Challenge Leads: Janice Wait, Chad Sansing, [still recruiting….]
What if anyone, anywhere - regardless of coding experience - could build a virtual reality experience? What if educators - or students - could use this technology to build an explorable model of anything they wanted to teach? What if you could hold a virtual heart in your hand to see how it works? What if students could climb inside a molecule to study its properties or walk through an engine to diagnose its repair? All of this is possible with virtual reality, but how do you get started?
In this Web VR 101 project, we’ll brainstorm, research, draft, and test lesson plans that introduce Web VR ideas, vocabulary, and technical skills to beginner web and Web VR users.
For the Challenge, your job is to
- Introduce Web VR to new users and help them understand its basic ideas and vocabulary.
- Help new users find user-friendly resources and platforms for creating their own Web VR projects.
- Write lesson plans that help others teach this material.
- Curate those lesson plans into a Web VR 101 curriculum module to be featured on Mozilla’s teaching activities page.
The big idea is to introduce Web VR to new users so they understand how it works and can use it for their own teaching and learning needs.
People from all backgrounds can contribute to this project. You might enjoy participating if you:
- Love to sketch or make models.
- Love to explain abstract ideas in concrete ways.
- Love to teach.
- Love to learn visually or in a tactile way.
- Love to code.
- Love virtual reality.
There are lots of ways to contribute to this project that use different skills and talents. For example, you could:
- Invent different models and projects that would help people learn with Web VR.
- Try different Web VR platforms and think of how to teach them to others.
- Help create a repository of open and shareable resources that would be useful to others with little to no coding background looking to learn Web VR to use in their classroom.
- Write lesson plans or facilitation guides for using Web VR in the classroom or informal learning spaces.
- Sequence Web VR lessons with other coding lessons (i.e. HTML lessons on Thimble)
- Create online text or video explainers and tutorials about using Web VR.
- Code Web VR models.
All of our contributors and their work deserve care and thanks.
If you're unsure of what to contribute or how to contribute a piece of work, never hesitate to ask a project lead for help. We are here to support you and will be answering questions throughout the sprint.
Whether you’re brand new to Web VR or a veteran VR designer, we want to make sure you feel welcome contributing to this project.
Resources like these might help you get started.
- UTeach Outreach: Intro to Web VR Lessons
- AFrame & this Thimble tutorial
- A-Frame School (great resource if you’re a coder new to webVR)
- A-Frame in Code Pen
- Getting Started With A-Frame - Building the Olympic rings
- Minecraft in WebVR with HTML Using A-Frame
- A-Frame Registry of curated components
- NPR: How we built a VR project using web technologies
- VRDoodler
- CoSpaces
Of course. It's fine to begin the sprint with work already in-hand. You should feel free to set up for the sprint however you'd like. You might:
- Make some designs, puzzle, or story ideas for feedback during the sprint.
- Put together a team to begin work now and continue it after the sprint. You can do this online through your network or in our project's issue tracker. You can also recruit a team to work face-to-face in your community.
- Reserve space now to host a "site" or meet-up during the sprint (see more details about hosting a site below).
Just keep in mind that we're asking you to license the work openly so our everyone can use, adapt, and build upon your contributions (see more about licensing below). Learn more about how to contribute.
We’ve set up a repo for the projects you make in response to these challenges. You can check out what the greater Global Sprint community is up to on the 2017 Global Sprint landing page.
A repo is a repository - or collection of files - that belong together on GitHub. All the files contributed by everyone working on your project will eventually wind up in 1 repo so you can see each other's work, give feedback, and adapt it for yourself or your own communities.
If you are new to GitHub, it is totally fine to work on another platform, like in a Google Document, and to copy and paste your text into an issue or to share a link to your work through an issue. A project or challenge lead will put it into the master "repo" (repository), or collection of work, for you.
Please note that we’re asking all contributors to apply a Creative Commons-Attribution 4.0 license to whatever non-code contributions they make during the sprint. We’re asking contributors to license code contributions with the Mozilla Public License 2.0.
