Mozilla Web Literacy

Web Literacy: the skills and competencies required to read, write and participate effectively on the web. Join us to help map them!

[webliteracy]

Web Literacy Map v1.1

Cross-posted from Doug Belshaw’s blog.

EXPLORING

Reading the Web

Navigation

Using software tools to browse the web

Accessing the web using the common features of a browser

Using hyperlinks to access a range of resources on the web

Reading, evaluating, and manipulating URLs

Recognizing the common visual cues in web services

Exploring browser add-ons and extensions to provide additional functionality

Web Mechanics

Understanding the web ecosystem and Internet stack

Using and understanding the differences between URLs, IP addresses and search terms

Identifying where data is in the network of devices that makes up the Internet

Exporting, moving, and backing up data from web services

Explaining the role algorithms play in creating and managing content on the web

Creating or modifying an algorithm to serve content from around the web

Search

Locating information, people and resources via the web

Developing questions to aid a search

Using and revising keywords to make web searches more efficient

Evaluating search results to determine if the information is relevant

Finding real-time or time-sensitive information using a range of search techniques

Discovering information and resources by asking people within social networks

Credibility

Critically evaluating information found on the web

Comparing and contrasting information from a number of sources

Making judgments based on technical and design characteristics

Discriminating between ‘original’ and derivative web content

Identifying and investigating the author or publisher of web resources

Evaluating how purpose and perspectives shape web resources

Security

Keeping systems, identities, and content safe

Recommending how to avoid online scams and 'phishing’

Managing and maintaining account security

Encrypting data and communications using software and add-ons

Changing the default behavior of websites, add-ons and extensions to make web browsing more secure

BUILDING

Writing the web

Composing for the web

Creating and curating content for the web

Inserting hyperlinks into a web page

Identifying and using HTML tags

Embedding multimedia content into a web page

Creating web resources in ways appropriate to the medium/genre

Setting up and controlling a space to publish on the Web

Remixing

Modifying existing web resources to create something new

Identifying remixable content

Combining multimedia resources to create something new on the web

Shifting context and meaning by creating derivative content

Citing and referencing original content

Designing for the web

Enhancing visual aesthetics and user experiences

Using CSS properties to change the style and layout of a Web page

Demonstrating the difference between inline, embedded and external CSS

Improving user experiences through feedback and iteration

Creating device-agnostic web resources

Coding / Scripting

Creating interactive experiences on the web

Reading and explaining the structure of code

Identifying and applying common coding patterns and concepts

Adding comments to code for clarification and attribution

Applying a script framework

Querying a web service using an API

Accessibility

Communicating in a universally-recognisable way

Using empathy and awareness to inform the design of web content that is accessible to all users

Designing for different cultures which may have different interpretations of design elements

Comparing and exploring how different interfaces impact diverse users

Improving the accessibility of a web page through the design of its color scheme, structure/hierarchy and markup

Comparing and contrasting how different interfaces impact diverse web users

CONNECTING

Participating on the web

Sharing

Providing access to web resources

Creating and using a system to distribute web resources to others

Contributing  and finding content for the benefit of others

Creating, curating, and circulating web resources to elicit peer feedback

Understanding the needs of audiences in order to make relevant contributions to a community

Identifying when it is safe to contribute content in a variety of situations on the web

Collaborating

Creating web resources with others

Choosing a Web tool to use for a particular contribution/ collaboration

Co-creating Web resources

Configuring notifications to keep up-to-date with community spaces and interactions

Working towards a shared goal using synchronous and asynchronous tools

Developing and communicating a set of shared expectations and outcomes

Community Participation

Getting involved in web communities and understanding their practices

Engaging in web communities at varying levels of activity

Respecting community norms when expressing opinions in web discussions

Making sense of different terminology used within online communities

Participating in both synchronous and asynchronous discussions

Privacy

Examining the consequences of sharing data online

Debating privacy as a value and right in a networked world

Explaining ways in which unsolicited third parties can track users across the web

Controlling (meta)data shared with online services

Identifying rights retained and removed through user agreements

Managing and shaping online identities

Open Practices

Helping to keep the web democratic and universally accessible

Distinguishing between open and closed licensing

Making web resources available under an open license

Contributing to an Open Source project

Advocating for an open web

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On this week community call we were making the final push to finish the skills under the competencies of version 1.5 of the Web Literacy Map. We started off with Ian sharing a Cory Doctorow talk, but then dove write into the work.

Doug was on personal time off but checked in throughout the day and helped to set up the etherpad (learning to take PTO like an American I guess).

We first reviewed the activity on Git as we shifted to asynchronous work to ensure Version 1.5 can ship by the end of Q1. The team is getting more comfortable with filing and responding to issues on Git and we encourage everyone to visit the issues to track our progress,

We first reviewed the sharing competency as we noted earlier that this was our most problematic competency. Too much overlap existed with other competencies in version 1.1 of the Map.

The following skills were proposed in GitHub:

Contributing content and finding content for the benefit of others (Greg)

Creating, curating and circulating web resources to elicit peer feedback (Greg)

Understanding the needs of audience in order to make relevant contributions to a community (Greg)

Creating and using a system to distribute web resources to others (Greg)

Identifying when it is safe to contribute content in a variety of situations on the web (Tim)

Ian and Mikko suggested that creating a system to share should be ordered as the first skill. The final list of skills included.

Creating and using a system to distribute web resources to others.

Contributing  and finding content for the benefit of others.

Creating, curating, and circulating web resources  to elicit peer feedback.

Understanding the needs of audiences in order to make relevant contributions to a community.

Identifying when it is safe to contribute content in a variety of situations on the web.

