New Hive KC Digital Drive Fund Launches to Support Tech-Driven Edu Initiatives in Kansas City

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Taking aim at the K-12 education space, Mozilla’s Hive KC Learning Community and KC Digital Drive have just launched the HIVE KC DIGITAL DRIVE FUND. The fund is designed to support local projects and organizations that promote youth learning through digital technology.

The first grantee of the Hive KC Digital Drive Fund is the newly established Tech sHeroes project. An initiative of KC Women in Technology and the Shawnee Mission School District, Tech sHeroes encourages 7th and 8th grade girls to seek out careers in technology, learn to code, and take on tech-related projects to benefit their school and community. Google Fiber has granted the first $5,000 in seed funding for the project.

New to the Kansas City educational community, Hive KC is a member-based organization of teachers, educators and youth-serving organizations. Supported by the Mozilla Foundation, it operates on a participation model to provide educators with openly networked collaboration and professional development, along with access to innovation funding and grant making.  Hive KC is part of the global Hive Learning Network, which includes a growing number of established and developing learning communities in cities such as New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Toronto.

HiveKansasCityPartnered with Hive KC in launching and administering the fund is KC Digital Drive, a local nonprofit that has been working to help pilot area projects that involve next-generation uses of the gigabit connectivity that Google Fiber initially brought to the region.PrintHive KC and the Digital Drive originally came together this past February under the Gigabit Community Fund, a project created by Mozilla with support from the D.C.-based app driver U.S. Ignite. Established with help from the National Science Foundation, the Gigabit Community Fund was created to explore how next-generation networks can create new opportunities to build and explore on the web in places such as classrooms, libraries, museums and other learning spaces.

The Gigabit Community Fund has so far granted $150,000 in innovation funding to nine Kansas City-based projects: The Lean Lab, Bonner Springs Fire Dept., Big Bang, aSTEAM Village, Reconciliation Services, Kansas City Public Library, PlanIT Impact, Fitnet, and Northland CAPS.

The Hive KC Digital Drive Fund was established to bring even more local focus to the momentum created by the Gigabit Community Fund. And now, thanks in large part to Google Fiber’s generous contribution to Tech sHeroes, Hive KC may begin connecting schools, cultural institutions and youth-serving organizations throughout the metro area.

“Hive KC is joining communities around the world that share a vision of connected learning that empowers educators and youth alike,” said Chris Lawrence, Senior Director, Hive Learning Networks at Mozilla. “We’re really excited to be cultivating a Hive in an innovation economy, with partners like the Kansas City Public Library and KC Digital Drive, and look forward to seeing, sharing and being inspired by the unique perspective and creativity that reflects and embodies Kansas City.”

The KC Hive Digital Drive Fund is looking for more contributors, partners to help out, and projects to fund. Organizations and individuals who would like to learn more about the fund, including how to donate or have a project funded, are encouraged to contact Kari Keefe at kari at mozillafoundation dot org.

How to Get Involved

To learn more about Hive Learning Networks and Hive KC, including membership and events, please visit hivekc.org.

About Hive KC

Hive KC Learning Community is a member-based network of educators, schools, libraries, museums and cultural institutions, youth programs and organizations that collaborate and share openly to support digital literacy and connected learning experiences in the Kansas City metro area. Hive HC fuels the creation of these learning experiences through innovation funds from the Gigabit Community Fund, a National Science Foundation supported initiative to fund the development of gigabit-enabled applications and associated curricula, and the KC Hive Digital Drive fund to further the development of digital inclusion and digital skill-building programs for K-12 students.

About KC Digital Drive

KC Digital Drive connects technology solutions with social and civic problems in the Kansas City region and beyond. Targeting the areas of economic development, digital inclusion, next-generation applications and smart city leadership, KC Digital Drive conducts research, builds relationships, develops programs and promotes events and initiatives that make Kansas City and its citizens more technologically empowered.

