Demystify the Web! Call for Proposals at MozFest!
Grab your ticket to our carnival of learning! All who enter will gain the most important skills of our age: the ability to read, write and participate in our digital world. Mozilla Learning invites teachers and learners of all ages to join our funhouse of web literacy. Embrace the unknown! Experience the thrills! Imagine and share the full potential of the web with everyone!
We’re looking for proposals that share fun, interactive ways to teach and learn the web in diverse, inclusive spaces; proposals designed for creative collisions; proposals that inspire people to engage in an openly networked world.
What is this space thing all about?
Spaces at MozFest are physical and thematic learning hubs based around a broad topic, like Web Literacy. For many people, teaching web literacy, or teaching anything at all, can be an intimidating or scary experience. We want to create a space at MozFest that encourages people to embrace and overcome their fears, to get excited by the thrill that is teaching and learning and to feel invited and welcome, despite any reservations they may have. Or as André Garzia put it, we want to see:
“people laughing in awe when they are around our activities”
We are drawing inspiration from haunted houses, roller coaster parks, and funhouses: places where people excitedly line up to confront their fears! The first experience inside our space is a hall-of-mirrors style interaction that invites participants to reflect on their “web presence” via Mozilla’s main issues of web literacy (#weblit), privacy and security (#privacy), digital inclusion (#web4all), walled gardens (#open), and hackability (#hackable). Once through the entryway, participants enter into an open learning space connected to a variety of session spaces:
Open Learning Space This is a space for creative collisions! It’s open for session leaders, participants, staff, community members, youth to connect with each other, demo a tool, or find some space to collaborate on impromptu ideas and projects. Did a session go really well and people don’t want to leave? Great, take it to the open learning circle! Did you make a friend in the last session and want to work on something? Great, sit down and get going.
Education/Classroom Space Young learners spend most of their time in a classroom. Chances are, you’ve spent a lot of time in one yourself. How does Web Literacy show up in a traditional classroom space? How might we guide classroom teachers to evolve, transform, or transcend their classroom to engage with Web Literacy? What is the classroom of the future?
Cultural/Environmental Space Museums, Zoos, Libraries, Community Centers, Video Game Arcades: these are unique spaces for learning that curate environment, culture or history to make it easily visible and accessible to learners. We imagine reproducing some of the feel and potential of these spaces to put cultural experience at the forefront of learning.
Maker Space The Maker Movement is having a transformative impact on education and we want to provide a maker space that is filled with spontaneous learning opportunities along with specific sessions that will help participants take new ideas and skills back to their own spaces. We are looking for sessions and materials that encourage learners and teachers to experiment, connect, share and solve real world problems.
Virtual Space There is so much happening at MozFest that it’s bursting at the seams with people and possibilities. Help us find ways we can connect the learning and community building happening at MozFest with the wider world.
Create Your Own Space Do our spaces feel constricting? Let us know what’s missing. In your proposal to Demystify the Web, clearly connect your learning experience to the space where they might happen and we’ll help shape that space to match. Or make your whole proposal about a learning space!
Who comes to MozFest?
Last year, MozFest was host to over 1,700 attendees from more than 50 countries. The festival is a time and place where passionate technologists, educators and creators unite to share their ideas and collaboratively create solutions for the Web’s most pressing issues.
When and where is MozFest?
The MozFest Call for Proposals is open now through August 1. MozFest 2016 happens October 28 thru 30 in Ravensbourne, London.
We can’t wait to see what you submit!
Demystify the Web! Space Wranglers - Kim, Robert, Su & Simeon