Next we turned to Search

Developing questions related to your goal and knowing when these questions are answered. (proposed)

Using and revising keywords to make your web searches more efficient.(approved)

Evaluating search results to determine if the information is relevant to your needs. (edited needs approval)

Finding real-time or time-sensitive information using a range of search techniques. (approved)

Discovering information and resources by asking people within social networks (proposed)

These were discussed extensively. Gadit and Tim were looking for clarification on the questioning skill. We spent a good amount of time deciding if formulating questions was part of a searching skill. The group decided to keep the skill. The skills were edited to only include third person language and they were approved.

Next we turned to Composing for the Web

We began with the following proposed skills -

Inserting hyperlinks into a web page (defined)

Embedding multimedia content into a web page (defined)

Creating web resources in ways appropriate to the medium/genre (defined)

Identifying and using HTML tags (defined)

Creating and controlling a space to publish on the Web (Doug)

We debated the last skill. Specifically if you create a space and why you have to control the space. Laura brought up the issue of how we started on hosted spaces and moved to open spaces. Greg argued for trying to push people out of silos and on to the open web. Mikko and Gadit supported a similar position.

In the end we voted on:

Setting up and maintaining a space to publish on the web+1+1+1+1+1

establishing, acquiring+1+1, and setting up

maintaining controlling +1

The skills under the competency were then set.

Next we turned to remix, but once we realized that we could not come to agreement we decided to abandon the issue in kicked it to asynchronous debate. Ian argued for renaming the competency synthesis. Greg argued to move the synthesis skills booted from search to remix. He felt you are making something new wit someone else idea. Gadit felt strong that, "Remixing is under building - it should have a very specific 'publishing' aspect," and therefore should not include "in your head" skills. Laura questions whether we were discussing a web literacy skill or a life skill.,

There was also debate whether attribution fit under remix or under open practice. We did agree that the skill on remixing open content should be changed to, "Identifying and using content that can be ethically remixed." This separated the skill from the open practices competency.

We also turned to the skill, "Creating something new on the web using existing resources" and felt it was too close to a new remix we added: "Shifting context and meaning by creating derivative content." There is a current debate on GitHub whether these are similar skills and only one is needed or if both skills are needed under the remix competency.

We tried then to turn to credibility and we nailed down a skill before time was up.

Wrapping Up

We have almost finished Version 1.5 of the Web Literacy Map. Here is our current state of progress

Finished competencies:

Search

Sharing

Composing for the web

Navigation

Web Mechanics

Designing for the web

Accessibility

Community Participation

Unresolved competencies:

Credibility

Security

Remixing

Coding/scripting

Collaborating

Privacy

Open Practices

Final Steps

It was decided to host a hack session on Monday 5pm UTC (10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm CET / 10.30pm IST). The group also decided to abandon the spreadsheet for work (though Ian will update it) and just finish off our work on Github.

Please visit the meta-issue if you would like to contribute.

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On this week's community call we spent the majority of our time diving into the skills underpinning three of the competencies of Web Literacy Map v1.5. We started off, however, with Doug sharing his post giving an overview of the final push and Greg's post giving his thoughts on last week's call. After reminding ourselves of the scope of these calls, we got started.

Doug introduced a GitHub meta-issue linking to 15 issues for developing the skills under each competency for Web Literacy Map v1.5. We can tick these off when we're happy with them. We did have a decision to make this week: should we aim to organise skills by difficulty? We've bumped up against this issue a few times. Lots of people seem to assume that the skills are ordered by difficulty. In fact, many seem to think that the competencies within each strand go from easiest to most difficult. Whether or not we explicitly communicate the fact, we had a decision to make as to whether we should make an attempt to order the skills within each competency by difficulty.

After some discussion, Tim's suggestion that we should order the skills that it makes sense to order (but not worry about every single competency) won out. In other words, if there's a logical progression then we should reflect that in the ordering of the skills.

Once we'd recorded that decision, we moved onto defining some skills. Doug suggested that we focus on Community Participation, Search and Sharing. As it happened, Search proved so difficult that we didn't get on to Sharing - but we will continue to discuss these asynchronously via GitHub issues.

The skills we decided upon during the call were:

Community Participation

Engaging in web communities at varying levels of activity

Respecting community norms when expressing opinions in web discussions

Making sense of different terminology used within online communities

Participating in both synchronous and asynchronous discussions

Search

Finding real-time or time-sensitive information using a range of search techniques

Using and revising keywords to make your web searches more efficient

Evaluating the relevancy of search results to locate desired information

The contributors who attended this week haven't been mentioned above were: Mikko, Laura, Roz and Gadit.

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This week our focus was on finalising the competencies and starting work on defining the skills for v1.5 of the Web Literacy Map. After reminding ourselves of the scope of these calls and reviewing the GitHub issues, we got started. Doug also pointed out the place that we’re discussing the design of the Web Literacy page on the upcoming teach.webmaker.org site.

On last week’s call there was a discussion about revising some of the competencies under the Connecting strand. We had a bit of a debate as to whether updating these possible/desirable for v1.5. Marc pointed out that the issues we’ve identified of some of the competencies being somewhat similar in scope may not be so much of an issue for practitioners. Tim suggested that one solution would be to retain the competencies while updating the competency descriptors and better-define the skills.