Mozilla in Chattanooga’s Gigabit Ecosystem

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On Tuesday, Chattanoogans turned out in force for GIGTANK Demo Day, the concluding celebration of The Company Lab’s gig-focused summer accelerator program.  With 900+ in attendance, GIGTANK Demo Day is Chattanooga’s premier technology event, serving in equal parts as an annual benchmark for how far we’ve come as a technology hub and as a launching pad for future successes.

Mozilla Gigabit Community Teams at GIGTANK Demo Day

Mozilla Gigabit Community Teams at GIGTANK Demo Day

GIGTANK celebrates Chattanooga as a living laboratory for gigabit development. On the heels of this celebration, it seems a fitting moment to share some ways Mozilla has been supporting this unique experimentation ecosystem in Chattanooga since launching the Gigabit Community Fund and the Hive Chattanooga Learning Community last February.  Consider this, if you will, a sort of “State of the Hive” report as we approach the six-month mark in the Gig City.  The TL;DR?  The state of our Hive is strong, and we’re growing every day as projects launch, events gain traction, and connected learning principles take root in our community.

The Gigabit Community Fund

As part of our larger commitment to web literacy, Mozilla launched the Gigabit Community Fund in Chattanooga to explore how next-generation networks like EPB’s can create new opportunities to build and explore on the web in classrooms, libraries, museums and other learning spaces.

Our approach to taking gig discoveries out of the lab and into the field is multi-pronged.  First, we’re supporting the development and piloting of gig apps and associated curricula through the Gigabit Community Fund.  Second, we’re catalyzing the adoption, spread, and scale of these innovations through the Hive Chattanooga Learning Community.  And, finally, we’re leveraging the international reach of Mozilla to broadcast those successes across other Hive cities and beyond.

Launched in early 2014 with support from the National Science Foundation and as part of the broader US Ignite initiative, the Gigabit Community Fund has distributed $150,000 to eight gig pilot projects in Chattanooga. In addition to this funding, Mozilla is also able to connect project participants with a network of peers, experts and potential investors, as well as to provide both national and international attention in other hub cities – New York, Chicago and San Francisco, among others – and at events like London’s yearly MozFest.

The pilot projects that have received funding to date are:

  • Adagio | Chattanooga Music Resource Center: An audio-mixing application, piloted at the Chattanooga Public Library and Barger Academy of Art, leveraging cloud storage and remote collaboration to lower barriers to music production and education.
  • Building an App from the Ground Up | The Creative Discovery Museum: An application-creation toolbox and digital record that will serve as a design blueprint for other youth-serving organizations in Chattanooga and beyond.
  • devLearn | Duncan Ingram, Inc: A mobile coding application for elementary school students which recognizes that, for many across the digital divide, cell phones are a primary means of internet access, and will build critical capacity for Chattanooga’s gigabit future.
  • GigBridge | Global Excel Tennessee:  A high school student-led project bolstering English language and digital literacy skills (while improving access to health education) in underserved communities, teaching ESL students to construct interactive mobile applications focused on obesity education and prevention.
  • The GigLab | Chattanooga Public Library: A venue for access to gigabit connected resources for the purposes of workforce development, application testing and education, the GigLab is the first public-access space of its kind.
  • Hyperlocal Hyperaudio | Hyperaudio:  A Chattanooga-centric edition of the Hyperaudio platform, creating a multimedia educational tool grounded in community history, as well as improving access to local archival history.
  • Viditor | GeonCode: A new, online video editor being piloted in local schools, UTC-student developed Viditor is a multi-platform tool allowing students across the city to work on and edit film collaboratively.
  • Wireless Earth Watchdogs | Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences: By building a student-driven, real-time water quality monitoring system using micro-controllers, the Wireless Earth Watchdogs, in collaboration with Hixson High School and the Chattanooga Public Library, are pioneering a multidisciplinary approach to digital and engineering education.

