Board/CathyDavidson

Background information on Cathy Davison, Emeritus member of Mozilla Foundation board

Cathy N. Davidson holds two distinguished chairs at Duke University and is the co-director of the Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge. She is an influential public intellectual and frequent speaker at universities, K-12 schools, nonprofits, technology companies, and corporations around the world. Cathy was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in June 2011 to the National Council of the Humanities. She was influential  in the creation of the NEH’s interdisciplinary Office of Digital Humanities. She writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review and many other publications, including a new series for Fast Company Changing Higher Ed to Change the World. Cathy released the book Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn late last year on Viking Press,

Cathy has been actively involved in the Mozilla community since 2010. She led the 'Storming the Academy' track at the first Mozilla Festival. Since then, she has actively contributed to the development of the Mozilla Webmaker and Mozilla Open Badges initiative. She is currently a candidate for a position on the Mozilla Foundation board of directors.

Cathy Davidson's Work With Mozilla

• Organized and hosted the 'Storming the Academy' with her students at the 2010 Mozilla Festival.
  • http://learningfreedomandtheweb.org/ebook/stormingtheacademy.html
  • http://hastac.org/tag/drumbeat-festival
  • http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/mozilla-manifesto-because-open-web-does-not-have-tenure
  • http://jadedid.com/drumbeat/
  • This was the only student run track at the first Mozilla Festival

• In 2011, collaborated on the development of Mozilla Open Badges project and the DML Badges Competition.
  • http://www.openbadges.org
  • http://hastac.org/events/live-interview-mark-surman-mozilla-open-badges-oct-20-2011
  • http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/03/01/macarthur-foundation-competition-winners-will-use-mozilla-software-to-supercharge-learning/

• • The DML Badges Competition resulted in $4M in funding going to projects that will build on top of Mozilla's badges technology, including partnerships with Gates Foundation, NASA, Dept of Veterans Affairs, Intel, and many others
  • All of the winners of the Competition will use the Mozilla Open Badges platform

• In 2012, actively advised Mozilla on the development of 'web literacy' skills map that will be used to offer badges.
  • Included running a fireside chat to get community feedback on what skills Mozilla should offer badges for.
  • http://openmatt.org/2012/01/30/teaching-the-fourth-r/
  • http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2012/02/16/recap-awesome-mozilla-webinar-4th-r-webmaking-vital-21st-c-skill
  • This skills map and associated badges will be a defining element of the Mozilla Webmaker initiative

• Public champion for Mozilla in her writing and speaking.
  • Now You See It includes and interview with Aza Raskin and several other references to Mozilla.
  • Also, Cathy's book tour featured Mozilla regularly (58 presentations)
  • Washington Post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-fourth-r-for-21st-century-literacy/2011/12/29/gIQAxx2BWP_blog.html
  • http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/how-hack-traditional-learning-institutions-open-web-ideas
  • http://dmlcentral.net/blog/cathy-davidson/why-we-need-4th-r-reading-writing-arithmetic-algorithms  
  • at W3C   http://ondemand.duke.edu/video/21981/the-future-of-learning-is-the-
  • http://www.stevehargadon.com/2012/03/live-tuesday-march-20th-with-cathy.html

Other Community Work by Cathy Davidson

• Cofounded in 2002 and principal director, nonprofit Humanities, Arts, Sciences, Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC or “haystack”).
  • 9000+ network members, primarily educators and students, dedicated to “learning the future together” and based on adapting principles of open web collaboration to higher education.
  • Includes the student-run peer-to-peer learning network HASTAC Scholars, begun in 2009, which has hosted 522 current and recent alumni on small scholarships from 120 supporting institutions and representing over 60 different disciplines and departments.

• Cathy regularly blogs about the open web within the context of HASTAC
  • http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/how-can-we-make-education-open-open-web
  • http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2012/01/18/because-we-can-sopapipa-protest-reminds-us-work-keep-web-open
  • http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/how-hack-traditional-learning-institutions-open-web-ideas