This blog post contains contributions from Karen Louise Smith and Doug Belshaw, team members on the “Co-Designing Open Privacy Badges for Privacy Education with Canadian Youth” project.

The privacy badges project began workshops with teens in October 2014, our group of eager teen peer researchers worked hard to learn about privacy issues while crafting and testing out activities for future Open Badges. The forthcoming badges can be earned through Webmaker or in settings like public libraries and after-school program. In this blog post we share information about the typical workshop format for teens, as well as our knowledge mobilization workshop for educators, held in February 2015.

Teen workshops

What makes the privacy Badges project unique has been the structure of a typical workshop. We held 7 teen workshops between October and February.

Workshop dates and locations

• Sat. Oct. 4th, 2014 @ Mozilla  (11am – 5pm)
  
• Sat. Oct. 18th, 2014 @ U of T (11am – 5pm)
• Fri. Nov. 14th @ Mozilla (11am – 5pm) (PA Day for many Toronto schools)
  
• Sat. Nov. 29th @ U of T (11am – 5pm)
  
• Saturday Dec. 13th @ U of T (11am – 5pm)
• Sat. Jan. 10th @ Mozilla (11am – 5pm)
• Sat. Feb. 7th @ U of T (11am – 5pm)

The Privacy Badges workshops typically started at 11am on a Saturday, which is a late start compared to a typical school day.

Each session began with an icebreaker, recap of key learnings from the previous workshop, or sharing of any great makes from the assigned homework. For example, one week the teen peer researchers shared out privacy memes that they created, using the Webmaker meme remix template.

After the icebreaker or morning recap, the group ate lunch.

In the afternoon, a major component of the workshop was dedicated to a production centered learning or “making” activity using a variety of tools. Great examples of these making activities include storyboarding, mind mapping, and creating webpage remixes.

Anchoring the making activity, we often brought in experts and leaders in the privacy world to hear about the emerging trends and design project involving privacy.  One week, we were visited by experts from The Citizen Lab.  For another session, we were able to tour the Semaphore Lab at the University of Toronto. The teens not only got to learn about the challenges and opportunities of drone technology, the teen researchers were able to get hands on with 3D printers and create their own spinning glider. The teen peer researchers wrote responses on their making activities and production centered learning which were captured in a blog post.

Built into the work plan for the peer researchers was a series of assigned homework tasks to allow the teens to dive further into the issues of protecting privacy while exercising their skills of synthesizing research collected from various mediums – video clips, articles, newspapers and reports.

Educators’ workshop for knowledge mobilization

On February 21st, 2015 the privacy badges project held a knowledge mobilization workshop for educators. The idea, was to provide a space for the teen peer researchers to train librarians, after-school program educators, and other interested adults, seeking to learn about the privacy badges curriculum. There were 37 registrants for the workshop. Most attended in person, at the Mozilla office in Toronto, but some participants logged in via video conferencing software.  The main activities at the workshop were:

• Welcome, lunch and networking
• A privacy icebreaker to explore privacy interests
• A curriculum overview presentation (delivered by Karen Smith and the teen peer researchers)
• Teen-led learning stations to share the IP Address Tracer, Data Trail Timeline, and Privacy Coach badge concepts
  • The Anonymizer and Drones badges were also shared as learning activities at the Privacy Coach station

All participants who attended the educators’ workshop were provided with prototype-level versions of the privacy badges in button format.  If you’re interested in the educators’ workshop you can also view a video remix on the day’s activities.

The post Looking Back: Teen Workshops & the Educators’ Workshop appeared first on Hive Toronto.

When I joined Mozilla as the Director of Hive Toronto, the network was a small, dedicated community of youth-serving educators and organizations who had come together for 3 pop-ups to increase digital literacy learning opportunities for Toronto youth. Through this initial year, the seeds of a collaborative network had been planted. Toronto now had a community of educators and organizations eager to empower youth with the web literacy skills necessary to participate in the culture, mechanics, and citizenship.

Now, over 2 years later, with investment from the Ontario Trillium  Foundation, the .CA Community Investment Program, and  the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and the essential work done with Karen Smith, my Hive Toronto colleague, Hive has made extensive progress including:

• Growing to over 60 member organizations throughout Southern Ontario
• Hosting more than 20 Hive meetups and 20 Hive community calls
• Funding 13 projects with 19 Hive members, facilitated over 20 youth-facing events
• Representing Hive and Mozilla at conferences and speaking engagements including sxswEDU, the Digital Media and Learning Conference, The Association for  Media Literacy, and theOntario Library Association’s Super Conference
• Growing Hive communities in Waterloo and Vancouver

It’s  been amazing to lead an initiative that has impacted over 4000 youth and educators in just over two short years but it is now time for a new adventure. A few weeks ago I let Mozilla know that Monday, March 30th will be my last day.

I am excited to share that Hive Toronto will be left in the very capable hands of Karen Smith and Simona  Ramkisson who will be Interim Hive Managers.  

Karen Smith has been working on Hive Toronto and Mozilla’s digital literacy  initiatives for the past several years. Karen came to Mozilla as a post-doctoral research fellow after completing her PhD in the Faculty of  Information and Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of  Toronto. She has been invaluable to Hive Toronto’s development.

 Find Karen on Twitter: @smithisgeneric

Simona Ramkisson joined Mozilla last year as the Hive Learning Networks Project Manager. With over 7 years of non profit management, program design, and  acilitation experience, Simona has been instrumental in the spread of  the Hive model around the world and the development of Webmaker Clubs.

Find Simona on Twitter: @simonaramkisson

My Top 10 Hive Highlights

As I’ve been wrapping up at Mozilla, I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve accomplished together. There is so much to choose from but I’ve narrowed it down to 10 of my best and proudest memories of Hive Toronto moments:

Dispersing $150,000 through Hive’s Collaborative Community Projects in 2013 and 2014, funding cross-member projects to create new digital literacy learning opportunities through Hive Toronto

• Dispersing $150,000 through Hive’s Collaborative Community Projects in 2013 and 2014, funding cross-member projects to create new digital literacy learning opportunities through Hive Toronto
• Organizing Hive’s NASA Youth Space Challenge Pop-up at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) which was highlighted  by NASA as an exemplary youth event
• Wrangling the Youth Maker Party at the Mozilla Festival in London, UK with over 20 international partners hosting stations
  
• Our Ca.Appable project funded by .CA to create curriculum, training, and tools to help  educators teach app design and app-making
• Our Privacy Badges project, funded by OPC to codesign badges and corresponding privacy curriculum with youth
• A Webmaker workshop that had an unplanned all-female audience where youth unexpectedly used Webmaker to engage with current events that were  unfolding throughout the workshop
  
• The evolution of Mozilla Learning, including the growth of Hive Global and Webmaker Clubs
  
• Being invited to speak about Hive and Mozilla’s work the Youth and Digital Skills Symposium, a national conference in Ottawa that brought together leaders in policy, education, and industry
  
• Designing and facilitating digital literacy workshops for member organizations’ staff including the  Toronto Public Library and the City of Toronto
• And last but definitely not least, the phenomenal Hive Toronto community. Member organizations range in size, mission, and content but what they all have in common is their commitment to increasing their youth’s access to civic, educational, and personal opportunity through digital literacy.

