Mozilla @ Seneca: how it really works

I’ve written before about Dave Humphrey’s Mozilla course at Seneca. Why? Becuase it shows how a traditional college and an open source project can link up to create a killer immersive learning experience for students. It’s a model I’d love to see other colleges adopt.

Despite my past posts, I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job explaining the nuts and bolts of Mozilla @ Seneca. I asked Dave if I could share one of the great ‘how it all works’ email messages that he sends to other professors as a way to fix this. He said, ‘yes’. Here it is:

Didier Courtaud wrote:

> How may students per year are involved ?

It really depends. We typically have class sizes of ~40, but right now, for example, I have 12 doing the second Mozilla course. Over the past 3+ years we’ve had hundreds go through the courses.

> What is the level of these students ?

When I get them they are 3rd or 4th year undergrads. They have taken 3 courses on C/C++, Java, Web (client + server side), DB, etc. In other words, they are already as good at programming as one can be in 3 years of education, and are ready for some real work. As such I don’t teach them languages, but rather how to work within Mozilla, XPCOM, etc.

> What do they do ?

Many *different* things. One of my goals has been to try and match students with work that would really motivate them, since I push them very hard and expect a lot–never mind how hard Mozilla development is on its own.

I tell the students, “None of you is ready for this work yet, so don’t pick a project based on what you know, but rather on what you want to learn.” I help them see that learning, experimenting, not knowing how to do things, asking for help, relying on the community and each other, etc. — these are the normal way of working in a project like Mozilla.

I do not let students pick their own projects, but rather they must pick from a list of predetermined projects that I have found in consultation with the community. This way they are working on things that will have value, and therefore the community is more likely to help with things.

> … only contribute to the Mozilla code?

Yes. Some of my students are working directly on Firefox, Thunderbird, Fennec, the Mozilla build system, buildbot infrastructure, etc. I have students working in XUL/JS/CSS, others in C++ and Makefile, others in Python and JS, and everything else you can imagine.

> … the same + writing extensions?

Yes. I have students also writing extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Songbird. As you know, many projects won’t get accepted as changes to the core code, and have to be done as extensions. I teach the students how to work both ways, for example:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/Learning/ModifyBrowser

vs.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/Learning/ModifyBrowserExtension

These labs help them learn the different approaches. You can see my week-by-week approach here:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/DPS909_and_OSD600_Fall_2008_Weekly_Schedule

> … or do they apply the Mozilla technologies to other applications?

Yes. I have some (fewest in this category, since I like to work within the mainline community) working on Prism, XULRunner apps and packaging, etc.

> Are there evaluations of their work at the University level?

Yes, here is how I teach the first course:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/DPS909_Fall_2008

I expect them to release code just as all other Mozilla contributors. In the first course they must pick a project (e.g., bug) and work through 3 releases (0.1 – 0.3). We expect them to pick something large enough that they will not get finished, and have the next course for taking it from 0.4 to 1.0:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/DPS911

I have had good success with this approach. Here are some examples:

• Tony is rewriting the DOM code to allow script resizes/moves of the window to be controlled similar to how we do pop-ups. Here is his blog about the work: http://twlai1.blogspot.com/ and here is his bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=413792

• Sid is working to fix a whole bunch of bugs in the hgweb interface Mozilla uses to display check ins and repository history. See his blog here: http://blog.sidkalra.com/

• Anthony is writing a bittorrent extension for Songbird, wrapping an existing library (libtorrent) in XPCOM and adding UI to the application. See his blog here: http://ashughes.com/

There are lots more examples like this, but this gives you a sense.

> I will join you on IRC as soon as I can !

Great, I’m humph on irc. Let’s talk there when you have a chance.

My colleague, Chris Tyler, has written a paper describing our method that you can get here:

http://chris.tylers.info/ols2008/opensource-seneca-ols2008.pdf

I would also encourage you to join the growing community at http://teachingopensource.org, which is meant to supplement what we are doing at Mozilla Education and help us to connect with other similar efforts at other institutions/projects.

My hope in posting this is that both professors and Mozilla contributers will get a better sense of how the Seneca course works and why it is valuable.

Dave is putting a huge amount of his time these days into helping other colleges use this approach. If you’re interested in working with Mozilla to teach open source — or you are a Mozilla contributor who wants to mentor — you should get in touch with Dave.

Mozilla, messaging and innovation. Interview w/ Ascher.

The penny dropped for me at the end of David Ascher’s talk at FOSDEM last month: now is a great time to be digging into the messaging side of Mozilla’s mission.

The Internet is abuzz. Tweets. Status updates. 17 flavours of IM. A zillion RSS feeds. Good ol’ email. With each nifty new innovation, we see more messages — and more types of messages.

Mostly this is good and useful. It’s certainly fun. But it’s also a bit of a mess. As our messages cluster on a few big servers using their own formats, we have less and less control over our own information. Our data — and our attention — is fragmented.

David’s point at the end of his FOSDEM talk: this is a big opportunity for Mozilla. As our mission is to promote the open Internet. We’re one of the few players with a compelling reason to innovate and put users back in the driver’s seat. What this might look like is a pretty interesting conversation topic.

