When I first joined the Hive, I had already heard a lot of good things about the Mozilla Festival, such as the birth of Hackasaurus last year in Barcelona.  Therefore, when Chris invited me to tag along with them to attend this year’s Mozilla Festival in London, I was ecstatic!

It was a great opportunity for me to meet more like-minded people who are also interested in educational technology.  I was especially happy that I had the chance to work closer with Hive NYC members including the Institute of Play, Radio Rookies and DreamYard, as well as Hive Chicago.  I was extremely impressed by the members’ energy as I saw them in action.  My previous encounters with the members have always been in a formal setting so it was not until this trip that I got to see the members work with kids directly.  Their positive energy quickly melted away the initial awkwardness of the first group of teenage boys as they hesitantly approached each table.

Sanda from WNYC Radio Rookies showing youth how to create radio podcasts.

More photos from London!

Within minutes the students were roaming around collecting interviews for Radio Rookies, molding furniture in their creative space with DreamYard, redesigning board games with Institute of Play and hacking away using Hackasaurus X-ray Goggles.

This was also my first time facilitating Hackasaurus workshops with youth.  I was really impressed by how fast kids picked up hacking strategies.  Once they learned the power of hacking, their imagination had no limits!  Here are just a few sample Hacks that the kids have done to the Google Search bar.  Impressive, eh? (p.s. I am also Canadian)

Besides helping Chris and Lainie with holding down the fort at the Hive London Pop-Up, I still got to participate in a couple of learning sessions as a festival participant.  I learned how to “Hack the DJ” with awesome DJ/musician Ian Forrester @cubicgarden, brainstormed some wacky P2PU design challenges, and co-created a Storify page with Sanda from Radio Rookies when we attended the Storify Learning Lab together.

This Storify page pretty much sums up my experience at Mozilla Festival.  I am sad this year’s festival has come to an end but I know this is just the beginning of more wonderful collaborations to come.

That's me and the Mozilla Firefox!

–Helen Lee @heli_tomato