Thank you

With the growth and momentum of Hive Toronto and the Hive global model combined with learning now at the focus of Mozilla’s multi-year  strategic plan, I know the team is positioned to impact Canadian youth  and educators better than ever before.

A sincere thank  you to every Hive Toronto member, Mozillian, partner, volunteer, funder, and colleague who has helped to impact youth through moving Hive  Toronto forward. And a special Major shout outs to the Hive NYC and Hive Chicago teams who helped pave the way for Hive Toronto.

It was an absolute honour to be a part of the Hive Toronto community and this mission. Keep up the amazing work!

Say hi to me on Twitter – I’m @KathrynMeisner. Stay in touch with Hive Toronto on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

The post Moving on from Hive Toronto appeared first on Hive Toronto.

Applications (or apps) that run on cell phones and mobile devices are interwoven with digital media literacy education in Canada. A wide array of organizations — non-profit organizations, school boards and corporations — are involved in designing apps that youth may encounter in their classrooms, or through after-school programs. Three major trends realated to apps: 1) Bring your own device, 2) Canadian content and 3) Hackathons demonstrate important considerations for educators seeking to integrate appmaking into their programs. These themes will be explored in this post.

1) Bring your own device

BYOD image by jennip98 on Flickr under CC BY 2.0

Bring your own device (BYOD) is a term that is often used to describe employees bringing their own computers and electronic devices to work. School board policies for BYOD demonstrate that this is a trend that is also relevant to schools. Many schools are making wide use of tablets in classrooms, which suggests that apps are a part of classroom education.

A 2014 report titled Digital learning: the ‘new normal, by People for Education shares results from a survey of Ontario elementary and high schools. The survey found that 58% of schools report students using their own devices at school, and that explicit policies are being developed in Peel.

Equity remains an important question in relation to BYOD practices in schools and other informal learning settings, where tablets or other devices may be brought by youth. Educators must find creative ways to ensure that students who lack their own devices can fully participate.

2) Canadian content

Various apps are being created by Canadian organizations, which encourage youth to become creators of content that can be shared on the web. Creating content for the web can link to a longer history of using communication media to share Canadian stories and experiences.

As one example, the National Film Board of Canada’s NFB StopMo Studio app enables users to create stop motion animation creations. Stop motion animation is an important component of the NFB’s history, as demonstrated through films like Neigbours, Norman McLaren’s  Oscar award winning short film. The NFB StopMo Studio app is a tool that can be used in classrooms or other educational projects for collaborative projects for creative expression.

3) Hackathons

Hackathon image by HackNY.org on Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0

Hackathons and events that facilitate a participatory approach to appmaking are an emerging model. Hive Toronto held an Appmaking Hackathon in the summer of 2014 for educators. A hackathon is a social coding event. A hackathon combines the ideas of problem solving through code, with a prolonged period of working together. App related hackathons, and similar events that involve learning, are emerging through partnerships including a range organizations. A playbook to assist organizations interested in the model for the EdAppHack event run at MaRS in the fall of 2014 is available to individuals interested in the possibility of hosting app related hackathons for and with youth.

Featured image by Image by Johan Larsson on Flickr under CC BY 2.0.

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At Hive Toronto, one of our major goals is to empower youth-serving educators to provide digital literacy learning opportunities to their youth. Through our Ca.Appable project with funding from the .CA Community Investment Program, we’re responding to the pressing need in Canada for youth and the educators who serve them to gain web literacy skills through app-creation and app design. This is a need that has been voiced repeatedly by the educator and youth communities we serve.

Based on the feedback from our hackathon with educators, we created teaching kits to make this skill development more accessible to educators and organizations with the end goal  of making app creation and app design more accessible to youth.

At Mozilla and Hive Toronto, our definition of educator is purposely flexible to recognize that learning can happen anywhere, anytime, not just in a school setting. These kits were designed to be useful for educators with a range of digital literacy experience, from complete beginners to advanced facilitators. Together, these activities teach core concepts from the Web Literacy Map, specifically “Composing for the Web“, “Remixing“, and “Design and Accessibility” from the “Building” skill strand.

We designed these teaching kits to be valuable for educators in a variety of contexts serving a variety of youth learners including after school programs, youth media literacy programs, libraries workshops and library drop in programs, as we all in elementary and high school settings. All of the teaching kits are free, open, and remixable for educators and the public to adapt to suite their learners. Below is the teaching kit and the main corresponding activities.  Go forth and create and remix!

Educators’ Teaching Kit

Lo-fi / paper-based activities

1. Activity: Align Your Curriculum With Appmaking
2. Activity: Mobile App Brainstorming
3. Activity: Storytime on the Go
4. Activity: Paper Prototyping a Mobile App
5. Activity: User Test and Iterate on Paper

Web-based activities

1. Activity: Create Your First Mobile Brick
2. Activity: Make Music with Appmaker
3. Activity: Make a 2-Page App
4. Activity: Create a Chef Adventure Blocks App
5. Activity: Make a Simple Counter App

We would like to thank the educators who participated in the hackathon and provided Mozilla with valuable feedback. The hackathon, as well as the creation of its resulting teaching kit, has been supported by funding from the .CA Community Investment Program. Through the Community Investment Program, .CA funds projects that demonstrate the capacity to improve the Internet for all Canadians. The .CA team manages Canada’s  country code top-level domain on behalf of all  Canadians. A  Member-driven organization, .CA represents the interests of Canada’s Internet community internationally.

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Success Beyond Limits (SBL), a Hive Toronto member organization, based their 2015 March break programming out of the Mozilla community space. The theme for the program was “Employment Readiness and Career Exploration.” Entrepreneurship, branding, post-secondary planning, self advocacy, and design thinking were explored through programming. Success Beyond Limits shares their event via a YouTube video (below) and report, which can be accessed via their blog.

The 2014 version of the program was also hosted at Mozilla. In a 2014 blog post, SBL explained that joining Hive Toronto “opened up issues about the location of the program (bringing it into the core of the city) and the types of skills and experiences that we needed to offer” to include digital skills.