Hive Chattanooga Learning Community

Hive is a city-based network of classroom teachers, informal educators, technologists and everyday citizens working together to promote web literacy and bridge the digital divide.  Hive Learning Networks currently exist in Toronto, New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. New Hive Learning Communities are growing in the Bay Area, in Berlin, in Kansas City, and right here in Chattanooga.  Hive’s networked approach creates a platform through which to scale and spread innovations springing from the Gigabit Community Fund and from other digital literacy programs here in Chattanooga.  Online tools like the Hive cross-city member directory allow us to share great stories about innovations happening in Chattanooga across the world, as well as connect local members with their counterparts in other cities. On the ground we’re working to grow Hive Chattanooga through the following initiatives:

  • Gig Demo Calls: On the first Friday of each month, Hive CHA joins forces with Hive Kansas City to host a Google Hangouts on Air call about the newest innovations in next-generation networking, software-defined networking and gig-fueled educational endeavors.  Now in its third month, the Gig Demo Call has featured six unique demos from gig experts, which have reached an audience of over 250 viewers across the globe.  Join us this Friday, August 1 for the next Gig Demo all at 11am Eastern!  
  • Community Coffees: On the third Thursday of the month, Hive CHA invites Chattanooga’s technologists and educators together for a caffeine-fueled discussed about integrating web literacy skills, bridging the digital divide, and connecting to Mozilla’s resources to help teach the web.  Since February, more than 80 Chattanoogans have attended these coffees.
  • Professional Development Workshops and Meetups: In collaboration with the Public Education Foundation, the Hamilton County Department of Education’s iZone, and other youth-serving organizations in our community, Hive CHA has hosted a variety of workshops and meetups focused on sharing Gigabit Fund innovations and Mozilla web literacy resources with educators and innovators.  More than 300 classroom teachers and informal educators have attended these events.
  • Maker Party: Maker Party is Mozilla’s annual campaign to spread web literacy through hands-on learning events in cities across the globe.  With more than 2000 events planned for the 2014 campaign, Maker Party is another valuable platform for prototyping and sharing out innovations happening in Chattanooga and for localizing trends in education spread from other Hive communities. In July, the Hive Chattanooga team attended a Maker Party at the Bronx Library Center in New York to share the work of the Chattanooga Public Library and Gigabit Fund project Hyperaudio with the 600+ students in attendance.  Now, we’re bringing this experience back home to Chattanooga through local Maker Party events.

Want to explore our local Gigabit Fund projects and learn more about the state of our Hive community in person?  Join us for the Chattanooga Public Library’s Maker Party this Saturday, August 2!  From 12 to 3 p.m. on the 4th Floor, DEV DEV code camp graduates and educators from across the region will be on hand to help participants get started building, exploring, and creating on the web. Our partners at The Chattanooga Public Library, Creative Discovery Museum, Girls Inc. of Chattanooga, and Maker Faire Chattanooga will have awesome hands-on activities to share, and participants will leave with new web literacy skills, information about digitally-focused after school programs for the upcoming school year, and resources to keep exploring the web.

Even if you can’t make it on Saturday, there are many other ways to get engaged with our growing Hive Learning Community in Chattanooga:

Ten Projects Receive $165,400 from Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund

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Today, Mozilla announced ten projects in Kansas City and Chattanooga that will receive funding from the Gigabit Community Fund, an initiative supported by the National Science Foundation and part of the broader work of US Ignite. The goal of the Fund is to impact learning and support educators in and out of the classroom by investing in projects that utilize gigabit connectivity. The 10 projects will utilize the awarded funds, ranging from $5,000 to $30,000, to build and pilot gigabit-enabled applications and associated curricula in Kansas City and Chattanooga.

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“The Gigabit Fund is transforming how communities learn and the accessibility of learning methods by piloting next-generation innovation as ‘living labs’ in classrooms, cultural institutions and other informal educational environments, putting technology in the service of education,” said Kari Keefe, Community Catalyst for the Gigabit Fund KC.