The decision we made was to go with Tim’s suggestion, and so we locked down the skills for v1.5. They are reflected in the new REFINE tab of the online spreadsheet (shown above), and listed below:

EXPLORING Reading the web

Navigation

Web Mechanics

Search

Credibility

Security

BUILDING Writing the web

Composing for the web

Remixing

Designing for the web

Coding / Scripting

Accessibility

CONNECTING Participating on the web

Sharing

Collaborating

Community Participation

Privacy

Open Practices

Next, we started to dive into the competency descriptors for each competency as well as the skills themselves. Greg made a process suggestion that we should assume that any uncommented skills from the REVIEW tab on the spreadsheet could be moved directly to the REFINE tab. This was agreed upon and speedily executed.

Once this was done, we noticed that there were a few competencies where no skills had been transferred across. In other words, there were questions or concerns about each of the existing skills for that competency. To rectify this, on Greg’s suggestion we began with the competency descriptor for the new Designing for the web competency. After a few iterations and much back-and-forth, we decided on Enhancing visual aesthetics and user experiences. We also had time to (tentatively) define four skills:

Using CSS properties to change the style and layout of a Web page

Demonstrating the difference between inline, embedded and external CSS

Improving user experiences through feedback and iteration

Creating device-agnostic web resources

We decided not to limit the number of skills to an arbitrary number, and will return to the (perennial) question of whether the order of the skills implies some kind of taxonomy/progression.

Next week we’ll be diving into more of the skills and may need a ‘half-hour hack’ session as well to ensure we do the skills justice.

How to get involved:

Discuss the content of this week’s call on the #TeachTheWeb forum

Help with specific issues on GitHub

Write, tweet and share links to this work. Canonical URL

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This week the community call focused on looking through the Connecting Strand. In the previous call on February 12th, 2015 we spent a good amount of time reviewing the online spreadsheet. In this work we have been examining the skills and competencies across the Web Literacy Map. Under the urging of Marc Lesser, we decided to focus our time during the February 19th, 2015 call to examine the skills and competencies included under the "Connecting" umbrella strand.

The call included Tim Miller, Marc Lesser, and Michelle Thorne. Our fearless leader Doug Belshaw was recharging his batteries in an undisclosed location and Ian O'Byrne hosted the call. Our focus for the call was on comparing, contrasting, and critiquing the skills underpinning the Connecting strand for v1.5. You can review the etherpad here.

We started the meeting with a quite writing hack session to first get our minds into the specifics of the Connecting strand. Following this initial quiet writing and commentary phase, we started to talk through many of the issues we found as we read across just the Connecting strand. The overall discussion was very enlightening, and identifies the fact that many of us are beginning to think through the web lit map on a more granular level.

From a very macro level, one of the interesting pieces of the discussion included trying to understand and conceptualize what is meant by "Connecting" in the strand, and perhaps focusing on "Participating" might be a more appropriate choice of label. We also spent time trying to identify the differences and connections between Connecting/Participating, and the Building strand. The best way that we could conceive of how these would be different, but also compliment each other would be to view the Building strand as encompassing the work of a solitary individual. This would include an composing, remixing, designing, coding/scripting, and considerations of accessibility for one individual as they build online. The Connecting/Participating strand then introduces the complexity and magic of the social side of the Internet. In many ways this can be viewed in moving from Constructivism to Social Constructivism...for the psychologists and sociologists out there. :)

It is apparent from the discussion that we move forward with the development and scaling out of the web literacy map, it is important to create and agree upon a "one sentence" conceptualization, or definition of what each of these elements means. This sentences need to be all available at easy reach on a dashboard for the web lit map. This would include a sentence for each of the strands, skills, and competencies.

In the conference call there was discussion about (once we agree on what is involved in the Connecting strand) changing the following skills:

sharing

collaborating

community participation

privacy

open practices

...into these skills:

contributing

collaborating

supporting communities (or something to disambiguate from 'contributing')

privacy

open practices

The final discussion during the call focused on the inclusion of open practices and participation into the web lit map. We all agreed that open was an important element, and we didn't want to remove it. We also agreed that "open practices" needed more scaffolding for learners. For example, we might start with the top, or first competency being "understanding difference between open and closed licensing of content" and then moving into aspects of finding, using, knowing permissions of open content, and then creating and sharing content under an open, or CC license.

The discussion was quite robust and more information is available on the etherpad, or the recorded audio for the session.

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(note: as with last week, this recording includes periods of silence when we were hacking away on the skills!)

This week the community that has defined and developed the Web Literacy Map celebrated two years of work. Doug has put together a visual history of how things have developed, and an up-to-date list of contributors can be found on GitHub.

Our focus for the community call was on comparing, contrasting, and critiquing the skills underpinning all of the compeptencies for v1.5. You can find the etherpad agenda here.

Blog posts shared this week included the one mentioned above, and also:

Web literacy in the classroom by Tim

Help us redefine the skills underpinning three Web Literacy Map competencies! by Doug

We recapped last week's meeting - where we had drafted skills under the newly re-scoped competencies for v1.5 of the Web Literacy Map. After reminding ourselves of the scope of these community calls, we looked at the issues that have been filed on GitHub. FuzzyFox suggested we might want to come up with a better way of using the 'Milestones' feature in GitHub, and will come up with a proposal.

Su joined us for the first time and explained that she's currently 'obsessed' with binary and wondered whether that should have a place in the Web Literacy Map. She also mentioned that we should include more around networking in the Web Literacy Map. We bore this in mind as we dived into the skills...

The online spreadsheet details all of the skills included in the Web Literacy Map as we work towards v1.5. We spent some time adding comments to the skills, particularly focusing on:

Overlaps - are there any skills that overlap one another so much that one of them should be removed?

Awkward phrasing - have we used 'jargon bombs' or language which isn't sufficiently clear?

Appropriateness - do we have any skills which we feel should be included, but which are under the wrong competency?