The post Success Beyond Limits March Break 2015 appeared first on Hive Toronto.

This blog post is co-contributed by Karen Smith and Simona Ramkisson.

When we took on the new roles of interim co-managers for Hive Toronto, we knew we were in for an amazing roller coaster ride. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a few short weeks since the transition but we wanted to reach out now to share key issues and opportunities that will have an impact on the network over the next few months, including that along with Hive Toronto, Karen is completing her postdoctoral work as a fellow collaborating on digital literacy projects with Mozilla and Simona continues to serve as Project Manager for the Hive Global community.  While our other duties definitely have synergy with Hive Toronto’s mission, we are wearing multiple hats and appreciate your understanding and support! We are proud and excited to catalyze digital learning opportunities for youth in Toronto and beyond with you, and look forward to your feedback and questions as the work develops.

1) Networking and Professional Development

Hive Toronto is committed to monthly networking and professional development sessions for all our members in the form of community calls and meet ups, like the recent Grant Connect database session hosted by the Toronto Public Library on April 9. We’re also slated to visit MaRS in May to learn about entrepreneurial thinking in education and look forward to more great events. You can sign up to get involved in hosting Hive events via the form at the end of this post.

2) Maker Party

Mozilla’s 2015 Maker Party campaign will run from July 15-31st, 2015 and you’re invited! Hive Toronto members have been a huge part of previous campaign success. For example, Hive Toronto members appeared prominently in the international campaign video. Let’s make it happen again by sharing your events, workshops and camps on the global Maker Party calendar. Consider aligning your summer programs with Maker Party and host events to teach the web! This year, Maker Party is also designed to help organizations scale to year-round engagement with learners through a new initiative called Mozilla Web Clubs. A recent blog post by Amira Dhalla on “The Evolution of Year Long Party” offers this timeline: :

• May-June: Campaign planning. Ask communities and organizations to organize events and activities for Maker Party.
• July 15-31: Global celebration of Maker Party around the world.
• August: Continued engagement by participants with Hive, Maker parties and Mozilla Web Clubs
• September-November: Local clubs kick off campaigns to build momentum and encourage new clubs to launch, building a maker community
• On-going: Potential partner or location-specific events.

3) Mozilla Web Clubs  

Mozilla Web Clubs keep the spirit of Maker Party active all year! Hive Toronto members are invited to use Mozilla’s emerging and open web literacy curriculum in their work. Interested in creating or embedding Web Clubs into your programming?  Here are some opportunities to get involved — from launching a club to playtesting new curriculum modules or volunteering to be a Regional Coordinator (RC) who supports clubs in your area.

4) Innovation Funds

Working closely with the Mozilla Development Team, Hive Toronto is focused on network sustainability, especially the preservation and growth of our signature Innovation Fund. We use this pot of dollars to to catalyze partnerships by members through collaborative community projects (CCPs). Some recent examples of inspiring and innovative digital projects include Radiozilla, Fashion Futures, Maker Schools, and An Alien Has Landed–all of which can be viewed through our portfolio page. When an Innovation Fund is available and robust, we know that great digital learning projects emerge so  moving forward, our goal is to inspire this kind of work both deeper in Ontario and across Canada. While current Hive Toronto requests for CCP proposals are on hold for this cycle, we are working diligently to secure new funds in support of this cornerstone of our work together.

5) Increased Community Participation

We’re eager for community members to help us facilitate participation amongst the network.  Examples of ways in which you can get involved include:

• Post an opportunity: Do you need expert help, such as station hosts for a Pop-Up learning event for youth? Use the Minigroup or other forums to share opportunities and solicit participation from your peers.
• Blog: Hive Toronto would like to feature a community-written blog every month. You can write a post or alternatively, we can cross-post something from your organization.  In April, we’ve already featured a share out from Success Beyond Limit’s March Break program on “Employment Readiness and Career Exploration.”
• Special Interest Groups (SIGs): Do you  share interests with other network members? Organize a mini-meetup with 2 or more people and report back to the network through a community call or blog post on your activities.  Public libraries, maker spaces, or youth-led programs may find this kind of experience useful.

We’ll be fielding any questions that come out of this post on our next community call for Hive Toronto members, scheduled for Tuesday April 28th, 1-2pm.  If you’d like to get involved in Hive in one of these ways, you can also fill out a simple web form.  We look forward to speaking soon!

The post Looking forward with Hive Toronto appeared first on Hive Toronto.

Entrepreneurial Thinking challenges teachers to look at things differently.

This blog post is contributed by Ryan Burwell from MaRS, a Hive Toronto member organization.  A teacher by training and entrepreneur by disposition, Ryan built his career by identifying and pursuing opportunities for innovation in education. In addition to leading the MaRS Entrepreneurial Thinking project, he facilitates the MaRS Future Leaders entrepreneurship camp for youth aged 13-18 and works as the education lead for the empathy and design-focused start-up Twenty One Toys.

“What can you use this shoe for?”

It seemed an odd question with which to begin this meet-up. The group of 15 educators from the HIVE learning community gathered at MaRS Discovery District had been promised an overview of the MaRS Entrepreneurial Thinking project, and could be forgiven for their uncertainty as to what this had to do with the ratty looking sneaker staring back at them. However, it didn’t take long for their sense of adventure to trump any initial confusion:

“It’s a fly-swatter!” “I could bail my boat with it!” “It would make a great flowerpot!” “I could use the laces as a hair-tie!” “It could be used as part of a storytelling exercise!” “Let’s use it to frame a discussion about gender stereotypes!”

The shoe, as it turns out, could also be used to exercise our divergent thinking. This simple activity is a favourite of researchers and facilitators who explore how we can study, measure and refine creativity. By examining both the quantity and abstraction of the responses to this challenge, we gain insight into our ability to think fluidly and arrive at unexpected solutions. And as you might expect, the more times people engage in this activity, the more creative their answers become – a tantalizing finding that suggests that creativity is something that can be increased through practice.

At its core, the shoe activity is a powerful demonstration of what it means to think like an entrepreneur. Although it can be tempting to define entrepreneurs as those who invent something new, it is much more accurate (and useful) to understand them as people who leverage, combine and modify what already exists in creative new ways. Henry Ford did not invent the car, and assembly line techniques were used to build the Roman Colosseum nearly two millennia before they reshaped Detroit. Like all great entrepreneurs, it was Ford’s ability to rethink how existing technologies and processes could be used that led to his indelible impact on the world.