At the moment. David’s heads down getting Thunderbird 3 (which I love for its speedy IMAP) out the door. I stole him away from this for a couple of minutes to get a video snapshot of the big picture messaging space and the opportunities for Mozilla:

In case you’re video dis-inclined, or maybe offline on an airplane, here are the highlights from the interview:

• The Internet has been open since it started. It helps people innovate in a distributed way. Mozilla’s job is to make the Internet more open.
• The link between the open Internet and the messaging space is a mixed bag right now.
• Most of the exciting things happening on the Internet right now relate to messaging — Facebook, Twitter, MySpace.
• There are lots people innovating and creating new things that are interesting from a cultural point of view.
• At the same time, things are not as open as they could be.
• Messages are getting centralized with a few players, which in turn means people don’t have as much control over their own information as they used to.
• We need to figure out how people can get the benefits of all these innovations in messaging, which at the same time getting back more control over their data.
• An example: it would be great if people could search all of their messages easily without having to log into 50 different sites. but people need all of their data to do this.
• This is the kind of thing that Mozilla could make happen because of our central place on the Internet, and because giving people access to their own data fits with our mission.

The idea of pushing pushing Mozilla’s mission even further in the messaging space is pretty interesting to me. I wonder what other people think? What does Internet messaging look like from where you sit? What kinds of things could Mozilla do to make Internet messaging more open?

PS. Super thanks to William Quiviger for posting Mozilla FOSDEM photos, including the one used above.

Educators: sign up to learn and play w/ Mozilla

Mozilla, Creative Commons and P2P University will kick off an exciting experiment next week  — a short course for educators who want to learn how to use open tech, open licensing and open teaching approaches.

The idea is to give educators the basic content, tech and teaching tools they need to jump into the world of open education. Participants will get to learn and play with people like:

1. Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard and Dion Almaer — basic open web tech for teaching, plus emerging tech like open <video>.
2. Ahrash Bissell and Lila Bailey from Creative Commons — licensing 101 for open educational content.
3. Brigham Young’s Dave Wiley and Seneca’s Dave Humphrey — case studies of cutting edge participatory learning efforts.

The whole thing will be hosted by Philipp Schmidt from the University of the Western Cape / P2P University.

Half the course is webinars and chats with the folks above. The other half is focused on participant projects that apply the ideas discussed in the course. We’re hoping for projects like:

• A plan or mockup for improving education.mozilla.org, Mozilla’s emerging platform for educators.
• A spec for turning Firefox into the ‘educational platform for the future’ by pulling together addons for specific education use cases
• A design concept for an e-portfolio that follows students around the web, and can be used for recognition and assessment of their work on blogs, wikis, in discussion threads, etc.

The idea is similar to the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge: deepen learning and engage in an open innovation brainstorm by building a practical design element into the course.

Why is this an experiment? Two reasons …

1. We want to expand the focus of Mozilla Education beyond code and computer science, but don’t quite know what this should look like. This course is a first attempt to bring Mozilla Education themes to an audience beyond (student) developers.
2. We have a theory that online courses are a good way to share skills and get people involved in Mozilla — but it’s just a theory. This course plus the Labs Design Challenge are testing this theory.

This experiment offers up the chance to learn and play with some amazing people along the way. Even if it sputters a little as a course format, the content and interaction promise to be great.

If you’re an educator and this sounds interesting, there is still time to sign up. We’re almost full now, but are open to sneaking in a few more people who come with amazing participant project ideas.

What’s up w/ MoFo – March Update

Here is a brief Mozilla Foundation status update that I shared at this week’s board meeting.

During February, we narrowed in on areas where the current 3+ person Foundation team is making the most progress on. These are the areas where we currently think we can have the most impact in 2009. Here are some highlights:

• Mozilla Education gaining early traction, but education web site still needs significant push.
• Mozilla Research planning still moving slowly. Other programs on back burner for now.
• mozilla.org redesign started in earnest. Has potential to attract volunteer energy to MoFo and help us tell a better Mozilla story.

Next quarter we hope that we can add fundraising w/ focus on social marketing, the accessibility program and Mozilla Research to the list of things we are actively moving forward. We may also be able to add more ‘community support’ programs in Q3.

Program Pilots and Planning

• Most program effort going into Mozilla Education pilot, focused on giving people the skills to build and protect the open internet.
• Key topics include: open web and open source principles; licensing and open source DNA; open source work styles; Mozilla tech (XUL etc); open web tech (JS, CSS, etc).
• Interest in Seneca model growing at other colleges. New groups of students and professors contacting Dave Humphrey each week. Focus is mainly on Mozilla technologies and open source work methods.
• Plans in place for six week online course teaching educators how to use open licensing and open web technologies in the classroom. Will be offered jointly w/ Creative Commons. Launches in April.
• Next priority is to create a more effective education.mozilla.org web site. Needs to better communicate our strategy and provide resources useful to educators.
• Next major program push is write up Accessibility Program strategy and share w/ MoCo as a way to test this idea.
• The aim is to simultaneously move accessibility ahead, collaborating with MoCo and others.
• Social Movement experiments on hold w/ Zak’s departure. May be better fit with general community and community efforts, as that’s where we’re getting traction (see below).
• Mozilla Research planning efforts going slowly for now, waiting on Brendan and Mitchell.

Community and Communications

• Revitalizing mozilla.org is primary focus here. Goal is to redesign, refactor content and turn into better home for future programs.
• Potential to attract new volunteers to work on www.mozilla.org, which would strengthen MoFo team’s ability to work on community projects. This is a big priority.
• Current phase: community engagement, visual redesign and some refactoring of content.
• Next phase: improve navigation and findability; grow community of people working on the site; further improve content; and possibly replace tech underlying the site.
• Also, helping Mozilla community marketing people with activities like local MozCamp events and Community Take Action Day.
• Getting some traction here. This may be better approach to reaching new communities than what we were calling the ‘Social Movement program’.
• Will continue to collaborate w/ community marketing people over next two months. Will then assess whether there is way for us to increase impact and involvement here.
• Some planning under way on broader Community Support activities: eg. helping with community metrics and providing better support to the module owners process. Likely to move further once Gerv finishes university in June.