Gaps - which skills are we missing?

This process led to an interesting discussion around audience and appropriate language. Marc floated the idea of a glossary (as we are creating for the Clubs work) and discussed the use of specific terminology in general. Su thought that so long as we use terms consistently, we don't use terms for the sake of it, and people new to the Map can look them up, then we should be OK. Tim shared a useful reading level tool, Ian suggested we might want to use the 'Explain It Like I'm Five' (ELI5) approach as with this popular sub-reddit, and Doug (with his tongue firmly in his cheek) pointed to to the Up-Goer Five text editor.

We agreed that there's three things we need to get done:

Carving out the correct areas for the skills.

Checking the language for all of the skills (perhaps using as a sense-check: ELI5) or Up-Goer Five)

Improving the architecture of participation for this community

By the end of the call we had lots of comments in the online spreadsheet which we can continue to work on asynchronously via the relevant GitHub issue.

Next week, Doug is on holiday, so Ian is kindly hosting. The focus will remain on the skills, as well as checking the competency areas under the 'Connecting' strand.

How to get involved:

Discuss the content of this week’s call on the #TeachTheWeb forum

Help with specific issues on GitHub

Write, tweet and share links to this work. Canonical URL

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(note: the recording includes periods of silence when we were hacking away on the skills!)

This week’s Web Literacy Map v1.5 community call focused on the skills underpinning our newly re-scoped competencies of Designing for the Web, Accessibility and Web Mechanics. The etherpad agenda can be found here.

We began the call, as usual, with a reminder of the scope of these calls and what we’re here to do. Once this had been established, we recapped last week’s meeting and shared blog posts we’d written or come across about web literacy during the past week. These included:

Learning Pathways, Badges, and Models in the Web Literacy Map Development (Ian)

Digital Literacy and Web Literacy on Wikipedia (Doug)

Is grunt ‘n’ click getting in the way of web literacy? (Doug)

Ian introduced a conversation we should have about values, value systems, and beliefs. We added this to the list of things to come back to if we have time during this cycle.

Doug explained that he’s set up a ‘stub’ for Web Literacy as an article Wikipedia. There’s a GitHub issue to discuss this. Gus expressed a reservation in segmenting out Web Literacy from other forms of New Literacies as it creates ‘silos’ of work. We’ll explore this further on an asynchronous basis in the issue.

After an introduction to the next section we began hacking on the skills underpinning our newly re-scoped competencies. It needs further work, but here’s what we ended up with at the end of the call. Some of these were existing skills from the v1.1 competencies, some are tweaks, and some are entirely new!

Web Mechanics - understanding the web ecosystem and Internet stack

Explaining the role of automated systems (including bots) in creating, managing, etc content on the web

Creating or modifying an algorithm to serve content from around the web

Identifying where your data is in the network of devices that makes up the Internet, and whether it's at rest or in motion

Exporting, moving, and backing up your data from web services

Using and understanding the differences between URLs, IP addresses and search terms

Designing for the Web - creating effective communications

Demonstrating the difference between inline, embedded and external CSS

Using CSS tags to change the style and layout of a Web page

Reorganizing the structure of a web page to improve its hierarchy/conceptual flow

Understanding how and why to involve users in the design process

Understanding the impact of diversity of screen size and mobile vs desktop device inputs on design

Accessibility - communicating in a universally-recognisable way

Using empathy and awareness to inform the design of web content that is accessible to all users

Designing for different cultures which may have different interpretations of design elements

Practicing computer use without different senses and skills (sight, hearing, motor control) to physically understand how interfaces may impact users

Improving the accessibility of a web page through the design of its color scheme, structure/hierarchy and markup

There’s a lot more information, nuance and conversation on the etherpad. These suggestions are now in the relevant GitHub issue:

Web Mechanics - Issue #14

Designing for the Web - Issue #15

Accessibility - Issue #16

Finally, we decided to review all of the skills underpinning competencies on next week’s call, so we have a decent overview of the Web Literacy Map moving towards v1.5.

How to get involved:

Discuss the content of this week’s call on the #TeachTheWeb forum

Help with specific issues in GitHub

Write, tweet and share links to this work. Canonical URL

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On this week's community call we recapped last week's call, discussed using GitHub as an issue tracker, highlighted blog posts from community members, and then dived into the two-part proposal from Doug.

The proposal was: 

Combine the current 'Infrastructure' and 'Web Mechanics' competencies. This would create a re-scoped Web Mechanics competency under the Exploring strand.

Separate out 'Design & Accessibility' into two re-scoped competencies within the Building strand: Designing for the Web and Accessibility.

After much back-and-forth, this proposal was accepted and will be implemented in Web Literacy Map v1.5. Some of the comments:

I think accessibility is so very important and would appreciate the increased focus they need to be separated and bulked up. (Ian, +1'd by Greg and Gus)

I don't know enough to vote either way. (Mikko)

My only qualm is this bumps against the limits of the "exploring" term. Web mechanics definitely feels like infrastructure, but it feels more like building to me. But then, this is the limit of reading/writing dichotomy. (Gus)

What about swapping remixing with web mechanics, so that remixing is part of exploring and the *new* web mechanics falls where it feels like it belongs on under building? (Marc)

A lot of the other comments rested on slightly tangential (but still important) issues such as the naming of these competencies, whether reading/writing/participating is a useful taxonomy, and the links between web infrastructure and governance.

Next week, on the suggestion of Marc we're going to be having more of a 'doing' call where we dive into the skills underpinning all of the competencies. This means there'll be more more hack, less yack! This call will be at 4pm UTC on Thursday 5th February 2015.