Cultivating this flexible, enterprising mindset in our students starts by practicing it ourselves. The Entrepreneurial Thinking project at MaRS helps educators to think divergently about how they use, combine and modify entrepreneurial lessons and activities. Just as a shoe can be used for much more than walking, the competencies of entrepreneurship can be used much more broadly than starting a business. By exploring the many different contexts and uses for entrepreneurship, the Entrepreneurial Thinking project aims to spread this vital skillset across subjects and grade levels, while simultaneously providing educators with an opportunity to practice and increase their creativity.

“What can you use this entrepreneurial technique for?”

This was the question that framed the remainder of the HIVE meet-up at MaRS. It was asked as the educators sampled resources from the MaRS Entrepreneurial Thinking Toolkit, including activities in personal branding, problem exploration, rapid prototyping, and pitching.

Since these educators came from a variety of organizations, it was essential that they saw these resources as tools that can be used to build educational experiences that fit the unique needs of their students. The brief examination of the toolkit hinted at some of the divergent applications that are possible with its materials. In the hands of an enterprising teacher personal branding can be used to help students with group work, problem exploration can be harnessed as a research tool, prototyping becomes a great way to teach communication skills, and pitching can be leveraged as a remarkable studying technique.

Of course, with only two hours together, we only scratched the surface of what is possible when we approach entrepreneurship education with a divergent, enterprising mindset. But this is as it should be. The depth of any rich educational initiative comes not from the materials themselves, but from what teachers and students build with them.

Interested in learning more? Contact Ryan at rburwell@marsdd.com

Shoe image by Brooke Fishwick under CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Sometimes a Shoe Isn’t Just a Shoe appeared first on Hive Toronto.

New Role:

My adventure with Hive Toronto began in the winter of 2012 as a volunteer at a HackJam event. I learned so much from the experience that I continued with Hive through a Mitacs Elevate post-doctoral fellowship, which commenced in the summer of 2013. Being a post-doctoral research fellow allowed me to build and research Hive Toronto simultaneously.

Using a participatory approach, I have learned much about the building of a learning community to support web literacy and the open web. It is with deep respect for the work and excitement for the next phase of my journey that I am writing to share news — as of June 30th I am transitioning out of Hive Toronto to join Brock University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film. While this new role requires me to step away from day-to-day management of Hive Toronto with Simona, I will remain involved as an active community member and Research Consultant.

Next Steps:

During my time with Mozilla, I have had the pleasure of contributing to a number of initiatives, including the authoring of a white paper on Why Mozilla Cares About Web Literacy and a case study for the Civic Media Reader.  Most recently, I led the privacy badges co-design project, to develop youth centered privacy learning activities. Doing this work together with the Hive Toronto community has been an incredible learning experience, and there is more work to be done together — as Mozilla promotes web literacy across Canada and globally through initiatives like Mozilla Clubs, I will continue my involvement as a resource person, a researcher and a community member. One of my continued roles with Hive Toronto, will be to act as one of its storytellers. In the upcoming months, I will be sharing drafts of book chapters and academic papers with the Hive Toronto community through our Minigroup.

Opportunity:

Mozilla plans to hire a part-time Community Manager to organize meetups, community calls, and run social media for Hive Toronto. Please stay tuned for the job posting if you are interested in this opportunity.

Thanks-yous:

I offer my sincere thanks to Hive Toronto’s community members, and the colleagues I have collaborated with to grow and build the network.  During my time as a post-doctoral fellow, Hive members have stepped forward to organize meetups, run professional development sessions, and to participate in collaborative community projects.

Hive Toronto is a dynamic network of educators, and I leave you in the capable hands of Simona Ramkisson. In recent months, Simona and I have collaborated to co-manage Hive Toronto and to gear up for Maker Party 2015.  Previously, I worked closely on Hive Toronto with Kathryn Meisner, who led the network to spark web literacy related collaborations across the GTA.

I am proud that contributions by Hive members and my colleagues are being recognized at the national level. Hive Toronto was recently recognized in MediaSmarts’ report on digital literacy in the Canadian educational landscape.  I have no doubt that Hive Toronto will continue with such innovative work under Simona’s leadership.

Please contact Simona Ramkisson (simona ***at*** mozillafoundation.org), who continues to manage the Hive Toronto network, with any inquiries.  You can continue to reach out to me personally at (karen.louise.smith ***at*** utoronto.ca) and I will update the network when I have a new institutional email address.

The post New role and next steps in my Hive Toronto journey appeared first on Hive Toronto.

This blog post is contributed by Nivedita Lane from Humber College, a Hive Toronto supporter.

Humber College students descended on the Hive Toronto headquarters on Tuesday Nov. 10 2015 for a “Mozilla Digital Tools and Career Exploration Fair”. Approximately 40 Humber students from the North and Lakeshore campuses were given the opportunity to come see the Mozilla office in Toronto, heard diverse career panel talk about their career and educational journeys, interact with Mozilla learning tools, X-Ray Goggles and Thimble, and network.

The career panel featured five different positions at Mozilla: Senior Developer, Engineering Community Manager, Senior Product Manager, Software Engineer and a Strategic Planning Consultant. Each panelist shared their own stories about their journeys through education and navigating their career pathways. Some key advice from panelists included “find what you love, and find a way to make a career of it…”don’t be afraid to change your mind and change gears” including specific advice on tools and resources to access online and in person as they make these decisions. Students walked away with career specific information on navigating their own career journeys post-graduation and enthused about the evening!

Participating Humber students came from all academic backgrounds, including: community and social services, business, liberal arts and sciences, engineering and applied technology. There was something there for everyone!

The event garnered some great feedback from students:

• “I’m re-thinking my career…and it’s exciting!” –T.A.
• “I didn’t know an organization like this existed, but it’s giving me a lot of ideas” – S.L.
• “Honestly, this was amazing” –A.N.
• “I didn’t think that my social services background could still lead to working at an organization like this” –S.W.

Thank you Hive Toronto and shout out to Simona and the Mozilla team for making this event happen!

The post Hive Toronto Hosts Humber College appeared first on Hive Toronto.

As we begin the new year, Hive Toronto wanted to take an opportunity to reflect on some of the highlights of 2015 as a network!

Over the last year, we have welcomed new community organizations into Hive Toronto as well as seen some of our members hire more staff, outgrow space and expand their programming. Our members launched new apps to connect more people to makers in their community, held a clock making hackathon to show our solidarity with those finding their passion, educated youth and parents on the impacts of cyber bullying and built new relationships with national programming partners.

We also were sad and excited to see long-time staff members Kathryn Meisner and Karen Louise Smith move on to new adventures in academia and career coaching but who continue to be connected to the network in a variety of facets. Hive Toronto compiled a few highlights of 2015 to celebrate our continuous network building and community impacts.