This is the second round of grants to be awarded by the Fund. The new projects receiving funds are:

Kansas City

  • PlanIT Impact KC | PlanIT Impact LLC:  a visually-rich application that leverages Kansas City’s open GIS data to influence early building design for architecture students
  • TechHawks | Fitnet: top-rated fitness app delivers real-time monitoring and robust metrics to curb obesity and shape how families manage and understand wellness
  • Students Reduce Patient Readmissions with the Gig | Northland CAPS: high school students work with business partners to develop a suite of communications, monitoring and treatment tools for clinicians and high-risk patients to reduce the frequency of readmissions
  • Minecraft+Oculus Rift for Community Development| Kansas City Public Library: virtual reality tech gives kids a voice and a way to design their ideal neighborhood in two of Kansas City’s urban areas, creating a gamed-up way to build community in this fully immersive educational program from KC’s Public Library

PlanIT Impact KC | Grand Blvd. in KC,MO

Chattanooga

  • Building an App from the Ground Up | The Creative Discovery Museum:  Constructing an application toolbox and digital record that will serve as a design blueprint for other youth-serving organizations in Chattanooga and beyond.
  • devLearn | Duncan Ingram, Inc: Developing a mobile coding application for elementary school students that will build critical capacity for Chattanooga’s gigabit future.
  • GigBridge | Global Excel Tennessee:  Bolstering English language skills and improving access to health education amongst minority communities by teaching students for whom English is a second language to construct interactive mobile applications focused on obesity education and prevention.
  • The GigLab | Chattanooga Public Library: Providing public access to gigabit connected resources for the purposes of workforce development, application testing and education.
  • Viditor | GeonCode: Expanding and piloting a new, online collaborative video editor.
  • Wireless Earth Watchdogs | Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences: Creating a student-driven, real-time water quality monitoring system using micro-controllers in collaboration with Hixson High School and the Chattanooga Public Library.
Viditor.jpg

Viditor team leaders Stuart French and Andrew McPhearson (center) with first round beta testers at the Baylor School.

All of the ten projects feature a 12-week pilot program that will run from late July to October. For additional information about grantees and to follow their progress, please visit https://blog.mozilla.org/gigabit.

Funding Innovation to Develop Learning Communities

The Mozilla Gigabit Fund has accelerated the development of Hive Learning Communities in Chattanooga and Kansas City, which now join New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Toronto, among others, in Mozilla’s global Hive network. Connecting schools, cultural institutions and youth-serving organizations throughout these cities, Hive Learning Communities are paving the way for a connected approach to education, and grantees of the Gigabit Community Fund become founding members of these developing networks.

Members of the KC and CHA Hive Learning Communities participate in regular meet-ups and online forums share their planning, progress, lessons and best practices throughout and following the initial pilot period.

 How to Get Involved

  • Attend an event in Kansas City or Chattanooga
  • Get in touch with the Gigabit team to learn more about these projects
  • Follow team progress – and keep up to date with Hive KC and CHA – on Twitter

Project Midterms – the view (and report) from the front lines

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Last week marked the midway point for the Gigabit Fund’s first round projects. In KC, we marked this milestone with an event at Google Fiber Space during 1 Week KC, and delivered a public report-out on our progress.

Each of the KC projects presented their update via demo, Prezi or video, where they shared their humble origin stories with anecdotes on where they are and where they’re going to a room full of curious Kansas Citians.  Gigabit relevancy is a hard case to make, but when 1, 2, 3, 4 groups show you exactly how they’ve turned (and are turning) a gig into a deliverable medium for an educational program, the point is made.   And yields applause.

I was incredibly proud of this cohort for standing tall, banding together and being open with their projects regardless of the slow start (process is not always fun).

Each team has faced challenges and recorded wins.  It was inspiring to see it all take shape in one room.  I’ve had the privilege of working alongside these teams and seeing their progress week to week, and while they have a ton of work to do in the coming weeks, I am confident that they’ll get it done.

In honor of their work and progress, I made this “make” with Mozilla Webmaker’s Thimble tool – feel free to remix and make your own.

