MozillianistIntroducing “Mozilla Webmaker:” helping the world make the web
Cross-posted from the Mozilla blog. Today, we’re proud to launch “Mozilla Webmaker,” a new program to help people everywhere make, learn and play using the open building blocks of the web. The goal: help millions of people move from using the web to making the web. With new tools to use, projects to create, and events to join, we want to help the world increase their understanding of the web and take greater control of their online lives. And we’d like you to join us. This video requires a...
Planet Drumbea...Citing Versions
We got mail yesterday from a workshop participant saying, “My question is how does one show in a research paper that the underlying data and the software is version controlled?” Cameron Neylon’s answer, slightly edited, was: My approach in an idea world would be to have all of my data (or links to it) under version control along with the code. When the version to be used for the publication is clear I would give it a tag (I’m a Git user but there is similarly functionality in all version...
Organizing instructor events: hackjam and meetup
I’ve now had two great instructor-based events: the Toronto hackjam, and the Boston meetup. In my ongoing attempt to make myself as obsolete as possible, I’ve put together two documents for folks who are interested in running similar events in their area. How to Run a Teacher Hackjam (40-100 ppl) visiting a number of stations to hack/learn something/be inspired. How to Run an Instructor Meetup (12-30 ppl) meeting each other, learn from each other, and start building a sense of community. I...
A New Spin on Freedom of Speech
This post was written by NYC high school senior Sharon Mizrahi, and also appeared on the Hive Learning Network column on Huffington Post Teen. “Don’t put others down.” “Keep your heart open to surprises!” “Speak up – don’t keep things … Continue reading →
Being More Systematic About Publicity
Several people have suggested that we need to be more systematic about publicizing workshops and other events: blogging and tweeting reaches people who already know about us, but doesn’t reach those who don’t. If you know of mailing lists and/or news aggregators aimed at researchers who might be interested in what we do, please mail pointers to info@software-carpentry.org.
An Exercise With Matplotlib and Numpy
[Code and Data] For this tutorial, we’ll be plotting some weather data from a site call Weather Underground. You can download temperature readings and weather events for your local area in a comma-separated file. I’ve put weather data for Bloomington, IN in a file called weather.csv. Each row is one day, and there are columns for min/mean/max temperature, dew point, wind speed, etc. We’ll be plotting temperature and weather event data (e.g., rain, snow). 0. Installing matplotlib I covered...
Revised UI/UX for the app formerly known as Webpage Maker
Over the past couple of weeks we have been user testing the Webpage Maker tool as well as some of the learning projects associated directly with it. As a result of this, I see that there are several touchpoints within the interface as well as the overall user experience that need to be modified. I pulled together my thoughts and revised mockups (created by myself and Chris Appleton) and created this screencast. Since I last wrote about it, the project has been renamed "Thimble." You will see...
What’s Wrong With All This?
Titus Brown doesn’t like this web site. He’s OK with the content (I think), but he finds it awkward to use, and while I don’t feel as strongly as he does, I accept that we have outgrown WordPress. The question is, what should we use instead? We need a lot more than just a blog and some static web pages, but learning management systems like Moodle weren’t built with our ad hoc model in mind (they’re really teaching administration systems), and newer tools like P2PU feel like a step backward. I...
Space at Upcoming Events
Here’s how registration is going for upcoming events: University of British Columbia May 22-23 39/40 Johns Hopkins University June 18-19 7/20 Paris June 28-29 9/25 Boston July 9-10 23/40 University of Waterloo July 12-13 1/40 Halifax July 16-17 8/40 University of Toronto (Scarborough) July 19-20 14/40 If you’d like to join us, there’s still plenty of space—and if you have friends who could use some training in basic software skills, please point them our way.
The Three T's of Badge System Design
We’ve been working on the Mozilla Webmaker badge system, or at least initial alpha badges for the Summer Campaign and it’s tough! We knew that going in - if it were too easy, then we probably wouldn’t end up with very valuable or robust badges - but that didn’t make it easier. There are many things to consider and it’s very easy to get caught up and stuck in the core question of what badges? That’s a really loaded question because its not just about what to call the badges - which is a rabbit...
1st Amendment Hack Jam: A Raging Success!
Last Saturday at Hive NYC’s 1st Amendment Hack Jam, youth from throughout the five boroughs exercised their right to free speech and engaged in dialogue around self-expression, struggling against oppression and critiquing mainstream cultural messages. They came, they spoke freely, … Continue reading →
The Most Important Scientific Result Published in the Last Year
J.M. Wicherts, M. Bakker, and D. Molenaar: “Willingness to Share Research Data Is Related to the Strength of the Evidence and the Quality of Reporting of Statistical Results“. PLoS ONE, 6(11): e26828, 2011, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0026828. Background The widespread reluctance to share published research data is often hypothesized to be due to the authors’ fear that reanalysis may expose errors in their work or may produce conclusions that contradict their own. However, these hypotheses have...
