Recently there have been some gentle shifts in the Learning Team at Mozilla. The ebb and flow of changing the world through the educational hacktivism we duly named Webmaker, revealed an underwater cave of…ok, I’m going to nix the poetics and get to the point.
This year, we’ve done A LOT of stuff. We defined a brand and began defining the product, built some pretty awesome, even revolutionary software, touched the lives of countless young people by building learning projects that helped them make. We grew professional communities of journalists, scientists, developers, filmmakers and educators. We focused, together with these communities, on a vision and hacktivated hundreds and hundreds of people to run Webmaking events during the Summer Code Party.
In short, we killed it. We were awesome. Mozillians, thinkers, tinkerers, makers of all shapes came together and got excited about growing and participating in a global movement to create a more web literate planet.
As Mark said in his last post, educators
“played a critical role in getting Mozilla Webmaker off the ground”.
To take it further, I believe that the people that are excited about teaching webby stuff (using whatever tools or methods they want to use) are critical to Webmaker mission as a whole.
I see educators as the key to activating a generation of people who will not be able to skate by without the skills we’re highlighting through our work in web literacies. And I know that there are many educators out there that are looking for a little help in leveling up their own skills so that they can push their learners to develop the cognitive capacity to participate in the new structure of our society.
In an effort to not only support this group in every way we possibly can, but also learn from their experiences “on the ground”, we’re creating sessions, themes and spaces at the Mozilla Festival where educators can join forces with developers, technologists, gamers, creatives and each other to push the boundaries of learning and the web.
At Mozfest, educators and technologists will come together to learn from each other. Among other things, educators will help the technologists understand how our minds organize, filter and access knowledge (i.e. learn), and technologists will help educators understand how technology can support that function of learning.
Educators and technologists alike will Hacktivate Learning, Code for (and with) Kids, hack on Hackable Games, define Skills and Badges and play with Webmaker for Mobile. We will make together and learning is an inherent byproduct of making.
The web is a volatile animal, and finding new and innovative ways to use that volatility for the benefit of a learner is only part of what we’ll be doing at MozFest (a very important part, but still just a part). Together we will hack, remix and make things that lead a level of understanding that allows webmakers to be adaptive, nimble and ready to navigate our rapidly changing world and while we’re doing that, we’ll level up our own skills so that we too can be adaptive and nimble.
If you haven’t registered for the Mozilla Festival, you should. There are complimentary tickets available for educators who bring youth or students to the festival, bring specific ideas, volunteer, or evangelize. If you’re an educator that is hacktivated by the work we’re doing, get in touch.
Related articles
- Introducing Webmaker, the Product (erinknight.com)
- Explaining Webmaker Crisply (commonspace.wordpress.org)
- Seeking Educators that Get the Web (explorecreateshare.org)
