Get Involved in Gigabit Innovation with New Open Resources
The Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund team recently shared some of the outcomes and impacts its grantees had during the latest round of grant funding. Stories were shared about students and technologists leveraging gigabit speed networks to teach and learn in new ways, to build cool applications, and to pilot emerging technologies with end users. After sharing such exciting results, the team often receives emails asking how these interesting pilots and projects can be brought to life in communities beyond our five Mozilla Gigabit cities of Austin, Chattanooga, Eugene, Kansas City, and Lafayette. Eager to help these projects spread and have even greater impact, we’re excited to share two brand new sets of resources that you can use — no matter what city you’re in — to start learning about and collaborating with others to leverage high-speed networks for learning.
An Open Workshop Model for Learning about Gigabit
The first is an evergreen version of the Gigabit 101 workshop materials that the Mozilla Gigabit team has been creating and piloting across the country. Piloted in Detroit, Phoenix, Kansas City, and Charlotte over the past year, the workshop aims to increase participation in technology innovation, enabling more diverse participants to feel comfortable with and eventually to create with gigabit technologies.
We know from years of working with grantees and other community members that, while many people are aware that they have high-speed internet access in their community, they may not know what this technology enables. The Gig 101 workshop demystifies terminology, highlights ways gigabit networks are currently being utilized, and provides a framework for participants to innovate using their own projects and purposes. The materials include handouts, activity guides, slidedecks and videos to help facilitate a robust discussion about gigabit connectivity. At the end of the workshop, our goal is that participants feel more comfortable talking about technology and are beginning to dream about ways to leverage high-speed networks to solve real community challenges.
New Resources to Bring Funded Projects to Your Community
The second set of resources are a collection of 33 deliverables from the 44 funded Mozilla Gigabit projects. The deliverables are listed with the accompanying project in the Gigabit Portfolio and include curriculum, GitHub repositories, how-to videos, articles, blog posts, and presentation decks. All grantees of the Fund are asked to consider making part of their efforts open to others who want to learn more about their project or collaborate on further development of the technologies. Several grantees will be adding additional materials in the coming months, so stay tuned.
