The overall goal of this program is to establish Mozilla as the best place to teach and learn the mechanics, culture and citizenship of the web. We promote Mozilla's mission by educating people about how the web is an open platform for creativity and collaboration.
In 2015, we aim to achieve this by:
- Mobilizing more educators
- Creating new tools, programs and practices
- Catalyzing innovations across networks
- Growing demand for Mozilla events, communities and networks
In 2015, our key performance indicator (KPI) is 500 cities with ongoing Learning Network activity.
Our work encompasses several key initiatives, with varying levels of engagement.
- SMALL Maker Party drives initial activation and engagement via one-off events of all sizes
- MEDIUM Mozilla Clubs enable local leaders to put stakes in the ground in their communities through more sustained programming
- LARGE Hive Learning Networks are city-wide hubs where individuals, organizations and other stakeholders collaborate to incubate content, partnerships, and practices for teaching digital skills
##Our Community Our community is comprised of educators and activists. Activists are driven by our mission and join us to develop skills to teach the web and share their knowledge with others. Educators join us because they want to embed the web and digital literacy into their practice, and help their learners understand the possibilities offered by the open web.
Here is further detail on our Q1 progress and Q2 goals for our key initiatives and supporting infrastructures.
##Maker Party Our goal for Maker Party this year is to tee up year-long engagement and seed Mozilla Clubs. This year, we'll focus efforts on a two-week campaign, July 15-31, which is also historically the busiest two weeks of previous Maker Party campaigns. We’ll plan to highlight individual activities from the Clubs curriculum as a hook to drive participation.
Between now and June, we'll be working closely with the Engagement team to hone our marketing plan. We'll also begin initial outreach, coordinating with partners and other teams across Mozilla to maximize impact.
##Mozilla Clubs This is a new initiative for us this year, evolved from the success of Maker Party. It's our effort to take the sparks of activation from Maker Party and sustain them year round via local groups teaching the web on a more regular basis. We want to offer rigorous skills development while also modeling social, participatory learning, as research shows this is one of the most effective ways to teach and learn.
In Q1 we curated the our first curriculum module, Web Literacy Basics. It’s a series of six community-grown activities covering the foundations of reading, writing and participating on the web. We field-tested these activities with 40 educators and learners from 24 cities including Helsinki (Finland), Pune (India), Baltimore (US), Wellington (NZ), and Cape Town (S. Africa).
To ensure that Clubs are well-serviced, we also put a plan into place to adopt a more intentional volunteer organizing model that includes three specific roles: Club Leader, Regional Coordinator, and Organizer. This model was heavily informed by other organizations like Obama for America, Free the Children, and Coder Dojo.
In Q2, we'll focus on on-boarding volunteer Regional Coordinators and continuing to develop new curriculum for Clubs, on topics including Privacy, Mobile and “Teach like Mozilla”
##Hive Learning Networks We started 2014 with 7 official Hive cities, and are currently at 11. In large part this is due to momentum following the first (and successul) Hive Global Meet-Up at MozFest last October. That convening offered an effective way to build bonds and encourage in-person connections and collaborations across cities.
During the first few months of this year, we've clarified the pathway for interested cities to become official Hive Learning Communities. This includes having a dedicated team to drive the work forward, and articulating a mission that is aligned with that of Hive worldwide, but also highly localized to meet the challenges and realities in their locales. Existing Hive cities also serve as a testbed for developing new programs and curriculum that can be further leveraged by Clubs.
Over the next few months, we'll draw more explicit links between Clubs and burgeoning Hives, by merging new Hive leaders with Clubs volunteer roles, and seeing how Clubs can serve as an on-ramp to planting deeper roots and bringing additional local stakeholders together. Existing Hive cities will continue to develop and document best practices for driving collaborative innovation, and developing content that is highly adaptable in different learning contexts (in and out of schools, for instance). We will also finalize a fundraising toolkit–a resource we’ve heard demand for, to help new Hives formalize their local efforts.
##teach.mozilla.org
We spent a bulk of Q1 researching, developing and testing a new site that will serve as a hub for all Mozilla Learning Networks initiatives. The site, which will live at teach.mozilla.org, is on track for a soft launch in mid-April. This is the first time we’ll have a dedicated site that integrates our full offering. In Q2, we'll scope and start to build a directory for our community to more easily connect with each other based on their expertise and interests, and will add more dynamic content to the site, i.e. blogs, curriculum, community features.