Join the Webmaker list and/or subscribe to the calendar for updates!

Finally, Doug encouraged people to blog their thoughts and to file issues on the Web Literacy Map’s GitHub repository. There’s also the specific #TeachTheWeb discussion forum thread for this week’s call. Finally, there's a couple of ways that people can dive into the Web Literacy Clubs work right now:

Composing for the Web

Remixing

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This week's community call was extremely interesting - as Doug pointed out in a post immediately afterwards! The focus of this series of calls, which will run until the end of Q1 (March), is on updating the Web Literacy map to version 1.5. In this particular community call we looked at the ways we could the visually represent the Web Literacy Map.

Intro

We kicked off the call with a very brief recap of last week's discussion about 'skill levels'. Greg had written up his thoughts and Ian corralled feedback from the LRA conference. Moving swiftly on, Doug went through the scope of this series of calls, asking for any questions.

As a precursor to the main business of the call - a discussion as to whether we should keep the current 'competency grid' visual, we looked at skill maps. Lots of them. These included:

Games

DestinyDB (Mikko)

Final Fantasy (Gus)

Tomb Raider (Mikko)

Twine (Doug)

Organisations

Girl Guides (Gus)

Gates Foundation 21st century skills grid (Jess)

Duolingo (Jess)

Social Thinking tree metaphor (Marc)

DIY.org (Ani)

Other

Hexagon-based approach (Greg)

Feedback from MozFest Remotee challenge (Jess)

Recursive-Iterative model (Darren)

Marc also included a link to something we should probably try and avoid(!)

Main section

The introduction set us up well to discuss the main question for today's call:

Q. Should we alter the way the Web Literacy Map is presented for v1.5?

The vote was decisive: we should RETAIN the competency view for v1.5. We should explore other approaches, but this serves as a reference point for many.

The other things we discussed creating included:

Something that builds on Laura's Web Literacy pathways prototype

An API that helps the community create their own apps and visualisations - kind of like the WebLitMapper (Jess)

Some way for learners to situate themselves in the Web Literacy Map so different parts are selectively revealed (Hannah)

A way to match up mentors and n00bs easily. Something like MentorN00b (Jess)

It was one of those calls that could have gone on for a long time, and the etherpad agenda includes more detail than included in this summary overview. The call ended rather abruptly as someone else needed the line dead on the hour.

Doug encouraged people to blog their thoughts and to file issues on the Web Literacy Map’s GitHub repository. There’s also the specific #TeachTheWeb discussion forum thread for this week’s call.

Next week's call will be on Thursday 29th January at 4pm UTC. For full details subscribe to the Webmaker list and/or bookmark this page on the Mozilla wiki.

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Many thanks to those who joined us for this first Web Literacy Map community call of 2015. The focus of this series of calls, which will run until the end of Q1 (March), is on updating the Web Literacy map to version 1.5. In this week’s call we re-introduced ourselves, and then Doug provided a very brief recap of how we got to this point: 2012

Initial work by Michelle Levesque: http://rwxweb.wordpress.com

Web Literacies whitepaper: http://mzl.la/1waKC0v

2013

Kick-off call for a Web Literacy 'Standard': http://bit.ly/1BhCEZY

Community calls and other work (v0.1 - v0.9)

Launch of Web Literacy Standard v1.0 at MozFest: http://bit.ly/1AaMCIh

2014

Decision to rename Web Literacy 'Map': http://bit.ly/1waKVIt

Move from wiki to https://webmaker.org/literacy

Creation of https://webmaker.org/resources (built on WebLitMap)

Mozilla Manifesto links to WebLitMap for 9 of 10 principles: http://mzl.la/17Dd2f2

Start of work towards scoping 'v2.0': https://bit.ly/weblitmapv2

Decision to focus on creating Web Literacy Map v1.5: http://bit.ly/1wVErUD

Following this, we ran back through the particular features we’re looking to update for v1.5:

Reviewing skills and competencies

Combining, separating and changing the wording of skills and competencies (where necessary)

Referencing the Mozilla manifesto where relevant

A specific audience: those getting involved in Webmaker Clubs: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/2015/Mentors/Clubs

Updating the visual representation of the map in a way that shows continuity with v1.1

Alvar, a teacher and technology integrator from Argentina, reminded us that we also need to:

Review localizations (when words changed in other languages to fit context/culture)

Moving on, the main focus of the call was to come to a decision around whether we should build a Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced taxonomy into the Web Literacy Map itself. This was something we considered in the early days of the Map’s development, and has been raised again by some work that the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) is doing. The short answer is that we’re not going to be including a Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced taxonomy in v1.5 of the Web Literacy Map. Any level-based taxonomy will be something that will be built on top of the Web Literacy Map.

However, there was lots of very interesting points made by participants. There’s a lot of interest in learning pathways and skill trees which don’t necessarily have to be tied to ‘levels’. For more on this, see Laura’s Web Literacy Learning Pathways prototype, introduced here: http://literaci.es/weblit-learning-pathways Other important points made included:

Jess mentioned could allow people to take any pathway they want through the Web Literacy Map, but some would be ‘endorsed’ by Mozilla. Gus followed-up by noting that this could help solve the issue of the Web Literacy Map’s remixability.

Hannah indicated that she sees pathways as more important than a taxonomy. We could provide just-in-time information such as “X people found this skill difficult”.

Alvar suggested that the level of difficulty could be in the resources aligned with each skill/competency.

Doug noted that there are many contexts in which the Web Literacy Map will be used. Alvar added that you can be beginner or intermediate in any of the skills.

Greg mentioned that an important aspect of being a 'beginner' is getting to grips with key vocabulary.

