As the year comes to a close, we’re feeling extremely grateful for the many individuals who have been able to learn, teach others and contribute to our tools, products and curriculum in 2014. Whether it was on their own, in small groups or at large events; people from all around the world stood up and showed their support for a web literate universe.
We recently asked community members to share their stories on how they taught web literacy in 2014 and their responses made us proud to be apart of this movement with such an amazing group of people. Below are some of the responses, as told by each individual. If you have a story to share, leave it in the comments for others to read!
We saw individuals learning and teaching basic literacy for the first time with family members, educators, and classmates.
“At our Maker Party we worked together with a group of learners to share information on how to keep kids safe on line by making a meme on Thimble and publishing an online leaflet – “Use SafeNetwork” in various community languages including English, Bengali and Somal.”
“I thought my parents how to use popcorn by showing them what I learned in class which was awesome!! I showed them how to download pictures and put them in an order so that you can form a video I also showed them how create pop up texts and titles.”
“I co-led a Webmaker training on 11/18/14 for over 45 afterschool program staff for the PASE Explorers program, to give them the tools and skills to teach the youth they work with to build neighborhood websites. We taught X-ray goggles using this template that I remixed and Thimble, using these templates with tutorials that I remixed. “
“One of my friends from school was interested in how HTML worked. I tried to explain it to him and he got it for the most part but he still didn’t understand. The next day, we were both in the library so I whipped out the X-ray goggles and gave him a lesson in HTML. We changed pictures, colors, and links until our abilities were equal. By the end of the hour, we had turned our school webpage into Pyroland.”
“I have taught my friends to understand the process of P2P sharing and the dangers, benefits, and precautions that come from them. I am only 14 and have allowed others online to follow in my footsteps to understand the fundamentals of technology to begin teaching others in my legacy. I am proud to have learned computer and internet technology and have become the internet literate person I am today.”
There was resounding success with our networks where Mozilla networks, Hive Learning Networks, Science Lab, Open News and our partner networks have seen tremendous growth and impact.
“Hosted an event at Toronto City Hall with Hive Toronto for 120 school age children from across the City to participate in webmaker/maker activities such as Thimble, HTML coding, toy hacking and 3D printing. The event was a great success! As a result, City of Toronto departments such as Parks, Forestry and Library have continue to explore and expand their digital literacy/making programming with specific strategies.”
“I took part in the Europe Code Week initiative, as ambassador and mentor. The biggest take-away from the whole organizing-teaching-mentoring-providing support frenzy was the get-together feeling, the way parents worked together with their kids in a new family activity and the eagerness to take coding to the next level :-)”
“I’m helping the community of webmakers in Brasil grow strong. And to do that I’m organizing Reps events and doing talks about the importance of Web Literacy. I also do hackjams to teach how to make cool things with a little bit of HTML and CSS using Thimble, and how to make awesome videos with Popcorn Maker. Here in my hometown I do regulary hackjams at UNAERP University every Saturday.”
“The first global Mozilla Science Lab sprint happened! Over 22 cities were represented in the sprint (18 official sites with a number of other individuals joining us virtually) for two jam-packed days of round-the-clock sprinting on tools, lesson materials and resources for open science. It was a fantastic way of uniting the open research community around the world to collaborate on projects that further science on the web.”