Humber College students meet Mozilla staff to discuss their unique and diverse roles in tech

Highlights of 2015:

1. Hive Toronto welcomed 21 new members bringing our total member to over 60 community organizations which include community health organizations, public libraries and museums, tech education and maker spaces to name a few.
2. Success Beyond Limits held its 2015 March Break program out of the Mozilla Toronto community space. Focused on the theme  “Employment Readiness and Career Exploration”, youth were exposed to topics such as branding discussions, career awareness as well as post-secondary preparedness.
3. Hive Toronto launched it’s privacy curriculum, “Co-designing Open Badges for Privacy Education“. The project was developed to enhance privacy education for teens in Canada. This project was conducted as a participatory design research project with teens, and it underwent ethical review at the University of Toronto.
4. Utilizing the work of the Privacy Education curriculum, Maker Party 2015 was focused on empowering young women from the Burlington Public Library and the YWCA on understanding their online presence and how to protect their privacy on the web.
5. Long time member, The Textile Museum of Canada launched its Making Makers website. An online tool for 21st-century makers to create community by contributing sites and sources of maker activities and resources across Canada!
6. Our members led meaningful professional development opportunities for members like the Entrepreneurial Thinking workshop for educators hosted by the Mars Discovery District.
7. Hive Toronto made its way to Ottawa to support the MediaSmarts Youth Summit with our privacy education curriculum.
8. STEAMLabs rallied the troops to hold a clock-making workshop to demonstrate the value and potential of maker education.
9. Ca.Appable Project, a project developed to meet the needs in Canada for youth and the educators who serve them to gain web literacy skills through app-creation and app design.
10. The Holiday Party! This was an opportunity for Hive Toronto to say thank you for your continued support. We asked attendees to list things that we wanted to see in 2016, please look out for a new blog to discuss these recommendations.

Updates from the Mozilla Foundation:

1. Mozilla Foundation lays out the 2020 strategy with a focus on expanding advocacy and engaging leaders across industries and professions.
2. Mozilla Leadership Network launches new platform that helps young people gain 21st century skills as they read, write and participate on the web

In the next few weeks, we will be posting a series of blogs about the Hive Toronto 2016 strategy which will highlight plans for a new membership cycle, increased engagement with our membership base located outside of the Toronto-core, resource updates as well as the new calendar for our community meetings and calls.

If you are interested in hosting a professional development meet-up, information session or contribute a blog about the work of your organization, please contact simona@mozillafoundation.org.

Thank you for making 2015 a memorable, truly inspiring year!

The post Thank You For a Great 2015! appeared first on Hive Toronto.

Become a Hive Toronto Member!

We are excited to announce that Hive Toronto is now accepting new members! At Hive Toronto, members network with each other, share best practices and pedagogies, learn about and play with new technologies, participate in events, and most importantly, collaborate to design and implement transformative learning opportunities for Toronto youth.

To learn more about our members, check out our MEMBERS page

Please find our application here

Why become a member?

To support youth learning, Hive supports member organizations by providing opportunities for educators to develop skills, share knowledge, and collaborate through the following mechanisms:

• Cultivating a community of practice: Community calls, meetups, online communication platform, consultation on program and curriculum development
• Facilitating professional development: Digital literacy trainings, cultivating and sharing training opportunities
• Acting as a conduit: To other organizations, to funders, to opportunities for youth, promotion
• Seeding collaborative partnerships: Informal partnerships, pooling funding from outside funders for cross-member to develop new digital learning opportunities for youth

By joining Hive Toronto, members commit to contributing to a collaborative community of practice. We often explain Hive as a potluck: members have different needs, or “appetites,” but like any good potluck, you take what you need while contributing what you can.

With this being our fourth membership application process, Hive Toronto strives to curate a network of diverse members that serve and are reflective of Toronto and the surrounding areas. Based on member feedback, this round of membership application was open to for-profit organizations with youth programs. The reasoning behind this was twofold: These orgs are offering quality programming to youth and/or educators and current Hive members were already collaborating with several of these for-profit organizations, indicating that they have skills and expertise that could benefit the network.

Requirements for application:

• Must be a registered not for profit in Canada
• Organizations applying to Hive Toronto must serve youth in some capacity
• Is able to commit to monthly, in-person meet-ups and conference calls that allow for members to share program updates, best practices, and learn about new opportunities
• Be able to host a professional development session in the first 6 months of membership with the support of the Hive Toronto team. A professional development session is an opportunity to showcase the work and programming of your organization to the rest of the membership
• Organizations must identify and name at least one individual who will be the point person for their engagement

Next Steps:

• Applications are open from April 1-April 29, 2016
• You will be notified if your application was successful by May 12, 2016
• If your application is successful, we ask that be available to attend our June community meet up on June 16, 2016 at the Mozilla space at 366 Adelaide Street, Toronto, ON

If you have any questions, please contact simona@mozillafoundation.org

We thank all those that apply.

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This post is submitted by Erum Hasan from the YWCA Girls Centre. Erum is an active member of the YWCA Girls Council, a long-time member of Hive Toronto.

Day 1:

Through funding we received from CIRA.ca, our Girls’ Centre offered summer and March Break programs to young girls to learn about technology and the many opportunities offered in this field. My peers and I wanted to use the skills and what we learned from volunteering in these digital literacy programs to create awareness on cyber safety. We were in touch with Simona Ramkisson from Hive Toronto, to work on a project together. We wanted to celebrate the International Women’s Day, which fell on March 8th. The Council collaborated with Hive Toronto to run a workshop that focused on cyber safety for the Girls Club at Sir Samuel Steele Elementary School.

In preparation for the event, our Girls’ Council gathered to discuss and review “Combating Cyber-violence for Women and Girls: Reading the Web”. This document gave us important information we used including statistics about cyber violence and helpful ways to create a safe space online.Each member of the Girls’ Council was given a specific part to deliver on the day of the presentation. We wanted feedback from our peers, so we practiced running the workshop a few times. The fun part of the rehearsal was how my peers pretended to be the younger audience to simulate the experience of delivering the actual presentation.   We were able to come up with different ways to manage their behaviours and keep them focused on task. We developed group guidelines at the beginning of the workshop; we gave our participants a chance to to suggest rules. Our rehearsal made us feel prepared, we used our teamwork skills to work together to ensure the presentation would be well delivered.

Simona Ramkisson from Hive Toronto came to the YWCA Girls Centre to provide support before the presentation. She also wanted to know what our level of knowledge was in the topic. We reviewed our lesson plan together and answered the questions we would ask our participants at our workshop. Our answers were written on sticky notes which allowed us to better organize our ideas to see any similarities and differences.

