A well deserved shout out to our peers Ravezilla, Mozilla Gaming and Journewlisim for being great sports.

A Special big thanks to our amazing Course leaders James Morris (Ba Hons Web Media Production) Robert Chapman-Aymes (Ba Hons Content Development and Production) and Tim Riley (guest lecturer) for all their help and guidance and Last but not least Ravensbourne College for making this all possible.

To re-live the experience make sure you follow our Twitter and Facebook page, which will be updated with more videos and articles to come.

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Be sure to check back for all that happened at the event and watch our videos!

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Mozilla Festival, 4th – 6th November 2011.
It’s all happened here.
Rave Mozilla News

Read his opinion on education, how Mozilla plan to help children learn better and why he’s so impressed with Ravensbourne!

Question: Where do Mozilla stand with the new phase of a Digital Classroom?
“Mozilla have really started to look at learning as something that’s important for us to play a role in over the last 18 months or so and we started that from the perspective of really wanting to make sure that people could learn digital skills and learn what I call ‘web literacy’ and that’s really at the core of our interest and so projects like Hackasaurus that you saw here today are about us finding easy ways for anybody including kids to just get the basics of how the web works in a way that they’re empowered to make something on the web so that they have the confidence and the skills to really use the web to its fullest potential. We actually made a decision in the last couple of weeks that that should be a big focus for us because we’re really at the level of reaching out and helping millions of people get stronger digital skills and so that’s where we started. In terms of the question you’re asking, using a digital approach to teaching, it’s certainly something we believe in although we really believe that if you want to include technology as a part of how you teach the best way to do it is to do it using the culture of the web. If fall you do is videotape someone giving a lecture that’s not any different, in fact that’s probably a lot worse than a classroom. If what you is say ‘well what’s the web about?’ well the web is about collaboration the web is about tinkering and trying things out, the web is about being able to build something really fast and say’ well what if we build education, even if it’s like science education and made it work like that and for us that’s the role that technology can play. What’s good about it isn’t that it’s cheap or free or everyone can watch a video, what’s good about it is that you can take it apart and make things which is actually a really good way for people to learn. What we’re doing with the HIVE Group for example is we’re helping them embed digital skills and digital technology in learning about science in learning about art, learning about history and in doing that it makes that learning more experimental and hands on because you go collecting data and that’s the role I think digital should play in education and if you use it in that way to make it more fun and more hands on, you also teach digital skills at the same time. We’re starting to work with educators in all fields, helping them use digital in a creative open way because if they do that then everyone is learning digital skills all the time instead of us only teaching kids who want to learn how to code.”

Question: Could you explain to us the term ‘Hacking’?
“There is a kind of tradition in the software developer world, where Mozilla are known for talking about Hacking as meaning just playing around and that’s really the original route meaning of it. I can play with a piece of code, I can try this I can try that, which is actually a really good way to learn things and understand how they work which is the thing we want people to do and in a media context a hacker has come to mean that someone is doing something bad or breaking into a computer and that’s something certainly that we don’t condone and really what we’re trying to say, in the positive sense, hacking is about tinkering, playing around and feeling empowered. In some ways it can be a dangerous thing to talk about it that way because people can misunderstand but also we’re trying to reclaim that language and say ‘it’s actually a good thing to understand how computers work’ in some ways it kind of raises the eyebrows of kids and say “what do you mean Mozilla’s teaching Hacking?’, well, its not the kind of hacking you think but it is about you having control of your digital life.”

Question: Is Mozilla involved in any educational projects?
“Yes. ‘Jetpack For learning’ was the first thing we ever did as an educational program bringing together educators and software developers and we actually got some neat add-ons but we didn’t have educators involved in the design process and we’ve learnt from that and said if were going to make software for education, lets bring educators and developer together and they’re going to come up with things like Hackasaurus or the kind of software that’s coming out of HIVE and we’re doing some stuff with Peer 2 Peer University around teaching web development and in all those cases there is always this marriage between people who know learning and people who know software and that’s when the magic happens. So Jetpack for Learning was a good dip in that pool but it was actually more the thing that taught us ho to make Hackasaurus and all these other kin of things.”

