Mozilla @ MindSay

Firefox 4 Kids April 7, 2006

Today I gave a presentation to 120 4th graders, as a participant in Career Day at Lowell Elementary School in Long Beach, California. I covered some general intarweb topics, places I had worked, and then talked about Mozilla, Firefox and open-source software.

You can download my slides here. Obviously, some topics were presented in a very simplified manner.

I did 3 presentations, to groups of 30-50 kids. I started the presentation by taking a survey (”Raise your hand if…”), then ran through my slides, and then took questions. Here are some observations from the day:

• All of the kids had used a computer (they have a computer lab at the school).
• Almost all of the kids said they had used the internet, and surfed the web.
• About half of the kids said they used email.
• About a quarter of the kids said that they used IM, and those kids were *really* excited about it.
• Though almost every kid said they surfed the web, when I asked if they knew what a “browser” was, only a couple kids knew. However, I know that they actually *were* surfing the web because of the questions that they asked. It seemed that the browser was a piece of infrastructure that blended into their general computer experience.
• They really didn’t understand the difference between an internet connection and internet browser. When I said Firefox was free, some kids thought that meant they could get online for free.
• Anywhere from 5-10 kids in each group had heard of Firefox.
• 1-2 kids in each group had heard of “open-source”.
• The kids knew of viruses and phishing. They didn’t understand what they were, but knew that they were bad, and from the internet.
• The kids knew about MySpace, and were scared of predators. For real. In each group, someone brought up MySpace, and *always* in the context of a news story they saw on TV about how some creepy guy was trying to hook up with teenage girls. Local news must be pushing this story.
• Computing in public education means Mac OS8 and Netscape Communicator. And we live in an *affluent* area. It was crazy to be talking to a group of kids who all knew about Netscape and *not* Firefox.
• Games! The boys all played games via websites, and wanted to tell me all about them. The only game brought up by a girl was WOW.
• They thought the Firefox logo was cool. They thought the Mozilla logo was cooler :) Especially the boys. Several started grilling me on the anatomical incorrectness of the dinosaur: “If it’s from the pleocistene family it’d have a bump on it’s head and the nostrils would be in a different place.” I had no response to that.
• The kids all knew what “non-profit” meant, and each group had at least one of these kids: “How does Mozilla make any money??!!”. Long discussions about the economics of search referrals and advertising ensued.
• The kids liked “free”, and they only grokked “freedom” when I asked a kid’s name, and said he could take the source code and make his own “JakobBrowser” if he wanted. They loved that.
• They didn’t really grok “extending the browser” until I mentioned themes.

Overall, the kids seemed conversationally literate about the internet, more so than I was expecting. There was a general feeling that the internet was cool, but to be feared. They were definitely interested in Firefox, and asked where they could download it. They loved the Firefox stickers I gave out. Tons of thanks to Marcia, who got me more stickers on short notice (I originally thought I was only presenting to my daughter’s class).