However you decide to work or whatever you make, there are lots of ways to contribute:
- Spreading word about the Global Sprint beforehand through your professional and interest-based networks.
- Organizing a team ahead of the sprint and helping it prepare.
- Hosting a site, or meet-up, during the sprint for people in your community so they can work together in person.
- Proposing helpful changes to other contributor's content with "pull requests," or requests to pull new content into older files to update them.
- Crafting new content for the project and contributing it through pull request, issue, or link.
- Sharing resources by filing an issue.
- Sharing feedback by filing an issue.
- GitHub vets, fork the repo and submit pull requests.
There is no wrong way to contribute, and project and challenge leads are here to answer your questions help you get your work into the repo. You should feel free and empowered to share your work before, during, and after the sprint on social media (like through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter), as well.
Thank you for your contributions to the challenges in our Mozilla Privacy Arcade project.
GitHub can be challenging for new users. If you experience difficulty with it, you are not alone. We want to help you overcome those challenges or find a way to contribute that works for you.
For this project in the Global Sprint, we can use a feature called the "Issue Tracker" in GitHub to communicate with one another. It's kind of like a shared message board combined with a to-do list. To address an issue to a specific person, you add their name to the issue the same way you would to a tweet, like this for example: @chadsansing would address your message to Chad, one of our project leads.
If the Issue Tracker is too difficult to use, contact a project lead. We will work with you and help you find a way to contribute no matter what.
Here are some steps you can take to get started on GitHub if you'd like to try it.
- First, create an account on GitHub.
- Then visit our repo.
- Next, click on the "Issues" tab near the top of the page.
- Finally, click on the green "New Issue" button to the left of the page. You can then title your issue and add content. Specificity helps.
Before you submit your issue, label it. You can choose one from the "Labels" dropdown menu to the right of your issue. Add the light-green #mozsprint label to each issue to file and then pick the label that goes with the challenge you're working on during the sprint. This helps people find the people and issues associated with the challenge to which they're contributing.
Here are some of our labels:
- vr-curriculum-sprint is gold.
- site-related is light purple.
- help-wanted is red.
- questions are blue.
After you apply all your labels, your issue should have a #mozsprint label, your challenge label, and possibly a site-related, help-wanted, or question label.
If you'd like to learn even more about GitHub, check out the GitHub for Collaboration section of Mozilla's Open Leadership Training Series.
If you organize a team for the Global Sprint or would like to run a "site" - like a meet-up at a community center or in a learning space or makerspace - visit this page to learn how to register your event.
Site leaders receive support from project and challenge leads to help people learn and work together face-to-face. They commit to being on-site from 9AM to 5 PM local time each day so they can:
- Welcome people who come to work in-person.
- Ensure that your site is a safe and friendly working environment for all.
- Help to promote the Global Sprint to your communities and encourage local participation.
- Serve as a point of contact for communicating (updates, progress) with the rest of the Sprint during the event.
- Help to collect data on activities on the Site (number of participants and contributions).
If you would like to host and register a site, let a project lead know how to help. We will make sure you feel well-prepared to host a site.
This year’s Global Sprint runs for 48 hours from June 1st, 2017, to June 2nd, 2017. Sprint hours are 9 AM to 5 PM in your local timezone. You can sprint for a few hours, for a day, or for both days. You can contribute to 1 project or several. There is no wrong way to participate in the sprint.
We will be curating and sharing your work throughout the sprint, so keep in touch and let us know how things are going at @MozLearn on Twitter using the hashtag #mozsprint.
You can also see "Featured Projects" on Mozilla's Network Pulse, our resource for sharing exciting events and resources with our community.
We’d love to keep up with you after the Global Sprint, as well, to follow the development of your work. We can also help you write a session proposal for this year’s MozFest.
Questions? File an issue and cc a project lead or email either project lead.