Question: do you think online learning will benefit children in the future?
“My kids are 11 and 9 and they are on the Internet all the time and in many ways the Internet is where they learn. It’s not the only place they learn but for example my son who is 11 if he wants to learn a new guitar chord or a song he goes and looks it up on the Internet, watches the YouTube video of that person playing it then go to a different site and see where the chords are. What’s amazing about that is that he is hungry for information. If he wants to know something he knows how to go and dig it up and that’s a really empowering way to learn, you don’t have to wait for the teacher to teach the class on this guitar chord and I don’t have to wait till its my guitar lesson, I can just learn when I want- in control of my own learning and I think there’s two things that will come out of that is those kids who are confident and have the digital skills, will actually learn faster and more independently which is a good thing and they’ll bring that set of skills into school and for him school goes faster, school goes better. I think as long as teachers are willing to realise that these kids have got jet fuel for learning, then I think the Internet will actually fuel schools in becoming better because student will be better if teachers can work with that, I think the downside is even though we think there are these digital natives, there is still a huge gap between rich and poor and a huge gap between kids who feel comfortable with the internet and kids who don’t and there’s actually some research going on in Harvard University which shows that its not everyone who gets it. Kids who have a lot of computers around them get I and it just seems natural for them and kids who don’t have access even if they just have access to a mobile phone don’t really get the mechanics of computers or the web and that’s why we’re so concerned with teaching digital skills as a really core part of Mozilla’s mission. We want to make sure that everybody understands how the internet works and make sure that they know that they’ve got the skills to be able to play ad make more of an impact like my son does.”

Question: What’s been your favorite part of the Mozilla festival so far?
“I think the digital pop-up youth space by the HIVE which is made up of twelve groups demonstrating this kind of learning where digital takes a back seat and kids are learning design and filmmaking but it takes that kind of ‘maker attitude’ and it builds it into these youth learning projects and you see those twelve very different groups down here teaching twelve different things but they all have that same approach of assuming that kids want to learn and really what we’re trying to use digital for is to give them some tools for them to use to explore or play and invent and move forwards with.”

Question: What do you think about Ravensbourne?
“I love Ravensbourne! I think it’s actually a real example of the kind of ethic that Mozilla would like to see more in education. You guys are actually out here doing something real as a part of your class and not just doing pretend assignments on fake content and to me that kind of learning that is hands on. You’re actually making real stuff not just doing an exercise. This is what absolutely has to happen in all learning and it seems that Ravensbourne to some extent builds that into how they work. I might have stayed in school if they had something like this!”

As the food was so good on the Saturday, Lunchtime saw everyone rush to the 4th floor for a selection of salads, rolls, wraps and cakes.

There was a rich vibe in the room as everyone had made friends over the weekend and Rave Mozilla News even took part in a Foosball tournament.

As the evening crept in the final closing circle was not to be missed and all the seats were instantly filled. Mark Surman and Mitchell Baker once again started the close which was mostly thank you’s to all who took part in the event, the guests for coming, the volunteers and to Ravensbourne which also included all the Content Development and Web Media Production student made websites including this one! A massive cheer was given to all of us for our hard work.

The festival had come to an end but not without a big send off! There was an after party which was laced with plenty of wine, juices, snacks and a DJ which got everyone in a party mood (be sure to check the video highlights) the party finished around 8:45 pm but some members of RMN still stuck around till the building was closed at 9:30 pm (we’re such workaholics!)

All in all we’ve had an amazing time and this has been an unforgettable experience for us.

Rave Mozilla News is sad to see MozFest go which has gone by too quickly. We’ve had so much fun and taking part in the event was an honor.

To re-live the experience make sure you follow our Twitter and Facebook page, which will be updated with more Videos and articles to come.

Follow us @ravemozillanews
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rave-Mozilla-News-Children-Education/136691916432807

Be sure to check back for all that happened at the event and watch our videos!

We found out how this this could affect the younger generation in the present and help solve common logging in problems we’ve all come across in the future…

Question: What is BrowserID?
“BrowserID means your email becomes your identity. You can use any email you want, go to BrowserID.org and set up your account and enter a password and this is the last password you will ever need because any website that supports BrowserID will give you a button that you can lick on and then you’re logged in, so you don’t have to do all the logging in which isn’t necessary anymore because we have confirmed that this is you. You can have several emails so that you’re not limited to one because a problem we found is that people don’t want to log in to their bank with their Facebook log in because they have personal things there and they don’t want others to get access to it, so that’s a thing we wanted to avoid with BrowserID, so BrowserID is de-centralised so there’s no one company that owns it and the data that goes there will not be sold to any ad providers.

What we wanted to do was make it as easy for users as possible to keep their information on the web and you only give away the information you want to give away. So we evolved OpenID into an email identity so it’s much, much easier for people to understand. It’s not a Mozilla thing, we’re just the company providing the infrastructure and helping out with it but anybody can be a provider for BrowserID and you can actually run everything on your own server.

