Women & Mozilla

[Project Update] An Accessible Web – Special Program

23 May 2013 by mermi | Category: Project Updates | No comment

For prior updates on my project, please see here and here

After a long time spent working with the students on web technologies and Mozilla projects, it’s time to organize a final event to celebrate the work accomplished.

This will take up a day during which each group will present the work they have been doing over the past few months. Additionally there is a competitive element between the presenting groups.

As well as developing their knowledge of webmaker project and technologies, they were able to create a webpage where they knew the whole structure of an HTML document.

Here are some examples of their work:

It should be noted that before working on the computer, we do a lot of work on paper. This allows for better and quicker uptake of things. Once that is done, we spend time on examples. The start of each class was spent on reviewing the previous classes.The less able students perhaps had some additional difficulties when they had to memorise things. The use of simple examples does not in anyway detract from their hard work.

The final session will be on May 30th 2013. It’s a friendly competition for people who were on the course. The topic is Mother’s Day (similar to to the thimble project called “Happy Mom’s Day”)

I’ll use this model and change the css and content a bit. It’ll then be up to the students to fill the HTML content.

You’ll find the details of the day here, feel free to add any suggestions

WoMoz Meeting Notes (May 15th)

23 May 2013 by Delphine | Category: Meetings, Project Updates | No comment

Meeting Agenda and Notes can be found here: https://womoz.etherpad.mozilla.org/15-05-13

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday MAY 28TH AT 20:00 UTC, irc channel #womoz

Project Highlights:

  • Some WoMoz members to attend AdaCamp, in San Francisco! The conference takes place during two days, from 8-9th of June. As Mozilla women community members, we are very proud to be able to participate in this event. Thank you Reps program for helping us bring women from far away so they can participate.
  • We are now 6 WoMoz committee members. More update about this to come soon.
  • Welcome Elvia who will help us out with the website! :)
  • Major website redesign and update on the works
  • Upcoming WoMoz local events:

WoMoz Meeting Notes (April 30)

3 May 2013 by Delphine | Category: Project Updates | No comment

Meeting Agenda and Notes can be found here: https://womoz.etherpad.mozilla.org/30-04-13

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday MAY 15TH AT 16:00 UTC, irc channel #womoz

Project Highlights:

  • Our new logo creation is looking good! Good progress there. Mozilla Creative team is going to help out and give us some design options from which to choose from within the next few weeks
  • Swag will therefore be created and distributed for local WoMoz events, once the logo is done
  • WoMoz committee is now formed. We are still open for one more person, in order to have an uneven number in the committee (for the moment we are 4). In the meantime the committee will start getting organized and start performing its tasks. Some of the things the committee will initially focus on are:
    • Coordinate WoMoz effort around the world, in local communities
    • Driving ideas for increased participation of local WoMoz Reps
    • Work with Recruiting/Engagement teams to grow women’s presence at our events (that aren’t organized by WoMoz) eg: Hack Days
  • Want to join and help out in the WoMoz project? Choose an area here to participate!

WoMoz Meeting Notes (April 17th)

20 April 2013 by Delphine | Category: Project Updates | No comment

Last meeting Agenda and Notes can be found here: https://womoz.etherpad.mozilla.org/17-04-13

Project Highlights:

Rails Girls Warsaw – how women learn coding across the world

19 April 2013 by Delphine | Category: Events | 1 comment

This month Mozilla was happy to help sponsor Rails Girls workshop in Warsaw, Poland. Please read about this great event, written by one of its organizers, Aleksandra Puchta:

“Last weekend, I had the opportunity to participate as one of the organizers in an amazing event – the second edition of Rails Girls Warsaw, which was supported by Mozilla.
Rails Girls is a 2-day event where women of all ages, most of them with no coding experience, are provided with the tools needed to learn Ruby on Rails and to make the tech world more woman-friendly.

This was already the second time that Rails Girls Warsaw was held at Centrum Prasowe Foksal – a wonderful villa right in the centre of Warsaw. Altogether, there were 43 participants, 13 coaches, 10 speakers, and 5 organizers.

The aim of the workshops is to give women the opportunity to learn the basics of Ruby by creating their own application, to get inspired and last but not least, meet great people.
The learning part usually starts with tryruby.org, which serves as an introduction to coding and Ruby in general. After that, the participants start to code their own application. This time, this was a new app (prepared by our coaches and organizers) called ‘The suffragist’ that allows votes to be cast for different cities.

In addition to the coding exercises, lightning talks were presented by people already into IT and/or programming, with the intention of inspiring girls to develop further in this area.
There were a lot of very interesting talks. Just to mention a few – we heard a great talk by Magda Malinowska, who learned to code by herself about a year ago and is now working as a programmer. Staś Małolepszy from Mozilla told us a story about his cousins, aged 11 and 7, who made their own video game. And Ola Sitarska, after jokingly discouraging us from starting to code, admitted that it’s one of the greatest things you can learn.

The talks were a great opportunity not only to get inspired, but also to meet new people. And they weren’t the only such element. After the first day, we held a middle party in a club and there were a few breaks for getting to know each other during the workshops. There was even a break for some pilates training, which was a great way to relax our bodies and have even more fun.
This edition was slightly bigger than the first and we’ve changed the programme, but the energy was just the same as before. I really hope to have the chance to participate in a number of such events and also hope the initiative will turn into a long-term, continuous learning opportunity.”

Thanks Aleksandra for sharing this inspiring event with us. Continue on your great path of teaching more women how to code! :)
(all pictures by A. Radzińska)

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