It was an amazing experience for us to have this opportunity to collaborate with another agency. Through this connection, our Council has participated in several activities and events at Mozilla. We always appreciate learning new things and doing more together.

Day 2:

In the morning, I learned that there were several school closures and TDSB buses were cancelled. Even though the road conditions were terrible, we were able to safely travel with our group to the school on time. Walking through the hallways and seeing the artwork for International Women’s Day made by the younger girls gave me hope. I thought to myself that this would be a great opportunity to share our message and purpose with the community. Looking at their artwork which was made up of smaller drawings for International Women’s Day showed me what a bright group of girls we would be working with.

As approximately 30 girls came and sat down in circle, I was very nervous and unsure of what to expect at first. However, as I started presenting, I gradually become calmer as I felt more connected hearing from the girls about their stories and experiences. I proceeded with more confidence. First, we introduced ourselves as members of YWCA Toronto’s Girls’ Council. I was thrilled that our Council received this opportunity to inform young girls about cyber safety and have discussions about this topic. From this experience, I was able to strengthen my leadership skills, work with a team, and learn how to collaborate. Our presentation came together and I saw how the pieces fit in the end. Our different parts were combined into a solid, well-thought, as well as cohesive piece presented by many. Often it’s challenging to work with so many people dividing up a workshop into several parts. I came to realization that we can work successfully together despite everyone’s various styles and be able to include the voices of every member in our project.

It was such a joy to hear the girls share information they learned, what surprised them, and what they appreciated about the workshop. For instance, the girls were able to recall that “73% of women are abused online” and another shared “women are 27% more likely to be abused online than men”. They recalled this information 3 hours after hearing it!

I hope we can bring this workshop to more schools across the GTA. I feel it would benefit young girls to have a space for these kinds of discussions, especially since they are growing up in a world where media has a vast influence.

My message for those who are supporting young people impacted by cyber violence is to be non-judgemental, compassionate, patient, and most importantly, listen with their heart. Our experience at Sir Samuel Steele has been inspirational for me and our Council to continue our work in advocating for more positive digital spaces and more ambitiously, a safer world for all.

The post YWCA Girl’s Club Creates Cyber Safety Awareness appeared first on Hive Toronto.

For the 3^rd year in a row, Success Beyond Limits (SBL) has hosted their March Break Employment Readiness and Career Exploration program out of the Mozilla community space. A week focused on exposure and opportunities related to a myriad of careers, which include workshops and workspace tours. This year’s workshops included the Art of Negotiation, Transition into Post-Secondary, Design Thinking and a Career Panel.

Check out the video below for a recap, along with their March Break 2016 Report for more details.

The post Success Beyond Limits March Break Camp 2016 appeared first on Hive Toronto.

Hive Toronto is excited to announce that we are a recipient of CIRA’s Community Investment Program. CIRA is actively building a stronger internet in Canada by providing funding to charities, not-for-profits and the academic community for projects that are on “on the ground” making the internet better for all Canadians. We will be launching the Ca.pture project which addresses the intellectual skills, personal values, and critical thinking required for good digital citizenship.

Working with educators and Mozilla staff, youth from Hive Toronto member organizations will develop open source digital skill-building activities designed to empower their peers to prevent and intervene in electronic bullying. Teens will leave the final workshop as peer educators, charged with sharing new understanding and tools for better digital citizenship with their peers. Built into the final phase of this collaborative project is professional development for educators to support youth promoting good digital citizenship through peer-to-peer anti-cyberbullying education. Aiming to improve the technical and social aspects of digital literacy among youth, Ca.pture leverages three powerful influencers: peer-to-peer education, youth-led tool design, and educator training.

If you have any questions on the CA.pture project, please contact simona@mozillafoundation.org

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At Mozilla, we work to ensure the Internet as a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Hive Toronto, a project of Mozilla is a peer learning community for innovation in education and to advance the promise of an open internet for learning in a networked world.

Over the last year, Hive Toronto as a network as continue its work to stabilize and grow the network throughout Toronto and parts of Southern Ontario. On June 23rd, we welcomed 5 new members to Hive Toronto. This year, the application process was opened to all community organizations and we encouraged our members to connect organizations that are part of their own professional networks. We had an overwhelming response from the community. With the help of our judging panel comprised of both Hive Toronto members and Mozilla staff, we had the task of determining the best fits for the network that would provide the maximum impact. In the end over a week of discussions, we narrowed our list down to 5 new member organizations.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome, The Remix Project, Techsdale, Bellemoun Community Network, Science Communication, Outreach and Public Engagement (SCOPE) and Visions of Science Network for Learning.

On June 23rd, we held a New Member Breakfast allowing attendees to connect, engage and discuss opportunities of collaboration. Wendy Szeto of the YWCA, Girls Centre provided an overview of her experiences and why she has been involved Hive Toronto for 3+ years. Karen Smith, a former staff member came back to share her own experiences of working and leading Hive projects and why she still is connected to the work of Hive Toronto.

As we end the first half of the year, we are excited that we get to begin the next 6 months with new voices to the network.

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One of the core beliefs of Hive Toronto is that collaboration is essential to creating an impact in our community. On September 22, we brought together 14 community organizations include representatives from Hive NYC and Hive Chicago to help lead our 2016 Hivestarter meet-up.

What is Hivestarter?

Utilized in 2014, Hivestarter is an opportunity to create real time partnerships and find support for upcoming member programming. It provides us the ability to surface our members full 2016-2017 programming calendar allowing for better promotion and outreach for events, funded projects and professional development opportunities.

We were incredibly fortunate to have Hana Sun, Portfolio Strategist from Hive NYC and Kenyatta Forbes, Community Manager from Hive Chicago attend to observe with the intention of bringing back the model to their Hive cities.

Overview of the Day:

Welcoming members, we started with outline new developments for Hive Toronto including a new membership structure that would allow for us to include more voices and diverse representation into the network. A blog post outlining the new structure which will debut in January 2017, will go live in December.

All attending members were asked to come prepared to discuss:

1. A current program or funded project in which your organizations is looking for feedback or debrief a past program or event
2. A specific need that could focus on technical or programmatic expertise, outreach or physical resources
3. A expertise that you or your organization could provide to the membership to help support or move programming forward

Members then posted on specific needs and requests and connected to those who could support. Feedback on a potential professional development opportunities including the development and growth of code clubs in the Greater Toronto Area, teaching opportunities, youth design opportunities and much more.

