Tag: learning standard

Announcing the Web Literacy Standard (specification)

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Doug Belshaw

On-stage at the Mozilla Festival on Saturday, Brett Gaylor and Chris Lawrence announced a number of updates and additional features of webmaker.org.

One of these, I’m delighted to report, was the Web Literacy Standard specification – something I’ve been working on since the beginning of the year with Carla Casilli and an awesome community of stakeholders.

Here’s the short (not-quite-tweet-length) description:

The Web Literacy Standard: a map of the territory for the skills and competencies Mozilla and community think are important to get better at to more effectively read, write & participate on the Web.

So what can you do with it in practice?

Issue Open Badges that align with it (using the ‘alignment’ metadata field)
Tag stuff with headings from the competency grid
Write curricula influenced by it.

If you know other languages, please do help with the localisation work for this and other parts of Webmaker. Finally, please do join us every other Monday as we seek to improve this. Further details here.

PS I wrote up MozFest.

Mozilla needs your help with a final push for the Web Literacy Standard (beta)!

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Doug Belshaw

TL;DR: Mozilla is launching a new, open learning standard for Web Literacy. We need your help in finalising the skills involved and providing examples. You can jump in and help here: http://bit.ly/weblitstd-skills

I’ve been a bit quieter on this blog recently. There’s two reasons for that. The first is that I started a new, additional blog at http://literaci.es.

But there’s another reason: we’re reasonably close to a beta release for Mozilla’s new, open learning standard for Web Literacy.

By ‘we’ I mean the close to 50 people who have joined us at various points since February; they’ve helped Carla and me think through the many (and sometimes quite thorny) issues involved. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, community-focused organisation: we need contributions from poeple like those who have volunteered their time and effort so far!

We’re aiming to launching the beta on July 26th. There’s a number of things that need to happen before then that are internal – things like graphic design, press releases and the like. But you can help, too! Here’s how.

Help us define skills

We’ve already got a competency grid (that’s in need of some Design TLC). Right now, though, we’re working on the skills underpinning those competencies. We also need at least a couple of examples of those skills.

You can dive in using the Google Docs and styleguide available from the link below. Please make sure you add/comment rather than delete!

http://bit.ly/weblitstd-skills

We’ve got a weekly community call every Monday that you’re very welcome to join. Further details of that can be found here.

Image CC BY marc faladeau

First draft of Mozilla’s Web Literacy standard now available!

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Doug Belshaw

I’m excited to announce that, after some fabulous work by my colleagues and the community, the first draft of Mozilla’s Web Literacy standard is now available:

http://mzl.la/weblitstd

We’ll be launching a ‘beta’ version in June which will be flesh out the competency-level grid and descriptors that make up this tentative first release.

The best way of thinking about the grid is as the areas that we think it’s important to pay attention to when teaching others how to read, write and participate on the Web.

I’d like to thank those who have been involved in this (ongoing) process and I’m very much looking forward to hearing further feedback, which you can give in several ways:

In the comments below
Using this feedback form
On the weekly community calls

Please do feel share to share the URL at top of this post with your networks. It would be good to get as many eyes on this as possible. 🙂

Competency-level grid

Competency descriptors

EXPLORING
Navigating the Web

Navigation – using software tools to browse the Web
Web Mechanics – understanding the Web ecosystem
Credibility – critically evaluating information found on the Web
Search – locating information, people and resources via the Web
Security – keeping systems, identities, and content safe

BUILDING
Creating for the Web

Composing for the Web – creating content (including text, images, audio and video) making use of Web technologies such as hyperlinks
Remixing – using existing (openly-licensed) content to create something new or modified
HTML – reading and writing HyperText Markup Language using the building blocks of the Web
CSS – reading, writing, testing and applying Cascading Style Sheets to change the visual appearance of HTML
Design & accessibility – creating universally effective communications through digital artifacts</li>
Coding/scripting – creating interactive experiences through digital artifacts for the Web
Infrastructure – understanding the Internet stack and how to host your own data

CONNECTING
Participating on the Web

Sharing & Collaborating – providing access to digital artifacts, understanding data ownership and jointly curating or creating content
Community participation – getting involved in Web communities, understanding and respecting online norms and practices
Privacy – working with intellectual property, examining and understanding the consequences of sharing data online
Open practices – championing, creating, and protecting the Web as a platform for democratic, universally accessible innovation