and evening adventures to get our fabulous community of leaders engaged with everything Mozilla supports.

Some of the awesome Swag from our Science Fair

Festivities and Fanfare

Our weekend started with the Friday Science Fair, an opportunity for Mozfest participants to showcase all of the awesome to ensue in the days to come. Our Science Fellows shared Science Fair tables with their Open News and Open Web fellow counterparts for some truly excellent showcases of their work in neuroscience, javascript, privacy/security, and journalism. We gave out Science Fox and Candy Chemistry swag, and played with Neurotinker kits to teach people more about how the brain works.

To partner with these themes, we also hosted continuous activities related to brain science, including the build-your-own-brain hat activity, and our brain game raffle which invited participants to explore all floors of Mozfest, in search of stickers that represented the function of each brain lobe. We selected winners who will benefit from cool Science Lab swag, comics, and books about Open Science.

Open Data and cross-floor collaboration at Mozfest 2016

From our Fellows

Our Open Science Fellows helped with curating our floor activities, giving excellent sessions on their research and projects, as well as participating in a lightning talk series with all attending Mozilla Fellows on the Journalism floor, to rave reviews (see below).

* Joey Lee – hosted a session on Web Mapping and debuted his GeoSandbox tool, a collection of interactive lessons to learn Leaflet.js and other geo utilities!

* Jason Bobe – hosted a fireside chat session on Biomedical Research and Privacy concerns with participatory medicine, featuring lots of jokes and biononymous swag for participants

* Stephanie Smith-Unna + space wrangler Richard Smith-Unna – hosted a well-received (and decorated!) session on eco-safaris in Kenya

* Bruno Vieira – hosted a workshop on Bionode.js, scraping genomic data for good with several utilities and collaborators, as well as a #mozfellows lightning talk!

* Christie Bahlai – hosted a session on her reproducible research course and toolkit for instructors available online and forkable on github!

* Danielle Robinson gave a great lightning talk on why ‘open science needs you‘ as did Teon Brooks on ‘how your brain works,’ a topic covered his zine on the Body Electric!

Our 2016 Mozilla Fellows for Science

From our Leaders

Last February, after our Working Open Workshop, we mentored a cohort of 20+ community members building projects and Study Groups in the lead-up to our June Global Sprint. Those leaders are now contributing to our MozOpenLeaders program, part of our greater Mozilla Leadership Network and initiative to bring our community beyond open science toward all open aspects of Mozilla’s mission. Abby Cabunoc-Mayes, the pilot of this program, ran an Open Leadership Table on the 9th floor of Mozfest dedicated to supporting these leaders, and to continuing conversation through our network match game.

Just to name a few:

* Open Knowledge Maps had a demo and session focused on network mapping and piloted by our own Peter Kraker and Christopher Kittel!

* Demystifying AI featured a packed demo session and fireside chat on Artificial Intelligence courtesy of our own Vigneshwer Dhinakaran.

* Jupyter (that is, Julia, Python, and R) received great reviews in a session run by Jacob Tomlinson + team.

* Nerdcator, a crowdsourced travelogue of nerdy places made great strides soliciting locations for their session and cribbed some Leaflet.js tips from Joey Lee’s GeoSandbox! Nerdcator was also selected for a table during the Mozfest Demo party, and you can read more in Egle’s wrap-up post here.

* Open Cosmics hosted a fireside chat with our own Achintya Rao on how to work with open cosmic ray data and how CERN is leading the charge…

* GOSH!, a CERN project on Gathering for Open Science Hardware, led a great session with Jenny Molloy on how to plan such events and sustain them, concluding with an epic visual roadmap of more magic to come!

* Study Groups received some special attention in Madeleine Bonsma‘s fireside chat about how to support and sustain a peer learning group around code, community, and open science!

Impostor’s Syndrome Fireside Chat was on fire with tweet <3

Learn more about that last one on our Friday Study Group call, all participants welcome! Add your name to the etherpad here and join us Friday at 11am EST for even more fun recaps of Mozfest!

Beautiful Network Pulse app to track projects’ progress post-Mozfest

Likewise, check out Network Pulse for all updated projects created and collaborated on throughout the festival, and submit more if you have them! Be sure to check out some of our excellent facilitators’ blogs:

* Caitlin McDonald‘s Connecting the Dots: Network Analysis for Organizational Value

* Egle Marija Ramanuskaite‘s Stall Catchers Demo Session + Nerdcator <3

Steph, showcasing the timeless style of our Build-your-own-Brain-Hat activity

Looking forward to a fabulous future Mozfest and more answers to this amazing question about the Brain. Hint: “temporal” :).

Community Spotlight: Andrew Brennen

Nov 3 2016

Mozilla

Because Mozilla believes that young people must be empowered to speak to, and shape, key social issues, the Learning team proudly serves as connector for influential leaders who use web literacy and 21st Century skills to enhance opportunities for youth to be active agents of positive change.

Andrew Brennan at Student Voice’s SXSWEDU panel earlier this year.

Andrew Brennan (far left) at Student Voice’s SXSWEDU panel earlier this year. Photo provided by Andrew.