Question: What’s your view on the younger generation having multiple email accounts, especially ones they are not actively using?
“It’s dangerous, I mean I go through the thing where I reset my password when I forget it I’m like yeah I don’t even try remembering it anymore, but the kids I see for example the have 12 different email accounts because when they forget their password they opened a new one instead and that’s just clogging up the web with information you don’t need. Outdated identities of you on the web are dangerous in the future, like your linked in account that you might not have updated for four years might sabotage your chances of getting hired from companies. We shouldn’t accumulate cruft on the internet that nobody needs and that’s why BrowserID was invented.”

BrowserID is launched and open to everyone.

To find out more about BrowserID, check out http://browserid.org/

I was delighted to meet a young woman called Adizah Tejani. I was engaged in their aims and what they have achieved. Having won numerous awards for their great work. The work they produced with there young pupils is encouraging and they gave the young woman they worked with the opportunity to flourish and independently come up with ideas. They were based in an all girls’ school in East London and produced phone applications for smart phones. The young woman gained skilled that are transferable and can now be used throughout their lives in various industries not just in the media world.

I stood wondering after why there is not more workshop/courses set up aimed at this market and thought back to my schooling where the ‘gifted and talented’ pupils received most of the extra curricular activities. There were also extra support and activities set up for students who needed more help and were falling behind the national average. The ‘average’ students who fell between these lines were seemingly ignored. I look to the future hoping that more people will follow in the footsteps of great organizations such as ‘Appsforgood’.

Ravensbourne College. The Mozilla team greeted its guest and informed them of the plans for the weekend ahead. Mozilla really wanted to get everyone involved and stressed this at the circle by reminding everyone that they were not there just to take notes and watch but there to get stuck in, learn about code, network with others and become hackers themselves!

Lots of learning labs and design workshops were set up from different organisations including, apps for good and P2PU but the word on everyone’s lips was Popcorn. If you hadn’t heard of Popcorn before this weekend you would have by now! Popcorn was introduced to all the guests at the event and they also had the opportunity to visit the related design workshop labeled Popcorn Bounties, which taught the learners how to use the software.

The 4th floor became more relaxed at lunchtime and was unofficially made a networking space with coffee carts set up for free hot drinks. Many people where spotted swapping business cards and collaborating ideas and we took part in Dundee University’s Skype interview challenge which was fun and interesting. After all the socialising everyone gathered around back to a formal standard to get ready for the Keynote speech.

Mitchell Baker and Mark Surman opened the floor, which was followed by five presentations from guest speakers including Kat Cizek from Highrise, and the innovative Tim Hunkin. We also got introduced to the revolutionary Octo-copter!

Everyone left in high spirits and feeling full and probably energised (from all that free coffee!), but most importantly no one left that building without having learnt something new and creative today. That’s just the Mozilla way.

“When I was in college I studied Mass Communications and journalism and radio and I did a lot of stuff with radio and then that sort of took me on a path of doing music industry related jobs, music journalism, record stores, record companies and I did this through most of my twenties and then the music industry changed and I also discovered online communities through music and I knew that I needed a new career and I knew that I was really activated by what was going on in the early days of social media and technology so I decided I wanted to go back to school to change my career path. I dint know if I wanted to be a teacher or work in museums and I found a program I New York City called the bank street college of education which actually ran a museum education degree, which I thought was the best of both worlds. So I did that and then I really focused on technology on my coursework within the program. I was probably in my early thirties when I finished the degree and so my career has taken a totally different trajectory in education, museums and digital learning and that’s the path I’ve taken”

“I don’t regret taking such a big break from education. I had a whole wealth of experience and I don’t regret that and I had a great time and I worked a lot and I was working music was my passion and I followed that passion so I don’t regret any of that and then it felt right to broaden my horizons I went and did that. I also feel that IT undergraduate course, some students that go right into college right from high school and then right into a masters program they don’t get the value because its really what you put in to it because I’s really expensive and you get from it what you put into it and I think some young people haven’t discovered themselves yet and don’t get that life experience…I kind of think that’s a waste and being a graduate program teacher now I see students like that so I think that a break to go and have some world experience and to focus on what you want and then to know the value of what you put into it is great in a graduate program but yeah I don’t regret taking a break.”

It’s the second day of the Mozilla Festival and The foxes are out again!

Check out our photo gallery to see some images of The Mozilla Mascot Foxes.

Users must create an account, which will store all their educational information.

I spoke to John Britton who is a representative for P2PU and this is what he had to say:

“We started P2PU to be the social wrapper around online learning, so you can go to P2PU and find some like minded people who are interested in learning any subject, for example we’re partnering with Mozilla on creating a school of Webcraft which is about learning how to program but you can learn poetry, you can learn literature, you can learn how to cook and all kinds of different things. If you find a group of people that have a similar interest, you get together and you can set up a plan of learning over 5 to 6 weeks and you use free materials and learn for yourself for free”

“ The most important thing is that you get knowledge but we are working on a form of recognition system so as you work on different courses at P2PU, your profile gets populated with new events, so for example ‘John took a class in astronomy 101 or john helped Bob how to program in Web Making 101’, so I get credit or all the activities I do and my profile will reflect how much of a self learner I am. We are working right now on a badges project so as you learn new skills for example programming, you can get badges from trusted partners like Mozilla saying that you know how to program and since Mozilla is a well known name on the web, it actually carries some weight and you might actually wanna put it on your CV.”

