On November 20th, Mozilla Japan supported Women who code for Tokyo and  Geek Girls Carrots to held an event together at Mozilla Japan. It is because, Mozilla has been supporting activities for Women to lean digital skills (Web literacy).

The event was about 3D and VR using Unity which is very hot area on the Web as you know.  At the event, Kate McKinley, Mozilla Corporation, gave a presentation about Mozilla and her works in Japanese.

This event is a great case study for Mozilla Japan to working with different group especially focusing to Women. Since some of participants didn’t know that Mozilla is an NPO or making Firefox. We had a chance to promote Mozilla’s mission and activities during the event.

We will keep supporting community activity for women related to Web literacy education in Japan to extend Mozilla community.

At Mozilla Festival 2016, we have conducted a session, Connecting remotely to global communities. On Saturday 29th, we connected Tokyo, Jakarta, Manila, Taipei and London via video conference system and live streaming.

The purpose why we connected Asian city is that, this year’s focus at Mozfest is “Localization“. We wanted to bring more diversity to the festival. We also focusing that how can we share events with Mozilla community all over the world. Mozilla community are located all over the world, however activities are divided into countries. Our goal is share good event with nearby timezones.

Therefore, at the Mozfest this year, not only viewing keynote speeches in Asia, but also we shared activities in each cities to the London participants. For example, from Tokyo, CHIRIMEN project and Gecko embedded community people  gave presentations about their activities.

Because of time difference between Asia and London, not all of sessions were available as public viewing style. However, over 50 participants were joined from Asia in this style is something new to Mozfest.  Participants enjoyed their Sunday nights with friends, even they don’t speak English. Because, at each space, coordinator helps people in language and also they had local events(LT,games etc) too.

We will keep this movement to establish a global events sharing mechanism in Asia and hopefully evolve Mozfest remote participation in the future Mozfests!

Mozilla Japan has been been working on Web literacy education for students. In 2016, we will start our new “Youth Program“ for Mozilla Factory.

On March 26th and 27th, we held a pilot workshop designed for high school and university students to learn basic Web App development, which covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript and GitHub.

Participants learn and built a development environment on their PCs on 26th. They created GitHub accounts and downloaded a sample program from GitHub. Then, they edit the program, undo the changes and commit the change to GitHub. After leaning how to use GitHub, participants used a local Web server and Firefox browser to confirm the action of their Web Apps. At the end of the day, participants are able to deploy play music button, change speed button, or jump to specific position buttons on their Web apps.

On 27th, participants developed to add a function to the sample Web apps. For example, play list, thumbnail, slider bars to adjust audio, Special UI using kinect and a lot more function were developed by participants.

We will continue develop curriculum and workshops this year.
Presentation material(Japanese) and sample code

Comozilla Lab provided a workshop to control Sphero over JavaScript. The workshop is about to control a robot in a maze.

The maze was built on wood board and PET bottles. Participants programmed a robot by detecting a wall. When robot touches a wall, participants have choices, back, turn right/left. Combination of those choices, participants can make robot out from the maze.

You can find more pictures from their blog post.

On March 12th, Mozilla Japan provided a workshop about Online Privacy to EBA IT Fieldwork participants at Mozilla Factory Space in Tokyo.

EBA is an university consortium in Asia which develops human resources needed in the area. IT fieldwork in Tokyo is one of their program. During the fieldwork, participants designed and implemented a Web based service for online education. There are about 25 students from, Indonesia, Thai, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar and Japan participated the program.

Online privacy workshop is designed by Mozilla Japan for those IT fieldwork participants to know and discuss with others about user’s privacy and how to deal with personal information on their Web services.

The workshop started from a lecture about Mozilla’s activity(Encryption, tracking protection and more), history of privacy rights, concept of “Privacy by Design” and recent news about online privacy. Also, discussed about “What is privacy in your mother tongue?“ to develop the common image of online privacy among participants. In most countries in Asia do not have a own word for Privacy in English. From that point, participants realized that privacy itself is a new concept for our society.

