For the last year, the Willoughy-Eastlake Public Library has been participating in the Mozilla Foundation’s Web Literacy pilot funded by an IMLS grant. Mozilla is the free-software company behind the Firefox web browser. The goal of the grant has been to strengthen the web literacy skills of our library staff. The web literacy framework is based on three core 21st century skills: read, write, and participate. These areas are divided into more specific skills such as navigating online, evaluating online sources, coding web pages, and online safety and privacy. This framework is not only essential for library staff to understand…
Bringing Trust to the Table
Trust is fundamental to so much of what libraries do. I think it is one of the main reasons that people like libraries. Fostering a trusting environment should be considered in all library decisions from building remodels to lending new materials. Ultimately, librarians and administrators need to look at themselves as part of the community that they are serving instead of being separate from it. Essentially librarianship is about building relationships and opening a dialogues. I think this is true for how we engage and interact with coworkers. Personally, I know that I need to bring more trust to the…
Coding for the Masses – Striving to Improve Digital Literacy
Our concept of information literacy is evolving more and more rapidly as technology becomes ingrained in our everyday lives. Schools and educators are realizing the importance of expanding an interest in computer science and coding to a wider audience and at an earlier age. On January 24, 2014, the popular science podcast, ScienceFriday, ran an episode entitled “Is Coding the Language of the Digital Age?“. The panel discussed ways that coding can be incorporated into our existing education system in order to close the gap for women and minorities. The ability to code is becoming increasingly important in order to…
Mozilla Releases New Web Literacy Standard
The Mozilla Corporation released version 1.0 of the Web Literacy Standard on October 23. The standard is broken down into three core skill categories: explore, build, and connect. Mozilla hopes to train a generation of webmakers – users that not only consume information and media on the web but also generate it. The standard is useful for those who want to teach web skills. It is ideally suited to serve as a backbone in curriculum creation for technology classes offered in public libraries and university libraries. The standard is a work in progress and can viewed here: https://webmaker.org/standard.