Cheers to the Gig –

The Gigabots Dashboard

Gigabit Cafe

Follow the teams: @TheGigabots, @p_brightspots, @aSTEAMVillage, @RS3101

Don’t miss our next Gigabit Demo Call – click here for deets.

 

Hive Global, Hive Local: Scaling to Reach 10,000 Contributors

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Three weeks ago, I traveled from Chattanooga to San Francisco to join my Mozilla colleagues for my first All Hands, the annual gathering of all Mozilla Foundation employees. For one week each year, our distributed, global team comes together for an intense, face-to-face sprint of getting things done. All Hands isn’t just about icebreakers and team building – it’s about collaborating on new cross-team ideas, about jumping into new projects, and about pushing beyond the comfortable boundaries of one’s existing work. As a new Mozillian, it was an invaluable opportunity both to meet new colleagues and to learn more about how the Gigabit Fund and Hive Chattanooga fit into Mozilla’s larger mission and our goal of engaging 10,000 Mozillians in 2014.

2014 All Hands Group Photo

All Hands 2014 in San Francisco (Photo: Andrew Hayward)

To reach 10,000 contributors, it’s clear that our work must be global.  To this end, exciting projects like  Webmaker and Appmaker are intentionally and explicitly global in scope and will be critical to bringing web literacy skills to new audiences and to engaging broad new communities.  But to become successfully and authentically global, our work must also be intensely local.  Our programs and projects must be transformed and tweaked to answer the global challenge of web literacy in a way that makes sense in each unique local context, and this is where the Hive model becomes critical to the success of Mozilla’s larger work.

Hive is a city-based strategy to share connected learning principles and to teach web literacy in a local context.  It’s a strategy that takes Mozilla’s larger projects and goals and translates them to the needs and demands of a given city.  It’s also strategy in which there is growing interest as more and more Mozillians across the globe begin to host events and to create communities that are both intentionally global in their focus on web literacy and forcefully local in their responsiveness to local needs and in their engagement with local educators.

Hive Networks plus emerging communitys

In response to this ever-growing global interest in the Hive model, I spent most of the All Hands week working alongside colleagues from Hive NYC, Hive Toronto, and Hive Chicago to create the new Hive Cookbook, a guide to building, growing, and sustaining a new Hive learning community.  The Cookbook is a work in progress, but, even in its infancy, it begins to answer many of the questions we receive again and again from interested people around the world about creating  Hive communities and about the impact these communities can have in cities.

One of these questions we must answer for ourselves and for others  about Hive is how the model scales.  Hive Chattanooga is a thrilling project to me not only because its work serves my much-loved hometown but also because it’s a bold experiment in scaling down. With just over 500,000 people living in the metropolitan region, Chattanooga’s population is 1/5th that of the Kansas City metro area, 1/10th that of the Toronto metro area, and just 1/50th of the population of metro New York.  We’re not just a little smaller than other Hive cities – we’re a lot smaller.  Exploring how a Hive functions at this new scale while preserving both its focus and its potential for impact is important not just for Chattanooga but also for Hive Global and for Mozilla as a whole as we expand across the globe to reach 10,000 contributors in 2014.  Thousands of future Mozillians live in small towns like mine, and scaling our programs to fit the unique needs of these communities will open the door to vast new groups of collaborators and contributors.  In Chattanooga and in hundreds of communities like it, Mozilla must scale to global by first being local.  We must go small to grow big.

Learn More:

Summer Application Window Now Open

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The second application window for the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund is now open!  

Applications for the summer round of the Gigabit Community Fund will be accepted through Friday, June 13, 2014 at 11:59:59 PM PT.  The pilot period for second round is July 11 through September 26, 2014 – perfect for fall classes and programs!

The focus for the new round remains on innovation in education and workforce development that leverages next generation gigabit technology in Kansas City and Chattanooga.  The challenge?  To think about how technology can transform how we learn, how we engage students, and how we connect youth to 21st century careers and skills.  We are investing in ideas that use the Gig to shape learning outcomes, and we’re investing in KC and Chattanooga.