There was enough interest in working on another iteration of the Web Literacy Learning Pathways work begun by Laura to tentatively schedule a Half-Hour Hack session this coming Monday 19th January at 4pm UTC. Laura will be leading this call if it happens and will send round details on the Webmaker list. The call ended by Doug encouraging people to blog their thoughts and to file issues on the Web Literacy Map’s GitHub repository. There’s also the specific #TeachTheWeb discussion forum thread for this week’s call.

Next week's call will be on Thursday 22nd January at 4pm UTC. For full details subscribe to the Webmaker list and/or bookmark this page on the Mozilla wiki.

[webliteracy]

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In this last Web Literacy Map v2.0 community call of the year, we reflected on previous calls and discussed the scope of our work in 2015.

Reflecting on the community interviews, survey, and calls

The first thing we covered on the call were the decisions made on the previous five calls. These were related to the proposals from the community survey:

1) "I believe the Web Literacy Map should explicitly reference the Mozilla manifesto."

We decided that we should reference the Mozilla Manifesto in the introduction to the Web Literacy Map, and link to the particular relevant principles where appropriate.

2) "I believe the three strands should be renamed 'Reading', 'Writing' and 'Participating'."

We decided not to make a decision relating to this proposal for the time being. There are other, related, issues that we need to resolve. For example: who should we prioritise in terms of audience for Web Literacy Map v2.0?

3) "I believe the Web Literacy Map should look more like a 'map'."

(not enough people on the call to make a decision)

4) "I believe that concepts such as 'Mobile', 'Identity', and 'Protecting' should be represented as cross-cutting themes in the Web Literacy Map."

We decided that:

our audience is teachers and learners in the upcoming Web Literacy Clubs

we're not going to include cross-cutting themes in the map itself (the text), but explore them in representations of the map (the visuals)

5) "I believe a 'remix' button should allow me to remix the Web Literacy Map for my community and context."

We decided that we shouldn't explicitly encourage remixing of the Web Literacy Map itself, but encourage remixing of the curriculum layer for Web Literacy Clubs.

Web Literacy Map v1.2, v1.5, or v2.0?

An important function of this call was to decide whether there was an appetite to go for a v2.0 of the Web Literacy Map, or whether we should aim for a smaller iteration.

The options we discussed were:

v1.2 - add links to Mozilla Manifesto where appropriate

v1.5 - as v1.2 + make changes to some competencies after 2015 discussions

v2.0 - as v1.5 + act on feedback from LRA conference + explore other ways of representing the map

After some back-and-forth, and talk of perhaps resurrecting the long-lost fourth 'Protecting' strand from 2012, we decided to aim for a v1.5 by Q2 2015 and then perhaps shoot for a v2.0 later in the year. The main reason for this was to show continued iteration while focusing on getting the Web Literacy Map widely adopted. The feeling was that too much change might put people off at this stage.

Writing the history of the Web Literacy Map

At this point in time, the work around the Web Literacy Map is two years old. Many decisions and discussions have taken place which can be somewhat hidden to those new to the community.

We discussed telling the story of the Web Literacy Map so far, along with doing a better job of linking to etherpads and call recordings. It was also suggested that we might like to start a regular 'this month in web literacy' podcast to give people a high-level overview of the progress that's been made.

Get involved:

Web Literacy Map community calls will be back in 2015. We'll discuss the best times and best formats for sessions.

Ways to keep up-to-date:

Check out the Web Literacy Map (and Webmaker resources section)

Subscribe to this blog

Sign up to the Webmaker mailing list

Keep an eye on the #TeachTheWeb discussion forum

[webliteracy]

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This sixth Web Literacy Map v2.0 community call was focused on more results from the community survey. We focused on Proposal 5: "I believe a 'remix' button should allow me to remix the Web Literacy Map for my community and context."

The survey allowed people to respond using a five-point scale, with five as being complete agreement. For this proposal, the average was 3.87. In addition to looking at the numbers, we pulled out some comments that resonated. You can view these in full on the Mozilla wiki, but here are the responses to Proposal 5 that we pulled out to discuss:

"I like the idea of a remix button, but also feel the map is not going to be a static resource and allowing remix could take away from the community-building aspect. The benefit of using GitHub is that updates to the original will be available to the forks and forks can do pull request for changes they want to recommend to community. Seems like we need a teaching kit on using GitHub to customize a map."

"As I think the Literacy Map should basically be some sort of *standard* as an enabler for an open web and don't reailly see the need for adding a remix button. You can end up in a situation where different communities introduce things that have nothing to do with an Open Web/Literacy."

"Different people and institutions have different priorities. A remixing of these priorities may prove helpful."

"Yes, I agree we need to walk the talk and make the map remixable. This is a good starter "make" project for anyone who is actively developing curriculum."

Adding a Remix button makes it more open but venerable (vulnerable) - problem to be addressed

"意見該被傾聽，讓此份文件更加完善" ("The opinions to be heard, so that this document is more perfect")

"Context and language is important and should be balanced with links back to the fundamentals and ideals that are developed in the map.

"Presenting the map as an API/json/xml might lead to different ways to explore or present it."

"Let's make the map actionable - but not definitively only webmaker."

"I think it needs to have an owner, who oversees transitions from 1.0 to 2.0 etc (as in this exercise). You could then encourage 'localisation' - remixing to me sounds like ceding too much control over something that needs coherence and stability for credibilty."

After a lot of discussion, we ended up iterating three possible options for making the Web Literacy Map remixable into five:

No explicit remix button

Forkable via GitHub

Provide multiple versions of the Web Literacy Map (GitHub, GDocs, etc.)