After the lecture, participants discussed in a group about their own Web services. They changed their design of services not to track user activity without agreement,  get minimum information, and not to store personal information on the servers.

Mozilla Japan and community group in Japan will keep working on online privacy education this year.

On February 6, MDN Localisation Hands-on was held  in Mozilla Japan office, and　we had participated it. Community members, who actually localizing Mozilla’s MDN, supported and advised participants as tutors.　A lot of people who have interest in translation, activities of Mozilla participated the event.

During the event, we’ve formed a 2 groups, such as beginners and others. Each participant chooses documents from MDN and localised them.

At the end of the event,　participants who finished their work showed their contribution, problems in their works, interpretation of English sentences or comments.

I, as a beginner, also had a fun, because there are short documents good for beginners and supports from tutors.

I believe that other participants also had very fulfilled day because of experience was different from a normal day.

An award winning projection mapping Workshop teaching kit using Para Para animation is now listed on the Mozilla’s official activity list. Please take a look!

https://teach.mozilla.org/activities/parapara/

Firefox Student marketing team participated a community meeting about online privacy. This is translated version of their blog post.
Original article(JP)
http://fxstudent.tumblr.com/post/138128552252/on-line-privacy-meeting.html
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Hi, this is Kubota. On Sunday, January 24, we attended the  "community meeting on online privacy.” Though it was my first time meeting most of the people there, they were all very nice and we were able to get along very fast.

The agenda included a sharing of results from a “survey on privacy awareness,” and then brainstorming for ideas based on the results to think where and how we should put more effort to raise people’s privacy awareness.  

We first got a short presentation describing what online tracking is and how it affects our privacy. Then, after a brief discussion as a whole, we broke up into 4 groups to discuss the topic further. Each group came up with quite interesting ideas, so I want to share these with you today.  

The first group focused their discussions on “tracking.” All members of the group agreed on a consensus that though we don’t really wan’t people tracking us, it’s negotiable if it brings us benefits. However, they thought people aren’t aware of the potential dangers of tracking. They came to the conclusion that, to make people more aware, we should write out these potential dangers of tacking in “short and simple” descriptions. With this, we can convey the pros and cons of tracking, and prevent online incidents from happening.

The second group’s opinion: “most people already know that it will do harm if they don’t take privacy measures, so we need to provide these people who don’t know what exactly to do with the right information.” To do this, we can make and distribute a small booklet that carefully describes some measures that they can start taking on the spot. We can also use the Moz Bus to campaign privacy measures, along with the popularization of the Firefox OS.

Group 3: “we need to target elementary and middle school kids at the entrance of the Internet, and teach the basics of the web (including privacy) so that they have literacy once they start using it.” In the discussion, another interesting point came out: “focusing on children is a good idea, but often their parents don’t have a good understanding of online privacy neither.” Therefore, this group decided to target not only schoolchildren, but also their parents. To do this, they thought up of a workshop that we can hold at the Mozilla office where kids can come join with their parents. The workshop will take a jack-in-the-box-approach, where participants are asked to enter information into a prepared website. After this, they will get a first-hand experience on how much their personal information is at risk. We hope we can show features on their browsers so that these users can benefit from a Internet experience, including privacy,  that best fits their needs.

Group 4 also discussed about materials that we can make to raise privacy awareness. From the survey results, we saw that there was a large population of people who understood the risk of online privacy, but didn’t take any measures to prevent harm. Therefore this group came up with materials that we can use to let people know of actual measures that they can take. They targeted high school students, since these kids can then share the knowledge to their friends and family. The program will teach these students about the importance of privacy through workshops and online sites that cover topics such as location information and tracking. Since just providing them with information would have little adhesion, this group thought up of an app where students can learn about privacy “the hard way.”  The interactive app will use location information to let them experience its potential dangers. This group also had ideas of using media such as train ads and manga to raise awareness. I really hope some of these ideas will become reality.