All Gigabit Community Fund projects must: (1) be piloted in the Chattanooga, TN and/or Kansas City, MO metropolitan region, (2) focus on workforce development or education, and (3) leverage the Gig network in these cities.   We’re looking for exemplar models of gig applications in live classrooms and educational spaces.  For project inspiration, just take a look at the Gigabit Projects from Round 1 in KC and Chattanooga.

Though the basic criteria haven’t changed, we encourage you to carefully review the Fund Rules, Terms, and Conditions and to make note of the following additions for the summer round:

  • Clearly explain your planned pilot and its learning outcomes. Where is the pilot happening? Who’s involved? What are participants learning? Getting the curriculum or application you develop through the Fund in front of real learners is key to the success of your project, and we want to make sure the application reflects the importance of this component.
  • Assess the risk and challenges your project faces. We want to know what hurdles, issues, challenges, or speed bumps may affect your project so that we can help you navigate and overcome them.
  • Use the NEW template for your application. Our proposal template has been updated to include new prompts, hints, and tips; it’s designed to make submitting an application even easier.  Just select “File” and “Make a copy” in the Google Doc to start editing your own proposal.

Once you’ve reviewed all of the fine print in the Rules, Terms, and Conditions and have explored the changes we’ve made for the new round, visit our iStart page to submit your application.  This easy application management tool is new for the summer round – just answer a few simple questions about your project, upload a PDF version of your proposal, and you’re done!  You may edit your application via iStart at any point prior to the deadline.

What’s next?  Get involved in your local gigabit community – check out our Meetups and Community Calls.  We’re here to help you craft a strong submission, so email us at gigabit@mozilla.org, follow @MozillaGigabit for updates, and check out our wiki in KC or CHA for all the details you need to move from demo to doing  and to go big with the gig.

We look forward to helping you bring your ideas to life!

Spring Round Grantees in Kansas City and Chattanooga

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Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund Awards $134,600 to Eight Grantees Across Chattanooga and Kansas City

Mozilla announced the five projects in Kansas City and three projects in Chattanooga that will receive funds from the first round of the Gigabit Community Fund.  Grantees across the two cities will receive a total of $134,600 for a 12-week pilot period beginning Monday.  The Fund, supported by NSF and part of the broader US Ignite initiative, is investing in organizations and projects that utilize gigabit technology to serve educational systems, support educators in and out of the classroom, and impact student learning.

Grantees will utilize the awarded funds to build and pilot gigabit-enabled applications and associated curricula that have immediate, measurable impact on classrooms and informal learning organizations in Chattanooga and Kansas City. Through these pilot projects, Chattanooga and Kansas City will become living laboratories in which to study how these next-generation networks can impact education and workforce development.

“A web with unlimited connectivity has unlimited potential—and can mean digital access, inclusion, education and workforce opportunity for an entire city,” said Chris Lawrence, Senior Director of Mozilla Webmaker  Community and Hive Learning Networks. “As the leading gigabit economies in the US, Kansas City and Chattanooga are uniquely positioned to explore these possibilities. We’re excited to see what the grantees create.”

Gigabit Community Fund Grantees – The following projects received grants between $5,000 and $30,000:

Chattanooga

  1. Remote Audio Mixing / Chattanooga Music Resource Center–for a collaborative, cloud-based music education app to be piloted with the Chattanooga Public Library and with Barger Academy of Fine Arts, a local public elementary school.
  2. Hyperlocal Hyperaudio / Hyperaudio–for a content remixing curriculum that uses locally produced content from partners includinghyperaudio-eco the Chattanooga Public Library, the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Public Education Foundation, and the Chattanooga History Center.
  3. Viditor / GeonCode–to pilot the launch of a new online video editor with digital art and design classes at Baylor School and at the Chattanooga Public Library’s teen center.

To learn more about these projects – click here.  