Remix button allows for in-browser remixing

Don't explicitly encourage remixing of the Web Literacy Map itself, but encourage remixing of the curriculum layer for Webmaker Clubs

We ended up settling on the fifth option. The Web Literacy Map will continue to be openly-licensed and on GitHub. Anyone can remix it. However, we'll focus our efforts on encouraging remixing of the curriculum layer on to of the map. This means we'll be able to count contribution and see what people are doing with the map in Webmaker Clubs.

Next week is the last community call before Christmas. On that call we'll wrap up what we've learned from this short series of calls. We'll make a clear list of what's in (and what's out of) scope. That will enable us to drill into the details and hit the ground running in 2015.

Get involved:

Check out the agenda etherpad

Discuss this in the #TeachTheWeb forum

Mozilla wiki page for Web Literacy Map v2.0

Calendar of community calls

[webliteracy]

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This fifth Web Literacy Map v2.0 community call was focused on more results from the community survey. We focused on Proposal 4: "I believe that concepts such as 'Mobile', 'Identity', and 'Protecting' should be represented as cross-cutting themes in the Web Literacy Map."

The survey allowed people to respond using a five-point scale, with five as being complete agreement. For this proposal, the average was 4.05. In addition to looking at the numbers, we pulled out some comments that resonated. You can view these in full on the Mozilla wiki, but here are the responses to Proposal 4 that we pulled out to discuss:

"I think this is a great idea- Showing overlap and cross themes is   definitely powerful and highlights the impact/pervasiveness of the  other  areas"

"I think adding cross-cutting themes (like the vertical themes at Mozfest) will be quite confusing for some people."

"I don't fully understand what this would look like, but I think  identifying cross-cutting themes and providing pathways to related  content would be useful for a user who is browsing (as opposed to  searching)."

"Be careful emphasizing mobile, who knows what future formats will come along! ooOOoooOo"...We've had this discussion in the calls as well...in thinking about the Web, apps, etc. Can't put the Internet is a category or a box.

"mobilité ne rime à rien. Accessiblité, identité et protection" ("mobility means nothing. Accessiblity, and identity protection").../li>

"Well if you introduce the readers to many *new* terms (that may be  new to them) you risk to confuse them and they end up missing the  content in the map."

"I think this is important, especially if you do create an actual  map-like structure for Web Literacy. The only concern I would have is  that the added complexity of the map may limit accessibility in certain  circumstances. I think these concepts should be added in as  cross-cutting themes, but they should be added in such a way that  simplified versions of the map (without those themes) can also be  presented."

The question of audience came up again. After some more clarity around Webmaker Clubs for 2015, we decided to use the teachers and learners involved with these as our starting point.

We discuss lots of interesting approaches, including using an approach similar to the (US) Next Generation Science Standards. Marc Lesser explained that it has a framework which pushes the standards as an important evolution of science education. It explains what they're trying to achieve and provides something that people can 'buy into' even if they have no practical use for the standards. Then there are the standards themselves which constitute the practical skills and competencies.

The decision was unanimous in terms of cross-cutting themes. While there was strong support in the survey, we felt that this was best served at the level of graphical representation rather than in the text itself. We discussed using an approach similar to Laura Hilliger's web literacy learning pathways where clicking on one part of the map 'lights up' related skills and competencies. This would allow us to be more agile when it comes to relevant themes and capture the zeitgeist.

Next week we’re taking a break due to a Mozilla work week, but we'll be back on the 8th of December with the final proposal from the community survey: "I believe a 'remix' button should allow me to remix the Web Literacy Map for my community and context."

Get involved:

Check out the agenda etherpad

Discuss this in the #TeachTheWeb forum

Mozilla wiki page for Web Literacy Map v2.0

Calendar of community calls

[webliteracy]

Web Literacy Map v2.0 community call: 17th November 2014

We didn't get enough people to make this fourth Web Literacy Map v2.0 community call worthwhile. We had been due to discuss more results of the community survey - in particular, Proposal 3: I believe the Web Literacy Map should look more like a 'map'.

The survey allowed people to respond using a five-point scale, with five as being complete agreement. For this proposal, the average was 3.69. In addition to the numbers, the (anonymized) comments left by respondents  can be found in full on the Mozilla wiki.

Examples:

"Grids and lists tend to create a linear focus. One of the cool things about the Internet, is that it doesn't have to be linear. Certain skills and competencies can and do impact a wide variety of literacies. Moving away from grids and lists would allow the Web Literacy Map to adequately reflect that. It may also help to diminish some of my resistance to the re-naming of the strands. If those strands are not firm linear divisions but rather more, shall-we-say, web-like, then the labels of reading, writing and participating, may not be as bad (although, I am still not a fan of renaming them)."

"Maps are helpful, however I think there should always be opportunities and encouragement to blaze new trails. So long as the map is an evolving document, I'm okay with it looking like a map. However, I tend to lean towards Joi Ito's preference of compasses over maps."

"I think the current grid/matrix metaphor is appropriate, so the question might really be: should the web literacy map be renamed as the web literacy grid. On the other hand, the subheads don't really relate across the grid (e.g. at the moment the second in each list is : 'remixing - collaborating - web mechanics' but with some work there might be other dimensions that emerged (e.g. in the building section, the obvious distinction is between visible (content) and invisible (infrastructure) ...)"

In the absence of a decision around this proposal, we'll resolve to keep the current grid. We can discuss additional ways to represent the skills and competencies of the Web Literacy Map in the new year. This might include some of the ideas from Jess Klein's MozFest remotee challenge.

