Today's Pick: Learning 2.0

Social media in Toronto

Toronto is quietly becoming a social media hub. But don’t take my word for it. Mark Surman,  Mozilla Foundation Executive Director, calls Toronto home and is working on some very cool new initiatives using homegrown Toronto technology.

Mozilla launched Mozilla Education in January, a project that creates new resources and learning models for the Mozilla community as a way of advancing broader ideals of openness and participation.

Mozilla Education builds on the work of Dave Humphrey, a computer science professor at Seneca College in Toronto.  Dave is involved in Seneca’s Centre for Development of Open Technology, encouraging students to learn, build and play with open source tools and technologies.  Mozilla Education offers the opportunity for such open source learning on a larger scale.  Dave explains:

“One of our first goals for Mozilla Education is to make it easier for students and educators to get connected to Mozilla project work, and for the Mozilla community to get project ideas into the hands of new contributors.  We want to be a conduit for communication between academics and the community.”

Mark provides more details on his blog, writing:

“We may be able to amplify and broaden the learning opportunities that flow from Mozilla by looking more systematically at the education side of things… The hope is that Mozilla Education can have this sort of broadening effect writ large: giving more people a chance to learn with and get involved in Mozilla. And not just technical students. Also students from disciplines like design, marketing and business.”

Intrigued?  Listen to Mark and Dave discuss their plans for Mozilla Education here.

Thanks to reader Greg Wilson for the heads up on Mozilla Education!

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Tags: open source, social media