Sharing Nicely

For the past two months participants in Mozilla’s Jetpack 4 Learning Design Challenge have worked on Jetpack prototypes to turn the open web into a rich social learning environment and explore new possibilities for learning online. Today 10 teams were selected to participate in a hands-on Design Camp. The Jetpack 4 Learning Design Challenge is sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The selected Jetpacks support a wide range of learning activities. They help users learn foreign languages, support the development of sophisticated web-skills or turn the web into a quiz engine. A list of finalists (and all Jetpack prototypes) can be found on the Mozilla Wiki:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/Projects/JetpackForLearning

The Design Camp in March will give the selected teams an opportunity to complete their prototypes with support from some of the world’s foremost Jetpack experts. The event is co-organized by Aspiration. An overall winner of the Jetpack 4 Learning Design Challenge will be selected during the camp and announced at the Mozilla SXSW event.(*)

The Jetpack 4 Learning Design Challenge uses an innovative combination of competition, training, and workshop to build skills in web development and drive innovation for learning on the open web. Online seminars provided participants with the necessary background on extension development and Jetpack technology. An active mailing list was used by participants to discuss and solve challenge they faced. All seminars and discussion are openly available for anyone to review and help them build their own Jetpacks.

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that sponsors the Mozilla project and devotes its resources to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet. We do this by supporting the community of Mozilla contributors and by assisting others who are building technologies that benefit users around the world. Through the Mozilla Education initiative we work with computer science, design and business schools around the world to create learning opportunities for a new generation of Mozilla community members and help to drive a new wave of participatory, student-led learning. By doing this we hope to move closer to Mozilla’s broader goal of making openness, participation and distributed decision-making more common experiences in Internet life. More information is available at education.mozilla.org.

The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. In 2006 MacArthur launched its digital media and learning initiative to explore how young people are changing as a result of digital media use and what the implications are for libraries, museums and schools. More information is available at www.macfound.org/education.

(*) The Design Challenge is not connected to or affiliated with SXSW in any way.

Derek is great at framing messages that sum up the problem (and often hint at the solution). His “imagine if …” statement became the slogan for the new Freedom To Innovate South Africa poster. FTISA has been a crucial organization in support of access to knowledge in South Africa. They played an important role advising the South African Bureau of Standards against giving in to corporate power in the OOXML ISO vote and they have been doing a tremendous job raising awareness of the registration of software patents (something the law does not support) in South Africa.

3 … 2 … 1 … and the Jetpacks are on their way. The Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge enters phase II. We were excited to receive 36 amazing submissions from teams around the world and accepted 26 into the next stage. Congratulations to our participants! Ideas that we liked ranged from annotating the Web with other students, building assessment into the browsing experience, or linking the browser to a backend learning management system.

The selected teams are eligible to participate in a set of online seminars covering Jetpack development and user interface design. They will also get support and mentorship from the Mozilla community to help them turn their ideas into Jetpack prototypes. At the end of phase II up to 10 participants will be invited to a hands-on Design Camp at SXSW Interactive 2010.

Have a look at our phase 2 projects:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/Projects/JetpackForLearning

The Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge invites software developers, designers, and educators to help turn the open Web into a rich learning environment. It is sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.