Joyce Perdue, Hixson High School’s curriculum coach, explains the Mozilla grant-winning project, Wireless Earth Watchdogs. It was a joint effort of science students at the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences and Hixson High School to build a real-time water quality monitoring network with sensors in North Chickamauga Creek behind Hixson High.Lindsey Frost helped give out $150,000 worth of grants last year in Chattanooga to people who came up with projects to take advantage of EPB’s super-fast gigabit-per-second Internet.
Among the grant winners were two University of Tennessee at Chattanooga computer science seniors who developed Viditor, a collaborative online video editor.
“Think Google Docs for video,” Frost said. “One of those students is now working for Amazon in Seattle.”
Frost will have another $150,000 to grant this year, since the National Science Foundation announced this week at the White House it would give a $3.2 million grant to help the Mozilla Foundation, makers of the Firefox Internet browser, expand the nonprofit’s “Hive” work in Chattanooga, Kansas City, and three yet-to-be-named cities.
Mozilla Hives are learning networks composed of educational, nonprofit, civic and cultural institutions. Frost works full-time for Mozilla as the “community catalyst” for Hive Chattanooga, and was at the White House for the announcement.