Foundation:Planning:Education2010: Difference between revisions

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 Mozilla Education is a Mozilla initiative (under Mozilla Foundation auspices) to help grow a new generation of Mozilla contributors by working with students and educators around the world; it is based on and grows out of efforts at Seneca College and elsewhere. Mozilla Education is part of a larger movement (exemplified by the "[http://teachingopensource.org/ teaching open source]" project) to promote the teaching of free software and open source technologies and development practices in academic settings. Mozilla Education also connects with an even larger movement to promote participatory, student-led learning based on open educational resources.
-During 2010 we want to focus on continuing and expanding activities that have shown past success and expanding them in a scalable way. The two major objectives are to
+This document briefly reviews the history of the Mozilla Education program, puts in the context of related efforts within Mozilla and elsewhere, and proposes a set of activities for 2010 and a vision for the future place of Mozilla Education with the Mozilla project.
+== History ==
+The Mozilla Education program grew out of activities by Prof. David Humphrey at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada, to teach Mozilla technologies and development practices in the classroom (as opposed to, for example, simply having students do Mozilla-related independent projects or work as Mozilla interns). This work was initially supported by in-kind donations of time by Mozilla employees in the Toronto office (e.g., to do classroom lectures and mentor students).
+Based on the success of the courses, the Mozilla Foundation then made a series of grants to Seneca College to provide Dave Humphrey release from regular teaching duties in order to spend more time developing the Mozilla courses and promoting their use in other academic institutions. In 2009 these activities were then formalized as the Mozilla Education initiative under Mozilla Foundation auspices (as described in the [[Foundation:Planning:Education|original Mozilla Education plan]]). Since then Mozilla-related courses and student independent projects have spread to about a hundred students at 13 schools with 10 professors (as described in the [[Education/ProgressReport2009|Mozilla Education 2009 progress report]]).
+== Context and assumptions ==
+To be written
+== 2010 plan ==
+During 2010 we want to focus on continuing and expanding activities that have shown past success and expanding them in a scalable way. The three major objectives are to
 * help attract and grow potential core Mozilla contributors through a combination of
 ** Seneca-style efforts to integrate teaching of Mozilla technologies and practices into academic curriculums
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 ** cross-school and (where appropriate) cross-disciplinary projects that leverage and build on Mozilla-related technologies (or technologies of interest to Mozilla)
 ** (optionally) one or more design challenges modeled on and supplementing related efforts by Mozilla Labs and others
+* serve as a bridge between educational institutions and Mozilla by providing
+** a dedicated point of contact for educators and students interested in working with Mozilla
+** a way for Mozilla people to learn about Mozilla-related education activities and (if desired) obtain assistance in reaching out to academia and working with educators and students
+** a Mozilla Education web presence (e.g., on www.mozilla.org) to be a central portal for links to Mozilla-related information of potential interest to students and educators
-A final objective is to provide a central portal for links to Mozilla-related information of potential interest to students and educators.
+=== Attracting and growing core Mozilla contributors ===
-== Attracting and growing core Mozilla contributors ==
 The following activities are proposed for 2010 in pursuit of the objective of growing full-time core Mozilla contributors (i.e., people who are good candidates for employment at the Mozilla Corporation or Mozilla Messaging):
 * Continue to promote the Seneca approach to schools that are most likely to be receptive to it, and in particular try to target schools interested in teaching topics like quality assurance through automated testing, [http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html continuous integration], and other software engineering practices needed in large-scale projects like Mozilla. The set of targeted educators and institutions includes those in the [[Education/Contacts|Mozilla Education contacts list]].
 * For research-focused institutions, reach out to and encourage professors to have students do Mozilla-related senior projects and independent study, either based on self-generated ideas or based on tasks previously identified as being [[Education/ComputerScience#Finding_a_good_student_project|good student projects]]. The overall approach will be modeled on that taken by Greg Wilson of the University of Toronto in his [http://ucosp.wordpress.com/ undergraduate capstone open source projects] (UCOSP) initiative.
-We will also use the Mozilla Education web site to promote student internship opportunities at the Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Messaging.
+We will also use the Mozilla Education web presence to promote student internship opportunities at the Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Messaging.
-== Attracting other Mozilla contributors ==
+=== Attracting other Mozilla contributors ===
 The following activities are proposed for 2010 in pursuit of the objective of
 engaging students to contribute outside the context of the core Mozilla codebase:
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 ** continuation of the Processing for the Web project
 ** a new project around tools for analyzing and/or rewriting code, leveraging existing work by Taras Glek and others (e.g., Dehydra and Pork) and done in loose cooperation with the GCC project or others
-** at least one other new project in an area yet to be determined.
+** at least one other new project in an area yet to be determined (e.g.,  student assistance with analyzing and visualizing Test Pilot data, as proposed by Jinghua Zhang)*
 * Start at least one new Mozilla Education design challenge project in 2010, if (and only if) there is a suitable problem (e.g., one that doesn’t overlap with planned Mozilla Labs challenges) and funding can be found.
-We will also use the Mozilla Education web site to cross-promote Mozilla Labs design challenges to the students involved in Mozilla Education activities, and will work with Labs and others to promote Mozilla Education projects to others in the Mozilla community.
+We will also use the Mozilla Education web presence to cross-promote Mozilla Labs design challenges to the students involved in Mozilla Education activities, and will work with Labs and others to promote Mozilla Education projects to others in the Mozilla community.
+=== Connecting Mozilla and academia ===
+The following activities are proposed for 2010 in pursuit of the objective of
+providing a bridge between educational institutions and Mozilla:
+* Formally designate Dave Humphrey as an official Mozilla representative to the academic community (e.g., in the context of the governance structure for [[Module_Owners_Activities_Modules|activities modules]]).
+* Establish a more formal Mozilla Education web presence (e.g., as a top-level page www.mozilla.org/education and sub-pages thereof) to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive set of links to Mozilla-related information of potential interest to students and educators.
+* Sponsor a series of informal events (e.g., modeled on the "brown bag" series) to inform the Mozilla community of noteworthy Mozilla-related activities in academia and provide students an opportunity to present their work.
 [[Category:Education]]