Hana Sun described “Hivestarter was a great opportunity for long-term and our newer members to meet, share each other’s work, and identify opportunities for collaboration…We would love to institute this event for Hive NYC while collaboration and peer knowledge sharing is integrated into all of the work that we do at in New York. We don’t have a dedicated event that is specifically organized around this role, so it was exciting and informative to see Hive Toronto’s model for supporting this type of connection”.

As follow up to the event, members who were unable to attend will be given an opportunity to add to the 3 prompt areas and add to the public calendar which will be shared shortly.

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The post Hivestarter 2016: Collaborative Community Meet Up appeared first on Hive Toronto.

This project is supported by a grant from CIRA’s Community Investment Program. CIRA’s Community Investment Program gives back by supporting initiatives and programs that help build a better online Canada.

Hive Toronto is excited to announce the launch of the Ca.pture project — a youth-driven, digital storytelling project that captures and maps cyber bullying experiences of GTA teens through multiple lenses: survivor, bully, witness, and intervenor. Youth from the YWCA Toronto and Youth Empowering Parents (YEP), in collaboration with Mozilla staff and educators, will develop open–source digital skill building activities designed to empower their peers to prevent, navigate, and intervene in electronic bullying.  

Numbers to remember

“1 in 10 teens have reported that they have experienced bullying”

“1 in 5 teens seriously consider suicide in the last 12 months”

from Kids Help Phone Canada, Teens Talk 2016, p. 4 and p.7  

“73% of women have been exposed to online violence”

“Women aged 18 – 24 are at a heightened risk for cyber-violence and uniquely likely to experience stalking and sexual harassment”  

From YWCA Canada, Project Shift: Creating a Safer Digital Word for Young Women

Why is good digital citizenship so critical?

Cyber bullying has severe costs, can escalate quickly and results in one of the most tragic incidents – teen suicide. The high profile deaths of Canadian teens, including Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, is catalyzing research, activism, and resource development across Canada to generate more respectful youth interactions online.

Unfortunately, cyber bullying is symptomatic of a larger problem: today’s youth live in cyberspace; it’s as if technology is their first language but traditional educational systems do not have the resources to support this rapidly moving medium. There is broken communication about what is cyber-bullying, how to create safe spaces on the web and what tools you can use to process and communicate. What is required for good digital citizenship is the development of intellectual skills, personal values and critical thinking in adolescence. It’s equally important to have educators understand and learn with the youth what it means to be a young person using the web and interacting online.

How will Ca.pture address these issues?

Building a Youth Council

Working with community partners  YWCA Toronto and YEP — a group of youth representing GTA teens that will form a Youth Council for the Ca.pture project.   

Incubation with Hive Toronto

The Ca.pture Youth Council will participate in four co-design sessions facilitated by Hive Toronto. Using open–source web tools such as Thimble, youth will design and create a workshop series and facilitation resource to share the stories of GTA teens and cyber bullying together.   

Youth to Educator learning

In the final phase of this collaborative project, educators from the community are invited to learn from the youth to gain a new understanding about technology, how to create dialogue about safe use of the web, and how to better serve youth when dealing with the complexities of cyber bullying.

How does Ca.pture impact the community?

We believe the best way to build better digital citizenship is by youth facilitated, peer-to-peer discussion and dialogue. With the Ca.pture project, – the youth council will leave equipped with new design skills, tools to create a safe space on the web, knowledge to share with other young people, and the power to inspire social change in cyber-bullying.

Most importantly, good digital citizenship is only achievable by creating and building a community that will lead, learn, and support each other online and offline. With Ca.pture, we hope to continue offering a space in and out of the web for young people and their allies to keep the dialogue open and provide the resources to prevent, navigate, and intervene with cyber-bullying.

Want to learn more?

Stay tuned as we progress with the Ca.pture project. We’ll be posting monthly updates, new developments and interesting discussions about good digital citizenship and cyber-bullying. Follow us on Facebook to stay connected and remember to check back on our blog for upcoming news, we’ll be announcing the 2016 Ca.pture Youth Council soon!   

The post Ca.pture: a youth-led digital storytelling project on cyberbullying launches appeared first on Hive Toronto.

This project is supported by a grant from CIRA’s Community Investment Program. CIRA’s Community Investment Program gives back by supporting initiatives and programs that help build a better online Canada.

This post is submitted by Erum Hasan from the YWCA Girls Centre. Erum is an active member of the YWCA Girls Council, a long-time member of Hive Toronto. The accompanying illustration is done by youth facilitator and artist Lena Xu.

My name is Erum Hasan. I am a grade 12 student attending Sir Wilfrid Laurier C.I. and volunteering at YWCA Toronto’s Girls’ Council. I also maintain the role of Ca.pture’s youth council blogger.

I am deeply interested in promoting social equity in the technology field. The youth council will be working with Hive Toronto, a network within the Mozilla Foundation, that makes technology accessible to young people like myself. I believe in the nonprofit work they do and have benefited from using their webmaker tools.

When I first heard about the Ca.pture project and the opportunity to be on the youth council, I was filled with joy and excitement! The Ca.pture project is youth-driven, digital storytelling project that addresses cyberbullying. Working  with educators and Mozilla staff, my peers from the YWCA Toronto, together with Youth Empowering Parents (YEP) will design resources to support teens and allies in preventing, navigating, and intervening in cyberbullying.

Our first co-design workshop was on Saturday, October 22nd 2016, which took place in Mozilla’s Toronto office. One thing that struck me was seeing other teenagers volunteering. Although we were a mixed group, everyone came from a different schools and had different aspirations but share the same passion for this type of work. For most of the session we talked about defining cyberbullying. What I enjoyed most was working together and listening to all our ideas that were contributed by YEP and the YWCA girls council. Towards the end I learned more about other members’ personal goals and found that we all shared something in common. Some of the goals included meeting new people, gaining knowledge and experience as well as learning coding and  getting more opportunities to code. One of the goals of the project is to create materials that can be used in high schools to guide educators in approaching cyber-bullying with more of a youth-focused perspective.

One of the exciting activities was the icebreaker. It was an engaging activity because we got to decorate our name tags while giving both youth and facilitators  a chance to connect and ask questions about other members of the council.

I am looking forward to working with YEP. Similar to my peers on this Council I would also like to receive more opportunities to code. Our council has used Mozilla’s Thimble program in the past and I am even more excited to see this used for digital storytelling.

The post First Day on the Mission appeared first on Hive Toronto.

Since the most recent U.S. election, our communities and schools have seen a sharp increase in open hostility towards people of color, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, women, and other traditionally oppressed and underserved populations.  These are the very people we aim to create equitable learning opportunities for through our collective work across Mozilla Hive Learning Networks in Chicago, New York City, Toronto.