##Badges In the first quarter of this year, our focus has been on planning and decision making, not implementation. Our short-term priority is to enhance the user experience for badge issuers and badge earners. For example, improving the badge review queue and gaining easier access to badge “evidence” after it's been submitted. In order to prioritize building the teach.mozilla.org site, this work on badges has been stalled, but will pick up this Spring as we work to enhance the current system and build out a few new programmatic badges.
##MozFest Mark your calendars! MozFest 2015 will take place November 6 - 8 in London. A key focus this year will be on leadership development. We plan to offer training to our Regional Club coordinators and seek additional ways to build skill development for all attendees. We’ll also continue the successful Hive Global meet-up from 2014, which really helped catalyze new cities and collaborations.
Over the next few months, we'll work to refine the narrative arc leading up to MozFest, as well as articulate some of the strategic outcomes of this annual event. Stay tuned for the Save the Date!
Here is some insight regarding aligned movements and organizations that are also in the digital learning space. Note that we also see Mozilla as a key driver in this space, and think we've done a good job of partnering with others, by finding ways to align external campaigns with our values, tools and community.
"Learning to code" and computer science are more mainstream Huge campaigns like Code.org’s Hour of Code, and Google’s “CS First” bring introductory and sustained programs to youth. Coding is generally seen as a more valued skill than it has been in the past -- but we’re not always sure to what end.
Hands-on pedagogy is also gaining popularity Making and DIY culture has become more prominent in the education space, with Maker Media as a leading force. In 2014, there was the first-ever White House Maker Faire and a declaration for a new National Day of Making. Tools such as Scratch, Minecraft and littleBits are being more widely used in third party digital learning programs, while they're also expanding efforts to build their own global communities with local nodes.
The mobile Web presents new possibilities Over the next few years, billions of first-time web users will come online via mobile devices. Based on some of the reflections from Mozilla's recent involvement at Mobile World Congress, we see a big opportunity to teach mobile web literacy while inviting creativitity connected to locally relevant content.
Teaching web literacy increases people’s understanding about the opportunity and potential of the web, that is anchored, supported and informed by Mozilla’s values. Within this landscape, we believe we're different because we’re teaching the mechanics, culture and citizenship of the web. It’s social, production-centered, open, locally relevant and reflective.
We’re building a volunteer ecosystem and organizing model for leadership development. Convening educators and activists who want to teach the next generation of web citizens.
Our model for leadership development empowers education leaders that can then take our tools, mission and practices into their work.
##What We're Hearing Here are a few quotes that illustrate what's working across these programs, as well as challenges or needs our community is facing that we hope to address in the near future.
I always thought I'd visit websites. Not make them! But now I can. ~From a middle school student that participated in PASE Explorers, an afterschool program in NYC, developed in partnership with us.
I already run two tech programmes in Argentina. I do it outside of my job, and it can be tricky to find other committed volunteers with skills and staying power. I’d love help, resources and community to do it with. ~Alvar Maciel, school teacher, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Our partnership with Hive makes us fresh, keeps us moving forward rather than doing the same old thing all the time. ~Dr. Michelle Larson, President and CEO, Adler Planetarium, Hive Chicago member
We had constant demand from our community members for web literacy classes, and we were finally able to create a great recipe with Mozilla Clubs and curriculum. ~Elio Qoshi, Super Mentor/Mozilla Rep, Albania
##Partners Over the past few months we've developed more thoughtful and intentional criteria for how we can best work with partners moving forward.
For the remainder of 2015, we're actively seeking partners that can help us:
- activate more mentors
- reach more cities
We're particularly interested in working with others that share our values and can help us improve our offering, while driving depth, spread and participation.
This criteria builds on the success of relationships with networks and organizations like National Writing Project (NWP) and Coder Dojo, and has sparked some exciting conversations with potential new partners like the Peace Corps.
##How You Can Help Here are some of our key challenges. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback for how we might adress these as we head into Q2.
It's hard to track "sustained engagement." We often rely on contributors to self-report their activity. How can we incentivize updates and reflection from community members? How do other organizations tackle this?
Establishing new brand relationships. Our current community of educators grew in deep connection with Webmaker products, however in 2015 we made a decision to more closely align learning network efforts with the Mozilla brand. How can we best transition the community through this - understanding there will still be overlap and connectors?
Quantifying impact. We’re getting better at demonstrating quantity, as in the numbers of events, or cities reached, but those measurements of growth are a surrogate for impact -- and it isn’t enough. How do we get better at measuring the relationships we’re building to support the open web for teaching and learning?