What if the same energy, ideals, organizational effectiveness, global army of volunteers and code wizardry that created the Firefox web browser could be applied to learning and education? Don't forget that the Mozilla Foundation is all about maintaining the openness and generativity of the Web. Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, told me recently "we need to do more than make a browser" for Mozilla to advance its larger goals. I asked him why Mozilla decided to turn its attention and formidable energies to education and learning. "We looked at each other," Surman said, "and asked ourselves who kinda looks like the people who made Firefox?" Which is what brought Mozilla's attention to the kinds of efforts represented here on DMLcentral. Open educational resources, intelligent use of media creation, gaming, social media in encouraging collaborative, peer-to-peer learning -- all fit closely with both open Web goals and open source production methods. Drumbeat was the name of the get-together organized by Mozilla in Barcelona last November, and it's the name of the online smartmob that's putting open-source principles and methods together with new kinds of learning media and methods.… more