Enjoy some of the wonderful creations from Saturday’s Mother-Daughter Hack Day with Girls Learning Code, held at Toronto’s Mozilla office and run by the amazing Ladies Learning Code mentor group.
Feeling inspired?
You can still make your Mom proud by learning some code! Make her a custom ecard today. Here’s how:
https://webmaker.org/en-US/projects/make-mom-proud
Yesterday saw Mozilla’s Toronto office hopping with girls, moms, aunts, neices, grandmothers, and mother-figures all learning the basics of code supported by the incredible mentors at Ladies Learning Code.
Girls Learning Code is less about “code” and more about changing the world – through teamwork, creativity, and, of course, technology.
Activities included making a family tree come to life with digital scrapbooking, using HTML and CSS to create a showcase for pictures and family videos using Tumblr, a lesson in photo editing using Pixlr, and learning how to create a family crest.
Those in the Toronto area can sign up now for the Father-Daughter Hack Day on June 15th.
Show Mom how much you care by coding her a web page to let her know how great she is!
Using our Thimble template, you can:
Imagine - she’ll *love* that you were spending time on the internet!
Try it now:
https://webmaker.org/en-US/projects/make-mom-proud/
About this project:
Take a look at the exciting new direction Webmaker.org will be taking in the next few months:
Our homepage has had a bit more UI design since last week (though the “makes” content is still mocked up) and we’ve begun to build out the frontend, so we thought it was time to highlight and share some of the changes coming to the Webmaker experience. Not only will the new layout still be…
“An open internet is our best chance to secure social and economic participation in society for all people”, according to Mitchell Baker. But it is precisely this web openness which is in danger and needs to be continually defended. Can and should businesses be able to monitor all of our online activity, store its data, and finally turn it into profit? What possibilities as web users do we have to defend ourselves? Whom does the data belong to, which we generate day after day? It is these type of questions which drive Mitchell Baker and which she addresses at re:publica13.
Enjoy!
This weekend, Mozilla’s Red Dinos made the scene on behalf of the Make Things Do Stuff campaign - a new initiative designed to mobilize the next generation of digital makers launching later this May.
Mozilla’s UK partners Freeformers, Technology Will Save Us, and Print Craft hosted activities such as 3D printing from Minecraft, TableTop Code Gaming, ‘Hack Your School’ with X-Ray Goggles and more.
About Make Things Do Stuff:
Make Things Do Stuff is a platform that gives young people the tools and support to make and share digital things. It’s been created by a group of like-minded organizations that want to inspire young people to be creators, not just consumers of digital technologies.
The platform will be launching at the end of May but in the meantime, take a look at the site so far and find out more.
New Funding for Maker Initiatives across the UK:
To encourage young people to get involved in digital making across the UK, seven projects are receiving a share of a £260,000 fund run by Nesta and Nominet Trust, in partnership with Mozilla, to encourage and stimulate learning through making.
The fund was set-up to help inspire a generation of digital makers – young people with the skills, confidence and motivation to make, not just consume digital technologies.
Read more about the selected projects that will receive funding.
The Mozilla Foundation has a vision of a web literate planet. We’ve built some tools to help with this and now we’re asking the question: What are the skills, competencies and literacies necessary to read, write and participate on the Web - now and in the future?
Since February, we’ve been meeting to discuss, both on our weekly calls and on the Mozilla Webmaker list, what to include and, more recently, how to present the whole thing.
We’ll be launching a Beta version in June and we’re looking for your feedback.
Let us know what you think by:
Mozilla’s community hub, the Hive Learning Network, creates new opportunities for teens to explore their interests, create their own spaces, experiences, and projects, and share what they make with their peers. Meet two amazing kids who participate in the program, and see what they took to the White House:
Zainab Oni is 16 years old and a High School junior in New York. She and her family moved from Lagos, Nigeria to the United States after her mother passed away, so that she and her siblings could find better educational opportunities. She joined the MOUSE Corps technology design program in 2010 and in 2012, she interned with the HIVE NYC as a Mozilla Webmaking Mentor and hopes to study design and technology at the Parsons New School for Design.
The project she developed and brought to the White House Science Fair:
The Dining Band is a wrist-mounted Arduino circuit that uses distance and temperature sensors to communicate the location of food on a plate, for diners who are blind and visually impaired. The Dining Band team (7 NYC public school students) spent a year learning and practicing the process of Human-Centered Design. Through interviews at Visions at Selis Manor (a center for the blind/visually impaired), they learned that people who are blind often struggle to eat discreetly in public without making a mess, or needing to use their fingers to find the food on the plate. With this challenge in mind, they brainstormed ideas and built several prototypes with a physical computing mentor. Their final prototype, the Dining Band, won top prize at the Emoti-Con! NYC Youth Digital Media and Technology Challenge and was selected to present at the New York Maker Faire in 2012.