With the fees in England increasing next year this can be another opportunity for people to gain knowledge without accumulating up to £50,000 of debt, without even needing to leave their house. It also gives flexibility to those who don’t want to dedicate 3 years of their life to a particular course as P2PU promote life long learning but with the influence of higher education.

Visit The P2PU website for more information: http://p2pu.org/en/

‘Media, freedom and the web’ is this year’s theme and the first speaker was Mitchel, the chairwoman at the Mozilla foundation, who started by telling us that Mozilla want to “shift the conversation on the internet.” They want people who use the web to work together and change the web. Mozilla is trying to build the next generation of web makers. Firefox is one way they have done this. Another way is to build tools to help people create software for the web.

This event is a combination of a school and a test lab for web makers and learners.  Mozilla are very keen on the idea of teaching and giving the web user total control. This is how they see themselves, which is why they set up the learning labs, science fayre and design challenges. Last year’s festival theme was  ‘Learning freedom and the web’. 30 people got together and made a working prototype to make Open Badges for the internet. Since then there has been an overwhelming interest from developers who have been making prototypes to improve these badges for clients including government, NASA. Mozilla believe that the web needs to be more cutting edge. The festival last year really started the ‘Hackfest’ and made this project come alive.

Bret gaylor and Dan Sinker are both the project leaders of Popcorn. Js

Mozilla Popcorn makes videos work like the web. Popcorn makes it seemingly easy to mash up online video with the rest of the web. They called it “the Resses cup moment, when chocolate and peanut butter came together’ and it worked. The Popcorn project has been built in a hybrid way with the involvement of students professors and filmmakers. Today hey launched the new home of the software and their ‘Learn popcorn moment’ which is perfect for anyone who wants to get there head around the software.

Highrise
Katarina Cizek from the national film board of Canada spoke about ‘One Millionth Tower’ which is the worlds first html5 documentary, made with popcorn. They want to solve the problems that filmmakers have with web browsers. The trailer, which was built in open source technology, looked pretty impressive and we were invited to a private screening of the film later on in the week. The film launches worldwide at 9:30 am pacific time with wired.com

The film was 100% produced by the National Film board of Canada as part of Highrise.

Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership

The Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership is about producing open-source code and ideas to solve problems in newsrooms in order to advance journalism. They have collected problems from newsrooms and then asked people to come up with ideas to change this.

5 fellows are:

• Mark Boas – Fellow at Al Jazeera English
• Cole Gillespie – Fellow at Zeit Online
• Laurian Gridinoc – Fellow at BBC
• Nicola Hughes – Fellow at the Guardian
• Dan Schultz – Fellow at the Boston Globe

They will spend the next year embedded in their partner newsroom to help journalism move forward into the digital unknown.

They will be at the newsroom for knight Mozilla for the next year, sharing their experience and innovation.

Lainie DeCoursy
Hive learning Network NYC,
Hive introduced themselves as a “digital playground and maker lab for young people” that bring organisations together for collaboration. They have bought 12 organistaions from the US and London including WNYC Radio Rookies, Mozilla Hackasuarus, DreamYard and Institute of play.. They invite school groups to visit and they encourage them to do all sorts of really creative things like to designing board games, become digital story tellers and play some fun games.  The main outcome is that kids learn new skills and work together.

Hackasaurus
This has been developed from last year at the festival in Barcelona. Mozilla have always talked about the flexibility of the web but most of the time it’s only web developers who can really do that. Hackasaurus brought together from last years festival, including librarians hackers, wanted to create a Swiss army knife of the web and try to make kids learn more about the web’s building blocks

They had a unique idea in which involved bringing a librarian with 15 kids, make them go on a website to find an advert that they didn’t like and make them replace it with another advert they wanted to change it too.

Hackasaurus lets kids and teens learn how to mix html5 code and hack in a fun way, seeing the web as something they can actively shape, remix and make better.

Conclusion
This year Mozilla have really branched out and pushed things to the edge. There is a lot of new language and concepts, which may confuse many new digital kids. Mozilla have a lot of new ideas and the next year is starting to look exciting especially for Popcorn. They all seemed really excited to be there and show their products which all looked very promising for the future of Digital education.