This month’s community spotlight is on Andrew Brennen, who in his junior year of high school co-founded Student Voice, a for-students-by-students nonprofit organization to integrate student voices into the global education conversation. Andrew is now a sophomore in the Robertson Science Leaders Program at Chapel Hill in North Carolina majoring in Political Science, and serves as the National Field Director for Student Voice. Andrew recently presented his work on a Mozilla Learning Community Call about youth activism and Student Voice is a fellow partner with Mozilla through the Letters to the Next President 2.0 campaign. Learn more about Andrew and his work.
We were so inspired by his work and his experience forming networks that have an impact on youth voices that we interviewed Andrew to learn more. Here’s what he had to say:
Who or what originally inspired you to stand up as a leader at a young age?
Like most people, I know my original inspiration came from a teacher. In this case, my AP Government teacher in high school. Ms.Mckenzie made learning fun through a variety of hands-on and group activities, a relief for a fidgety high school student like me. But her real value came from the support she provided me OUTSIDE the classroom. She knew when I came to school and didn’t seem right. She checked up on me to see how I was doing in other classes. She pushed me towards extracurriculars like Speech and Debate, and she encouraged me to apply for the US Senate Page Program my junior year of high school. This support gave me the confidence I needed to take my learning outside of the classroom and take some risks. Ultimately, this led to the creation of the Prichard Committee Student Voice Team and many great experiences in high school.
Where did the idea for Student Voice originate? What fueled your passion to turn the idea into reality?
Student Voice as an organization started when a small group of students started weekly #StuVoice Twitter chats. The goal of these chats was to capture the energy of students all around the country who were wanting more of a say in their education. These chats were by all accounts a success. Groups like the Iowa Student Learning Institute began collaborating with groups like the Houston Independent School District Student Congress. Students in California advocating for stronger policies to support their classmates with learning disabilities were connecting with experts in DC who could support their efforts. These chats were creating a digital community around the concept of student voice.
But we knew this was not enough. We knew that we weren’t going to be able to capture the voices of ALL students on these chats; the limitations were obvious. So in January we embarked on a national tour effort with the goal of visiting students in their communities to talk about their schools. We have since visited 20 states, over 50 cities, and have conducted well over 200 roundtable discussions with private, public and charter high school students all across the country.
The critical energy behind this work is driven largely by our status as students. We don’t like feeling powerless to improve our education system, and we observe that sometimes, to keep equity front and center, it takes students themselves to speak out.

Andrew speaking with a student about her college transition process and her plans after graduating high school. Photo provided by Andrew Brennan.

Andrew (right) speaking with a student about her college transition process and her plans after graduating high school. Photo provided by Andrew Brennen.

What resources benefit young people who want to become leaders in their communities?
Start as locally as possible. Too many people overlook the good they can do right now in their community. Look at local community development organizations or see how you can get involved with a local advocacy organization or nonprofit. This is where young people can truly make a difference. Speech and debate, as well as Youth in Government programs are also great places to start building a network.

Student roundtable in Providence, RI at a Student Voice Summit. Photo provided by Andrew Brennan.

Student round table in Providence, RI at a Student Voice Summit. Photo provided by Andrew Brennen.

How can people get involved in Student Voice?
You can email our Director of Partnerships at Merrit@stuvoice.org or me at Andrew@stuvoice.org
You can learn more about Student Voice here and keep up-to-date with Andrew’s work on Twitter.

Supporting Youth Leadership with Digital Skills

Nov 2 2016

Mozilla

1 response

As Mozilla strives for a healthy Internet that is inclusive and equitable for all, we’re fueling new approaches to learning through Mozilla Hives, Clubs and our Gigabit cities. Through these efforts and along with our network members, we’re supporting youth empowerment and youth voice, and as a results we’ve seen dozens of amazing stories, projects and experiences that inspire us to keep moving forward.
This month, we continue to rally youth to get involved in important local, national and global issues while building web literacy and 21st century skills.

Letters to the Next President 2.0: We’ve partnered with the National Writing Project (NWP_ and KQED to support youth voice in advance of the next United State Presidential Election on November 8th. Through the Letters to the Next President 2.0 campaign, we’re encouraging young people, aged 13–18, to research, write, and make media to voice their opinions on issues that matter most to them. Mozilla created a few remixable activities that connect youth voice, civic engagement and web literacy skills, such as this Thimble letter template and this candidate quote project. For those outside of the U.S., learners can remix the projects for any local, regional, or national cause.

Mozilla Learning Community Call: Wednesday, November 16 2:30pm PST/ 5:30pm EST/ 9:30pm UTC
Join Mozilla Hive Chicago, Educator’s Camp, and other special guests to discuss youth leadership and empowering young people to get involved in local, national and global community issues that matter to them.
Guests include:

Andrea Hart –City Bureau– Chicago IL
Jackie Moore – Level UP IRL – Chicago IL
Vanessa Sanchez – Yolocali/Pop Up Youth Radio – Chicago IL
Eva L.- Youth Silent Protest Organizer, Chicago IL
Rita Geladze – Educators Camp, Hive NYC

Mozilla Curriculum Workshop: Thursday, November 17 7am PST/ 10am EST/ 2pm UTC Join us for a conversation and workshop about exemplary digital youth leadership practices, projects, and programming. Along with special guests, co-hosts Amira Dhalla and Chad Sansing will examine what makes successful programs work, and will prototype teaching and learning materials that encourage their development.