(cross-posted from Web Literacy Lead Doug Belshaw‘s blog)
We’re in full swing with Webmaker contribution and web literacy badges at the moment, so I wanted to take a moment to give some advice to people thinking of applying. We already have a couple of pages on the Webmaker blog for the Mentor and Super Mentor badges:
However, I wanted to give some general advice and fill in the gaps.
First of all, it’s worth sharing the guidance page for the people reviewing your application. In the case of a Webmaker Super Mentor badge, this will be a Mozilla paid contributor (i.e. staff member), but for all other badges it may be community member who has unlocked the necessary privileges.
To be clear:
- Webmaker Super Mentors can issue the Webmaker Mentor badge
- Webmaker Mentors can issue Web Literacy badges (e.g. Remix ‘maker’)
The best applications we’ve seen for the Webmaker badges so far take the explain how the applicant meets each of the relevant criteria on the badge detail page.
For example, this was Stefan Bohacek‘s successful application for the Sharing ‘maker’ badge:
1) Sharing a resource using an appropriate tool and format for the audience: I wrote tutorials for people learning to make websites and web apps and shared them on my blog: http://blog.fourtonfish.com/tagged/tutorial. These also exist as a teaching kit on Webmaker — see my blogpost with a link here: http://blog.fourtonfish.com/post/89157427285/mozilla-webmaker-featured-teaching-kit. Furthermore I created resources for web developers such as http://simplesharingbuttons.com (also see: http://badges.p2pu.org/en/project/477 and some other (mini-)projects here: https://github.com/fourtonfish.
2) Tracking changes made to co-created Web resources: I use GitHub for some of my personal projects (although I only received a handful of opened issues) and GitLab with clients I worked with/for.
3) Using synchronous and asynchronous tools to communicate with web communities, networks and groups: https://twitter.com/fourtonfish — I follow some of the members of Webmaker. https://plus.google.com/+StefanBohacek/posts — I am a member of the Webmaker community. http://webdevrefinery.com/forums/user/18887-ftfish — I (infrequently) post here, share ideas, comment on ideas of others etc. [REDACTED EMAIL ADDRESS] — I wouldn’t be able to finish my teaching kit without the help of other webmakers and my email account to communicate with them
Note that Stefan earned his badge for numbers 1) and 3) in the above example. This was enough to meet the requirements as the badge is awarded for meeting any two of the criteria listed on the badge detail page. He did not provide any evidence for using GitHub, as mentioned in 2), so this was not used as evidence by the person reviewing his application.
Applying for a badge is just like applying for anything in life:
- Make the reviewer’s job easy — they’re looking at lots of applications!
- Tell the reviewer which of the criteria you think you have met.
- Include a link for each of the criteria — more than one if you can.
- If you are stuck, ask for help. A good place to start is the Webmaker discussion forum, or if you know someone who’s already got that badge, ask them to help you!
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