With so many different ideas from all the groups, it was a very fun and worthwhile meeting. With this being a kick-off, I am so excited of the series of activities about to start!

Mozilla Factory team participated MozFest 2015 in London! This year, we brought, “Co-mozilla Lab: Create your own projection mapping show“, “MozOpenHard : CHIRIMEN“ and “Fabble : Web based documentation platform“.

Masashi Yamamoto of Co-Mozilla Lab brought a workshop using parapara animation, which is a web based animation tool. The workshop is not only making an animation but also making a 3D object from cray. Participants are able to combine their 3D objects into parapara animation. The teaching recipe is available on Fabble.

MozOpenHard Project participated in WoT garage where various Web of Things projects come together in one place. Last year the project held a workshop to discuss about hardware specification of their Open source hardware. This year the project came back with actual board with B2G  and WebAPIs for I2C and GPIO installed!

At the WoT garage, the project demonstrated 2 activity. One is a digital signage system using CHIRIMEN to explain the environment. The demo is developed by Satoru Takagi a member of the project. A projector displays picture of the open hardware on screen. By touching red dots or pressing a hardware switch, the explanation of hardware pop up and video starts. This interactive signage system is all written in HTML,CSS and JavaScript and running on Gecko. Therefore, all signage data can be made by a front end Web developer. The system also capable to get values from sensors or control actuators connected via I2C and GPIO.

Another demo by Daisuke Akatsuka is WoT educational kit using CHIRIMEN, as shown in the picture bellow. When developing a software to control hardware, it maybe difficult to find a problem in development. In this demo, developer can preview the result on screen when he or she is writing a code to control hardware. If preview screen is working OK, problem should be in hardware side, if preview screen is showing different result, problem is in the software.

Fabble team also exhibit their activity in MozFest. Fabble is a Web based documentation system to record various project such as digital fabrication, teaching plan, lab experience etc.  Ryo Oshima, the main developer, also held a workshop to use archived project and reuse it to create something new.
Fabble was also used to share Parapara animation’s teaching recipe.

MozOpenHard project participated World Maker Faire in New York last weekend.

At the faire, the project displayed a digital signage made with CHIRIMEN (See a demo video above). By using touch sensor behind the screen, the signage can change contents dynamically. Since this is a CHIRIMEN environment, developer used only HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to develop.

At the event, a lot of people visited our booth and had great discussion. Such as developing products with other MAKERS or use of CHIRIMEN in education at schools. Also we noticed that people participated in the event had an interest on Firefox OS and controlling devices from the Web. It means that the Web and makers are very close and there are possibility to collaborate!

From the experience, we will keep developing the CHIRIMEN environment to make the better WoT developing environment.

August 30th, Tokyo, “Co-Mozilla Lab” which is a project in Mozilla Factory, won the highest award at “6th kids workshop award“ in workshop collection 11″.  It is the biggest and oldest events focusing in workshop for kids since 2004. There were more than 100 workshops and over 100,000 people visited the event.

Members of Co-Mozilla Lab are all students. Not only university students but also there are high school, junior high and even elementary school students. Youngest member who customized Parapara animation’s User interface joined the project when he was 6th grade in elementary school. He joined a workshop last year as a participants and this year he is working as a member of the project. Participants and member are very close age and some of the participants join the project after the workshop.

Co-Mozilla lab provided a workshop called “Create your own handmade projection mapping“.  Participants made objects with paper cray then design and drew their animation with Parapara animation.  Parapara animation is a web based application developed by Mozilla Japan. Co-Mozilla Lab members( most of them are university students) used it for projection mapping and designed a teaching plan for workshop. Their activity is not only making object with Real(paper cray) but also Make Cyber(animation on computer) projection mapping. The mixing real and cyber is a good experience for young participants to learn that computer, smartphone, tablets are all tools to MAKE Something new!

Mozilla Japan blog is also covering this topic (in Japanese).
More phots in Co-mozilla Lab’s blog