Next week we’ll be talking about Proposal 4: "I believe that concepts such as 'Mobile', 'Identity', and 'Protecting' should be represented as cross-cutting themes in the Web Literacy Map." Join us on Monday 24th November to discuss this further!

Get involved:

Check out the agenda etherpad

Discuss this in the #TeachTheWeb forum

Mozilla wiki page for Web Literacy Map v2.0

Calendar of community calls

[webliteracy]

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In this third Web Literacy Map v2.0 community call we discussed the results around of the community survey. We focused on Proposal 2: "I believe the three strands should be renamed 'Reading', 'Writing' and 'Participating'.

The survey allowed people to respond using a five-point scale, with five as being complete agreement. For the second proposal, the average was 2.95. In addition to looking at the numbers, we pulled out some comments that resonated. You can view these in full on the Mozilla wiki, but here are the responses to Proposal 2 that we pulled out to discuss:

"I find the suggestion to rename the first two items to Reading &  Writing very strange, for me the web is about so much more then those  two activities. I would suggest though is to change the wording  'Connecting' to 'Participating' as I think its better represent what Literacy should be about.

"More powerful and clear. More compatible with other models / naming conventions around this work."

"For total noobs, 'Reading Writing Participating' is much much easier to  understand. But it then loses relevance as you think about watching,  listening, drawing, talking and all the other ways we communicate on the web.

"I'm on the fence about this. While I think that the reference to  reading, writing and participating helps people make the associations  between web literacies and other basic literacies, I am not sure that  reading and writing adequately describes what people are doing on the  we. I prefer navigating, creating and participating)."

"No. Exploring, Building and Connecting are better descriptions."

"I think the original titles sound more active."

Before we dived into possible options, we stepped back and asked the question of who we're focusing upon in terms of audience. After a lot of discussion, we decided to use the Webmaker UX personas as a starting point.

As with last week, we iterated some options. The differences were subtle, but in the end we decided to whittle it down to:

Exploring, Building, Connecting

Exploring, Building, Participating

Exploring, Making, Participating

In any of these options, we could also use brackets to explain what each of the terms mean - as we currently do with v1.1:

We moved onto think about who we need to reach out to in terms of adoption. This is a work in progress. We also had a discussion about the needs of various groups - e.g. academics needing citations.

Next week we'll be talking about Proposal 3: "I believe the Web Literacy Map should look more like a 'map'." Join us on Monday 17th November to discuss this further!

Get involved:

Check out the agenda etherpad

Discuss this in the #TeachTheWeb forum

Mozilla wiki page for Web Literacy Map v2.0

Calendar of community calls

[webliteracy]

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This was the second of seven Web Literacy Map v2.0 community calls. In it, we started analysing the results of the community survey. The focus this time around was responses to Proposal 1: I believe the Web Literacy Map should explicitly reference the Mozilla manifesto.

The survey allowed people to respond using a five-point scale, with five as being complete agreement. For the first proposal, the average was 3.83. In addition to looking at the numbers, we pulled out some comments that resonated. You can view these in full on the Mozilla wiki, but here are the responses to Proposal 1 that we pulled out to discuss:

"web literacy" != "mozilla literacy" 

"Unsure. The map should be larger than Mozilla. At the same time, Mozilla's mission is also larger than Mozilla."

"Torn on this. I think it's important to foreground the initiatives  behind this to be transparent about our motivations. However, I don't  know if that will arouse any bias for users. I think it's okay for now. " 

"The manifesto is the reason and motivation why the web literacy map  exists. For this reason there should be at least a small reference."

"Helps to position the literacy map in relation to a set up  principles. Can do it in a 'here's where we're coming from' way rather  than a 'this is what everybody should stand for' way..." 

"I agree, in my view the map should reference the manifesto  - certainly in any accompanying text. Within the map  https://webmaker.org/en-US%3F/resources - possible  use a reference code (eg no /col matches to 10 pts) for each strand?"

In the end, we explored several options:

A) Don't reference Mozilla Manifesto

B) Reference Mozilla Manifesto in surrounding context (e.g. intro to Map)

C) Weave language of Mozilla Manifesto into skills/competencies of Map

D) Link to the relevant particular principle from the Mozilla Manifesto in the Web Literacy Map competencies

E) Re-structure Web Literacy Map around Mozilla Manifesto

Those on the call were strongly in favour of options B and D and strongly against options A and E. This led to us discussing combining options B and D into the following approach: reference the Mozilla Manifesto in the introduction to the Web Literacy Map, and then link to the particular relevant individual principles where appropriate.

Having dealt with this relatively quickly, we discussed some of the feedback on the other proposals. Next week we'll dive into Proposal 2: "I believe the three strands should be renamed 'Reading', 'Writing' and 'Participating'. The feedback here was particularly interesting. Please do join us!

Get involved:

Check out the agenda etherpad

Discuss this in the #TeachTheWeb forum.

Mozilla wiki page for Web Literacy Map v2.0

Calendar of community calls

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A healthy number of people joined us for this meeting, kicking off a series of seven Web Literacy Map v2.0 community calls. The focus of the meeting was on setting the scene for future calls and, despite some technical issues, that's what we managed to achieve.

We've decided to approach the calls using the five proposals from the Web Literacy Map v2.0 community survey as a structure. We're beginning the call on November 3rd with the first proposal: I believe the Web Literacy Map should explicitly reference the Mozilla manifesto. We may not proceed directly onto Proposal 2, but we thought it was important to address this proposal right away.

Comments? Feedback? Add them here.

Get involved:

Check out the agenda etherpad

Discuss this in the #TeachTheWeb forum.

Mozilla wiki page for Web Literacy Map v2.0