A Learning Network for Berlin
There’s a long road ahead to bring Europe’s “start-up darling” Berlin up to par with learning & and the web. Digital literacy and simple computational competencies are often lacking; and there’s no indication yet that Berlin schools will step to fill the gap.* There’s an important “out of school” role to play with Berlin’s tech-savvy communities and hackerspaces, together with an existing network of media centers and educational activists. To get closer to a vision of what this could...
Feedback from Alberta
Our two-day workshop at the University of Alberta wound up a couple of hours ago. We had quite a few no-shows this time (which was annoying, given how many people were waitlisted), but those who did come seemed to get a lot out of it: Good Bad Room Mix of talking & doing Stickies Version control Hands on Link on online video Python Clear speaking Computer in lab (using linux) Automatic versioning Programming in windows in Cygwin Philosophy Discussion of productivity Good reading...
Halifax in July
We have just added another workshop to the summer’s list, this one at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 16-17. Please let friends and colleagues know—I look forward to meeting them.
What the heck is a Hive Pop-Up?
When we were tasked with “doing something cool for/with youth” at last fall’s Mozilla Festival in London, we had just come off the heels of World Maker Faire where the Hive NYC booth won a Editor’s Choice Blue Ribbon award. So we … Continue reading →
And One More: Johns Hopkins in June
We’re pleased to announce that we will be running a two-day boot camp at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on June 18-19, 2012. We only have space for 20 participants, so please register early.
Feedback from Newcastle upon Tyne
This week’s Newcastle bootcamp, organised by the Digital Institute at Newcastle University with the Software Sustainability Institute and SoundSoftware, was the first Software Carpentry boot camp run entirely locally in the UK. For the organisers it was a slightly nervous experience, hoping we could get the material to hold together in presentation without Greg’s experience at hand. Feedback from the learners was generally good on the material, the venue and the structure. The most common...
Fooling the Internet
A recent article in The Atlantic titled, “How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught By Reddit” describes how GMU’s Prof. T. Mills Kelly has had students fake history online, and how their most recent effort unraveled. There’s lots to think about here regarding what scientists should know about using the web, trusting it, and making it their own…
Learning, coding, systems of power, and Mozilla
Starting this summer, we’re aiming to help create a group of webmakers. Building on Mozilla’s Manifesto—to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web—we’re rationalizing a set of core skills, developing learning objectives and outcomes associated with those skills and offering opportunities to try them out. This effort aligns extremely well with the development and promotion of #5 in our mission list: “Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the...
Two Boot Camps in Ontario in July
We are pleased to announce that we will be running two boot camps in Ontario in July: one at the University of Waterloo on July 12-13, and another at the University of Toronto (Scarborough) on July 19-20. If you’d like to take part, please sign up, and please let friends and colleagues know about them as well.
Academic European Instructor Evil Robot
WHOA! I know, I know, I’ve totally been slacking on my “Blog Every Single Tuesday” rule. I’ve been busy. Really busy, and I haven’t had a chance to actually think about what I wanted to write. Thus, I’m doing a roundup post. Here’s some brief insight into what I’ve been thinking about and doing:Linking Past and Present I’ve been reading a book about German Reform Pedagogy (really brief, dirty definition): the thought movement that happened circa 1900 to 1930s that changed the face of education....
Solution to Indented List Problem
Last week’s homework was to convert a two-level bullet-point list like this: * A * B * 1 * 2 * C * 3 into an HTML list like this: <ul> <li>A</li> <li>B <ul> <li>1</li> <li>2</li> </ul> </li> <li>C <ul> <li>3</li> </ul> </li> </ul> so it would display like this: A B 1 2 C 3 My solution is shown in the video below; the code follows. Click...
Feedback from Michigan State
Our workshop at Michigan State University this week was three days long instead of two, and included two topics (Git and the IPython notebook) that we haven’t tried before. Feedback was generally positive, but we’ve got lots to work on for next time as well. Good Bad Using history Ending with general theory Pen and paper database design Version control was useful Good practice in software Concise and module programming in Python Console segment Smooth flow between Bash and Python Challenging...
Run My Code
RunMyCode is a web site and service intended to support reproducible research (initially in computational economics). Authors create companion web sites for papers that include the software they used; other people can then re-run their models, and (crucially) play with parameters, using cloud-based instances of those environments. They only support MATLAB, R, and SAS right now, but are hoping to add more tools soon. It’s a cool idea, and we’d welcome your impressions.