Kansas CityGigabot Sneak Peek

  1. Gigabots / Big Bang–to bring connected devices to robotics and into classrooms to teach kids how to share innovation in collaborative ways.
  2. 3D Multi-School Learning / aSTEAM Village–to utilize next gen telepresence technology to teach computer programming and video game design to students in a multi-school setting.
  3. Project Bright Spots / The Lean Lab–to use the gig as a collaboration tool, by enabling community dialogue around specific experiences that highlight local innovation in education.
  4. Augmented Reality / Bonner Springs Fire Dept.–for a specialized training system that equips first response trainees with Google Glass to share live video and real-time information during training and simulation scenarios.
  5. Gigabit Cafe / Reconciliation Services–to deploy the first public test of the “Software Lending Library” to bring gigabit internet connectivity to Reconciliation Services’ clients and neighbors.

To learn more about these projects – click here.  

These 12-week pilot programs will run from April 28 to July 18. The application period for the next round of Gigabit Community Fund grants begins on May 12, for projects that will run from July 7 to September 26.

Cultivating Hive Learning Communities

Grantees  of the Gigabit Community Fund will also become founding members of  Gigabit Hive Learning Communities in both cities. These local  communities of practice will function as “living laboratories,” working  and learning together around community-driven goals. They also join a  growing global Hive network that includes New York City, Chicago,  Pittsburgh, Toronto among others.

Members  of the Gigabit Hive Learning Communities will participate in regular  meet-ups and online forums, and through an openly networked approach,  will share their planning, progress, lessons learned and best practices  throughout and following the initial pilot period.

How to get involved:

 

 

 

Kansas City Spring Projects

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The following five projects are KC’s first-ever grant recipients of the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund.  The fund invested $75,000 in the spring round to allow innovators to build and launch a pilot in Kansas City that impacts learners and our community by leveraging and building capacity for gigabit technology. 

Gigabots – Big Bang / The Gigabots bring connected robotics and devices to classrooms using existing educational robotics platforms. A Gigabot is a combination of hardware, software and a cloud platform that connects Gigabots to each other from any location in real-time.  This project takes Robotics to a new frontier in science and engineering through programming, all while teaching kids how to share innovation in collaborative ways.  Web | Blog | Follow

3D Multi-School Learning / aSTEAM Village – a project featuring next gen telepresence technology to teach Computer Programming and Video Game Design, providing a key STEAM pathway for students in a multi-school setting.  This project can deliver high tech innovation to interest-driven pursuits for non-dominant students in STEAM subjects.   Web | Blog | Follow

Project Bright Spots / The Lean Lab – using the gig as a collaboration tool for video and live sharing to rapidly spur community dialogue and collaboration around innovation in education by sharing examples of “Bright Spots” in teaching and learning in the KC metro region.  This project leverages the power of community, as powered by technology to create real solutions in advancing systemic education.  Web | Blog | Follow

Augmented Reality / Bonner Springs Fire Dept. – A specialized training system that equips first response trainees with Google Glass to share live video and real-time information during training and simulation scenarios. This project proposes to use the gig to save lives, giving KC a civic application of modern computing, with an ability to aggregate data to help coordinate first responders’ actions in the field.  Web | Blog | Video

Gigabit Cafe / Reconciliation Services – Bridging the digital divide by bringing gigabit internet connectivity to social services by deploying the first public test of the “Software Lending Library” to demonstrate internet relevancy and transformative powers to Reconciliation Services’ clients and neighbors. This project is the perfect example of using technology and innovation to address societal needs.  Web | Blog | Follow

Chattanooga Spring Projects

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The following three projects have been awarded the first ever Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund grants in Chattanooga.  We’ll be posting project news and updates often over the course of the 12-week pilot period so that you can stay up-to-date with these exciting pilots!

