November 2016 Community Newsletter: Youth Leadership

4 min readNov 4, 2016

This is an archived newsletter from November, 2016.

Featured Activity

Mozilla is partnering with The National Writing Project
and KQED for Letters to the Next President 2.0.

November 8th is the U.S. presidential election, the outcome of which will impact governments and economies across the globe. Encourage youth to add their voice to a topic important to them — public transportation, neighborhood crime, local and regional environmental policies are a few examples -by remixing a letter to the next president using HTML with Mozilla’s Thimble template. Regardless of age or the ability to vote, writing letters enhances critical thinking and leadership in a digital world. A step-by-step tutorial includes links to references for the presidential election in the U.S., but you can edit content for your own local and national elections.

Remix this Letter!

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Teach the Web Upcoming Events

Mozilla Learning Community Call — Wednesday, November 16 2:30pm PST/ 5:30pm EST/ 9:30pm UTC; Join Mozilla, Hive Chicago, Mozilla Hive NYC, and other special guests to discuss youth leadership and empowering young people to get involved in local, national and global community issues that matter to them.
Mozilla Curriculum Workshop — Thursday, November 17 7am PST/ 10am EST, 2pm UTC; Join us for a conversation and workshop about exemplary digital youth leadership practices, projects, and programming. Along with special guests, co-hosts Amira Dhalla and Chad Sansing will examine what makes successful programs work and prototype teaching and learning materials that encourage their development.

Announcements

Maker Party is here…and so are digital badges! Don’t let restrictive EU copyright laws regulate imagination or break the Internet. Stand up for modern copyright reform by creating and sharing content across the web while earning Maker Party badges. Individuals can earn their badges via the Open Badge Academy, or educators can sign up for a Makewaves classroom account to redefine copyright laws along with their students.
Did you know making a meme technically isn’t allowed in many parts of the European Union? Did you know in some parts of the EU, teachers aren’t legally allowed to screen films or share teaching materials in the classroom? Think that’s absurd? So do we. It’s time EU copyright laws caught up with our technology. Learn more and show your support here.
Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund grantee Art 120 shares their experience bringing a digital arts project to life from idea to execution. Read about how the Raspberry Python project is teaching students to create a network of computers, program them to track an object in a 3D environment, and provide a musical response depending on where that object is in the space.
Mozilla has launched a new site for its dynamic Women and Web Literacy initiative, designed to tackle the many barriers that women face when accessing and participating on the web and in the technology sector. Check out the new website here!
The Internet is most powerful when anyone can participate equally. Yet a yawning digital divide remains a clear reality for more than four billion people globally. “Equal rating” is a model where consumers choose digital content based on the quality, not the financial power and business partnerships of the provider. Mozilla’s Equal Rating Innovation Challenge boosts the movement to defend the openness and vibrancy of the web and to promote its social benefit for all by inviting you to help close the digital divide. Learn more about the challenge and example solutions here.
Make valuable educational resources available to your community. Join the campaign to localize the Offline Icebreakers module of our Web Literacy Curriculum! Click here for more information.

Community Spotlight

Andrew Brennen (far left) at Student Voice’s SXSWEDU panel earlier this year.

Because Mozilla believes that young people must be empowered to speak to, and shape, key social issues, the Mozilla Learning team proudly serves as connector for influential leaders who use web literacy and 21st Century skills to enhance opportunities for youth to be active agents of positive change.

This month’s community spotlight is on Andrew Brennen, who in his junior year of high school co-founded Student Voice, a for-students-by-students nonprofit organization to integrate student voices into the global education conversation. Andrew is now a sophomore in the Robertson Science Leaders Program at Chapel Hill in North Carolina majoring in Political Science, and he currently serves as the National Field Director for Student Voice. Andrew recently presented his work on a Mozilla Learning Community Call about youth activism and Student Voice is a fellow partner with Mozilla through the Letters to the Next President 2.0 campaign.

Learn more about Andrew and his work.

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