Free Speech in the Digital Age – the Hive NYC 1st Amendment Hack Jam
Join us this Saturday, May 12th from 1-5pm at the West Side YMCA for our first 1st Amendment Hack Jam! It’s a free event for tweens and teens to explore and exercise their constitutional rights. We’ve partnered with The American … Continue reading →
Fish and Bugs
The May/June 2012 issue of Washington Monthly has an article by Alison Fairbrother titled “A Fish Story“. Near the top, it says, “In 2009, a routine methodological upgrade at NOAA—and the subsequent discovery of a few lines of faulty computer code—forced the start of a profound shift in the ASMFC’s estimates of menhaden stocks.” A few pages later, we get more details: In 2009, the Menhaden Technical Committee updated its methodology for estimating the menhaden population—something it does every...
Boot Camp in Boston, July 9-10
We are pleased to announce that we will be running a boot camp on July 9 and 10 in Boston—please see its page for details (some of which we’re still working out). We have room for 40 participants, so please register early. (And if you can, register with friends: we are finding that people get a lot more out of this training if they’re learning with their labmates and other collaborators.)
Toronto Teacher Hackjam: photos and thanks
Last Saturday at the Mozilla Toronto offices we held a hackjam for classroom teachers with the idea of exploring the concept: how can I inject learning technology directly into my existing curriculum? We had a great turn-out of 40+ teachers from K-8 all the way through college. Some photos of the event here: Toronto Teacher Hackjam – May 05, 2012 Big thanks to the session instructors who did all the heavy lifting of motivating and inspiring our participants: Marco Tomada and Zaki...
Get excited and make things: beta test these new Mozilla Webmaker projects
The best way to learn something is by making something. So as part of Mozilla’s campaign to help the world learn coding and webmaking this summer, we created these new Mozilla Webmaker projects. Their mission: help anyone (especially youth) make something amazing on the web fast. Help test them out? Can you take a few minutes to beta test the projects below? Are they easy to use? Helpful for learning? Fun? Flammable? 1) Try them out now 2) Let us know what you think 3) Get more involved What’s...
Erin and I talking about web literacies @ JISC
I’m a little behind in posting this recording, but here’s a video of Erin and I talking about web literacies at JISC: Thanks to Doug Belshaw for inviting us, and super thanks to Erin for doing all the talking while my 6 am coffee kicked in.
The Architecture of Open Source Applications: Volume 2
We are very pleased to announce that The Architecture of Open Source Applications: Volume 2 is now available from Lulu. A PDF version will go on sale in the next few days, and e-book will become available as soon as we can produce it. Many thanks to everyone who contributed, and to the indefatigable Amy Brown for pulling it all together. As always, all royalties will go directly to Amnesty International, so if you buy a copy, you’ll be helping to make the world a better place.
Work at OpenNews: We're Hiring a Community Manager
As the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews program reaches its 2012 stride, it’s time to grow the team to help achieve the scale we’re looking for. So we’re hiring a Community Manager. The entire job listing is here on the Mozilla Jobvite page, but I wanted to give a little background on the person we’re looking for that doesn’t break down as easily into bullet points. At its core, the OpenNews program is about community: specifically around growing and strengthening the community of people making code...
An Exercise With Functions and Plotting
[Code and Data] Let’s say you have a text file called workout.csv that contains information about your workouts for the month of March: # date, kind of workout, distance (miles), time (min) "2012, Mar-01", run, 2, 25 "2012, Mar-03", bike, 10, 55 "2012, Mar-06", bike, 5, 20 "2012, Mar-09", run, 3, 42 "2012, Mar-10", skateboarding, 2, 10 # Broke my leg "2012, Mar-11", Wii, 0, 60 "2012, Mar-12", Wii, 0, 60 "2012, Mar-13", Wii, 0, 60 "2012, Mar-14", Wii, 0, 60 It’s a common-separated value...
UCL Bootcamp: Version Control Wrap-Up
For the boot camp at UCL, we tried using Mercurial (with EasyMercurial) instead of Subversion in the version control segment. You can see the plan for the segment on this EasyMercurial project page. Briefly, we opened with a few plain slides about the purpose of version control, followed by a hands-on example in three parts (working by yourself, working by yourself with an online remote repository, and working with others). We started at the beginning and got as far as “hg bisect”, but did not...
May Hive NYC Community Call Recap
As with our monthly meet-ups, we’re recapping what you might have missed on our monthly community call. A reminder: they’re held on the first Tuesday of every month at 2pm ET and details can be found on this etherpad. We … Continue reading →