Senqué A. Little-Poole (bottom row, second from right) is a sophomore in Pittsburgh. In addition to being a full-time high school student, he is an apprentice in the Campbell Laboratory for Infectious Eye Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Eye and Ear Institute. Senqué observes the varicella zoster virus at a molecular level to isolate the gene that inflicts pain on those who are infected. During the summer of 2012, he completed an 8-week internship at the Thomas Jefferson University College of Medicine in the Department of Cancer Biology where he learned advanced lab procedures and contributed to the production of fusion cells for Glioma Cancer research. As a result of his outstanding performance, Senqué has been invited to return this year. Senqué is also a Hive Youth Mentor with middle school students at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.
The project he developed and brought to the White House Science Fair:
Brain Quest: Cell Tracing with CFSE. The purpose of this investigation is to find out how to get anti-virus cells to successfully proliferate within the brain, which could cure diseases such as rabies, Alzheimer’s, sclerosis and several forms of cancer.
Maker Party 2013:
This summer, kids like Zainab and Senque will participate in Mozilla’s Maker Party 2013 - sharing what they’ve learned, and teaching other youth how to use the web to Make, Connect and Share.
Get involved now, sign up for updates and event info:
https://webmaker.org/en-US/party
Join people around the world to celebrate making—and the amazing things we can make and learn through the collaborative power of the web. Throw or attend events in schools, libraries, museums, hackerspaces, living rooms, anywhere. Last year we held more than 700 events in 80 countries—and this year’s party will be even bigger! #makerparty
This year’s Maker Party will be held from June 15th to September 15th.
Sign up now to receive updates:
https://webmaker.org/en-US/party
We’re extremely excited to be participating in today’s White House Science Fair—and even more excited to have President Obama help us kick off our new summer-long Maker Party: thousands of community-led events around the world to celebrate the amazing things we can make and learn thanks to the Web.
Webmaking at the White House Science Fair
Today, Mozilla joined President Obama at the annual White House Science Fair, celebrating the student winners of science, technology, engineering and math competitions across the United States.
Cathy Lewis Long from Sprout joins Zainab Oni, Senque Little-Poole, and Mark Surman at the White House Science Fair
A student member of Mozilla’s Hive Learning Network project—16-year old Zainab Oni from MOUSE in NYC—was honored for her contribution to a wrist-mounted Arduino circuit, which helps visually impaired diners find their food. 15-year-old Senqué A. Little-Poole, from the Sprout Fund‘s Hive Pittsburgh chapter, was also honored, for his research on how to use anti-virus cells to cure diseases.
Mozilla’s Executive Director Mark Surman also was there, to talk about our efforts to teach technology skills and, with the help of the White House, to kick off Mozilla’s big summer-long campaign: Maker Party 2013.
Find out more about Maker Party 2013:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/22/makerparty2013
Mozilla is attending the White House Science Fair today (Bill Nye and LeVar Burton are there too!) with a special announcement later in the day.
You can watch the livestream here at www.whitehouse.gov/live.
Another collection of amazing things on the web, as compiled by the Webmaker community in our weekly community call. Make the list - Make something amazing on the web now at Mozilla Webmaker.
~Webmaker Staff & Community
What’s the coolest thing you saw on the web this week? Let us know at the start of each weekly Mozilla Webmaker call .
Mozilla Ignite is an open innovation challenge hosted by Mozilla and the National Science Foundation as part of the US Ignite initiative. The goal: imagine and build apps that show the full potential of next-generation networks, in areas that matter — like healthcare, education, energy, manufacturing and public safety.
We’re currently judging the last round, we’ll soon be announcing the final winners.
Take a look at some of the amazing ideas submitted:
https://mozillaignite.org/ideas/list/
Despite its many challenges, the world is a beautiful place that can always leave you in awe and wonder.
Thanks to the web, there are endless videos out there that demonstrate just how magnificent life can be. With Popcorn Maker, you can weave together audio, videos, images, and text to share the vast wonder of the universe.
We combined video from the International Space Station with a song written and recorded by world famous astronaut, Commander Chris Hadfield. Hadfield loves to take pictures from space and share them on Twitter, and you’ll see some entertaining mashups from his fans at the end.
Make your own remix:
https://www.webmaker.org/en-US/projects/awe
About this project:
Have you ever played a game and wished that you could go in and change it around a bit? You know, like turn the boss’s head into a piece of broccoli, or make the hero a girl instead of a boy.
It’s actually not as crazy as you may think! Craftyy is a simple way to make your own games, or remix other games into your own creation.
Here’s how to dive in:
https://www.webmaker.org/en-US/projects/hackable-game-craftyy
About this project:
