The Mozilla Campus Club Birmingham is the first of its kind in the UK! Each week we run activities that help us learn how to teach, build and protect the web. Through the Club, we aim to promote collaboration between like-minded people from across the University and local community.
Whether you’ve always wanted to learn how to build a webpage, are keen on getting involved in robotics projects, would like to learn a new programming language or maybe explore how our data is kept secure on the web, we can guarantee there will be something for you.
The Campus Club has only existed since February and in our first few weeks we have focused on Javascript, a programming language used by web browsers. As it allows procedural programming and object-oriented programming it’s very versatile and is used to control web pages and mobile applications. Thanks to NodeSchool we had access to well-structured lessons which everyone could run on their laptops. In each lesson more materials were introduced and a problem had to be solved with each before we could move on to the next lesson. There are always plenty of experienced demonstrators on hand to offer help and advice too.
We have also created a web-connected robot that can be controlled remotely, connecting an Arduino-based robot to a Raspberry Pi running a web server. This robot, and others like it, will be used in outreach projects with local schools and will be involved in activities such as navigating mazes, detecting potential obstructions and responding to its surroundings thanks to our programming.
We have plenty of events coming up including some based on virtual reality and exploring what can be done using WebVR to create virtual-reality-based websites. We’ll be experimenting with mobile applications and related technologies including google cardboard, and will start designing interactive online games.
The team is also organising an outreach event called “Inclusive Programming” which will work with local schools in partnership with WISE (Women in Science and Engineering Society). We hope to widen participation with young people and show them the opportunities available to them in technology.
We hope to see you at one of our events soon! Keep and eye on Twitter and Facebook for more information.