We believe that every young person needs safe, open, and inclusive learning environments to thrive.  Regardless of our own political views, it is our responsibility as educators to create these environments so that the young people we serve have opportunities to engage in dialogue with their peers, develop their own values, think critically about the world they live in, and freely express their views and opinions.

Additionally, the influence and impact of social and digital media over past few weeks–and months–have shown us the essential roles that web literacy, digital media learning, and online privacy have in our education system and society as a whole.  As we move towards an increasingly networked world, it is essential that we all teach and learn to critically consider how our technology, data, and media are constructed; protect our communities from online surveillance; both produce and consume online content; safely connect, communicate, and organize on the internet; and ensure that all communities have equal access to media and technology. At Mozilla, advocating for a healthy, open web means fighting against the segmented narratives, filter bubbles, and mass surveillance that are growing threats to our increasingly connected, online lives.

Many of you have shared educator resources for facilitating difficult conversations and processing current events within your local Hive networks, and have already created space for this work in your programs and classrooms.  For the benefit of members across networks, we’ve compiled your resources, along with others we’ve come across, in the working list below.

As Hive Learning Network facilitators, we are committed to actively working to dismantle the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia that divide our communities.  Our work to promote digital equity and an open web is only possible when youth and educators feel that they can safely contribute to it.  We know this work is an ongoing process, and look forward to continuing to build in collaboration with all of you in our networks.  As an immediate step, we invite you all to share any related personal stories, tips, and resources you may have to add to our list.

In solidarity,

Ann Marie, Brenda, Chrystian, Hana,Kenyatta, Meghan, Sam & Simona
Mozilla Hive Learning Networks

Tips & thoughts on facilitating safe spaces (sourced from Hive members)

• Conversations in your programs and classrooms do not have to be conclusive.  Sometimes all that’s needed is a safe space to process.
• If youth are wondering what’s going on, take it as an opportunity to engage in conversation with them–open up the ‘stage’ for people to voice their fear and hopes.
• Validate young people’s individual experiences.  We all have different lived realities, and it is important that these realities are acknowledged and accepted in fostering safe dialogue.
• Show young people that there are sources of support, including your institution and program, for them.

Resources:

• 5 things to remember when discussing election results with students, The Lamp (Hive NYC)
• Race & Citizenship, Chicago History Museum (Hive Chicago)
• What do we tell the children?, Ali Michaels, The Huffington Post
• Supporting youth in the post-2016 election climate, Young Adult Library Services Association
• Our mission is more important than ever, Tom Boasberg, superintendent, Denver Public Schools
• Post-election letter from superintendent Tommy Chang, Boston Public Schools
• A letter from superintendent Thein regarding the election outcome, St. Paul Public Schools
• The Day After (facilitation tips and workshop links), Teaching Tolerance, Southern Poverty Law Center
• Election processing community circle (facilitation guide)
• A guide for administrators, counselors, and teachers: Responding to hate and bias at school (curriculum and facilitation guide), Tolerance.org
• #IAMNOTAFRAID curriculum for all educators and organizers
• Things to know about about web security before Trump’s inauguration: A harm reductionist guide, H, Medium
• Repairing the fabric of democracy (curriculum guide), Global Oneness Project via Public Broadcasting Station
• Trump and our election, Rethinking Schools
• Someone made a guide for what to do when you see Islamaphobia and it’s perfect, Maeril via AltNet
• Immigrant students write letters asking for ‘the opportunity to demonstrate that we are good people’, Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
• A get started guide to email encryption, Matt Mitchell, Mozilla Open Web fellow
• Speak up: Responding to everyday bigotry, The Southern Poverty Law Center
• A time for refusal, Teju Cole, The New York Times Magazine
• No place for self-pity, no room for fear, Toni Morrison, The Nation
• Radical Hope, Junot Diaz, The New Yorker
• Don’t feel hopeless, do something, Chatelaine
• Helping Students Deal with Trauma Related to Geopolitical Violence and Islamophobia, Toronto for All
• Yes, we still can, Sachi Ferris, Raising Race Conscious Children
• What designers should do now, Meg Miller, Fast Company Design
• Surveillance self-defense against against the Trump administration, Micah Lee, The Intercept
• Help hotline for those with immigration inquiries (US)
  • 1-855-HELP-MY-FAMILY; (1-855-435-7693)   English/Spanish/Korean/Polish

Local opportunities:

• Know your rights, ICIRR Resistance & Revision Campaign, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Chicago
• Glass Room, a performance art space hosted by Mozilla and Tactical Tech Collective that explores online privacy and surveillance, November 29-December 14, 201 Mulberry Street, NYC
• Building a Creative Campaign, Center for Arts Activism, free webinar series starting November 18th
• Toronto launches campaign to eliminate anti-black racism and islamaphobia in the city

The post Standing together to promote digital and education equity appeared first on Hive Toronto.

This post is submitted by Erum Hasan from the YWCA Girls Centre. Erum is a 17 year-old blogger, an active member of the YWCA Girls Council, a long-time member of Hive Toronto and part of the Ca.pture Youth Council. The accompanying illustration is done by youth facilitator and artist Lena Xu.

Our second co-design workshop took place on Saturday, November 5th. We started this session by reviewing our personal goals and those of the project to make sure that our expectations are aligned with the aims of the project. I learned that my personal goals were very similar to that of the other council members, one of them being that we all want to learn to code.

To prepare our group, we began looking at current popular communication apps; while categorizing them based on usability, security, community, and privacy. This was of great significance as we can incorporate the features that are appealing to us in our web-based platform. The tool we will be using for our digital storytelling is Mozilla’s Thimble program. In pairs we were able to “remix” an example, while learning how to manipulate the basic layout, color, font, image, etc. For example, we were able to edit the code in the navigation panel on the left, and then see these changes displayed on the right. This user-friendly aspect allowed us to edit the code in the project without the constant need to go back and forth to see what has changed in our actual work.  My work with Abeer, another Ca.pture Youth Council member, was really important to me because the trial and error process taught me patience and being hopeful, but in the end I learned that little changes in the massive program can be of great impact.

Our goal is to develop a template for other youth to add their own stories to the web-based platform we design. One of the things I am most excited about is to see others post their stories and how we can help this platform grow by collecting feedback. I am looking forward to sharing my technical knowledge with those who are unfamiliar with this web-based plaform. It is definitely a great addition and I can see myself using it for school work as well.

Finally, look out for more blogs from me, as I continue to record my experiences. Also, I would like to thank Lena for the wonderful illustrations of the sessions.

Here is the original Thimble template:

Abeer and I re-coded it and remixed to make this:

The post First Day to Code appeared first on Hive Toronto.