Remote Audio Mixing / Chattanooga Music Resource Center: Remote Audio Mixing (“RAM”) is a collaborative, cloud-based music education app.  RAM allows both professional musicians and aspiring student musicians to manipulate multi-track audio recordings in a simple, intuitive interface on any device.  A beta of this application will be piloted with the Chattanooga Public Library and with music classes at Barger Academy of Fine Arts, a local public elementary school.  Web | Blog | Video

Hyperlocal Hyperaudio / Hyperaudio: Hyperaudio is an audio/video in-browser remixing platform that invites anyone to create their own new media narratives using locally produced content.  In partnership with the Chattanooga Public Library, the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Public Education Foundation, and the Chattanooga History Center, Hyperaudio has teamed up with local content providers in Chattanooga to develop a content remixing curriculum with measurable educational outcomes for both informal and formal learning environments. Web | Blog | Video

Viditor / GeonCode:  Viditor is an online video editor entirely based in the cloud and composed of modern and open web technologies like HTML5, CSS, JQuery, and more.  Viditor, created by two University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students, makes advanced, collaborative video editing available to everyone.  Viditor’s beta launch will be piloted with digital art and design classes at Baylor School and at the Chattanooga Public Library’s teen center. Web | Blog | Video

What can you do with a gig? Mozilla’s Gigabit Fund tells us with 20 proposed pilot projects in KC

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Silicon Prairie News just released a two-part piece exploring the impact of Google Fiber on

Google Fiberspace / photo credit Silicon Prairie News

Kansas City, now 3 years since the original announcement that declared Kansas City, Kan. the first city in America to get it.  SPN dives into how Kansas City scored the biggest technological coup of the century, and charts the past, present and future implications of being the first in a long of line of ambitious cities to come on board. It also dishes on Kansas City’s struggle to wield a power that is largely misunderstood and certainly underused, all while trying to predict where and when outcomes of successful next-generation applications using gigabit technology can be seen and measured.

Like Google Fiber, Mozilla chose Kansas City, and in February launched a fund that supports innovation in education by leveraging gigabit technology.  Mozilla is interested in how technology can serve educational systems, programs and learning.  Mozilla has deployed the Gigabit Community Fund to champion transformative innovation in classrooms and in after-school programs or informal education spaces like Science City’s Maker Studio, Arts Tech, Upper Room, and in our public libraries.

When I started working for Mozilla in mid January, I had no idea how deeply vested and mission-driven Mozilla was when it came to education, web literacy, connected learning principles, and in building a learning network here in Kansas City.  So, it’s not surprising that Mozilla chose the lens of education and learning in which to focus this project to fund innovation on KC’s fiber-fast Internet.

When the application window for our first round of funding opened in late February, I was blown away by Kansas City’s resounding response to the question “What good is a gig?”  Twenty concepts put forward by schools, nonprofits, businesses, libraries and agencies were submitted for funding consideration.  Grantees will be announced here on April 14th.  And while these applications are being evaluated, we are preparing to put funded projects into practice inside live classrooms and spaces in Kansas City.  These funded projects will report their progress with blog updates, videos and use Mozilla’s Webmaker tools to share their success and feedback from the front lines.  These pilots will be evidence of our 3-year gig journey, and test its impact in real ways that we can see and measure.

Moving forward, the Gigabit Fund is how Mozilla plans to build a big tent for education and connected learning in KC.  We’ve worked to both grow our two foundational Hive Learning Networks (Chicago and NYC), helped to onboard HLNs in Toronto and Pittsburgh, and we’re now fostering the growth of new HLNs in Kansas City, Chattanooga, and the Bay Area, among others.  This energy, this “Hiveyness,” has led to a three-tiered engagement ladder that outlines what it means to contribute to the Hive Learning Network project.

 The Gigabit Fund is how we will create a community of practice, launching successful pilots with teachers and educators, funding scalable and remixable programs and technology to serve our community and beyond.  These inaugural pilots will be done by the Fourth of July – so maybe we can send up some fireworks to showcase real progress and projects built for education, using gig tech, right here in KC.

That’s how you build a gig city.  And that’s how we’ll build Hive KC.