Mozilla Posts Whitepaper on Web Literacy

How important is web literacy in today's world? The answer is that it's a rapidly increasing requirement not only in the workplace but on the social front, and elsewhere. With this in mind, Mozilla is out with a whitepaper in the form of a wiki that explores web competencies and needed skills for "webmakers." It's an especially good roadmap for anyone interested in any type of web development. 

Mozilla's Learning and Web Literacies Whitepaper consists of chapters including Web Skills, Web Competencies, and Web Literacies. According to the whitepaper:

"The web is becoming the world’s second language, and a vital 21st century skill. Digital literacy today is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. Mozilla believes it’s crucial that people develop the skills they need to understand, shape and actively participate in that world, instead of just passively consuming it."

Indeed, for many college graduates, facility with HTML and other web development skills will be more important than facility with foreign languages. The whitepaper also notes that Mozilla is pursuing a badge program that sounds a bit like a web literacty certification program:

"Teachers in formal education are well aware that skills have objective thresholds. That’s to say the skills they teach young people are assessed by third parties (such as exam boards) against some kind of rubric. In a similar way to Scouting badges, the learner has to prove they have particular learned capacities in a given area. Likewise, the Mozilla Webmaker badges we’re developing require learners to demonstrate such capacities as they ‘level-up’."

The whitepaper from Mozilla is the first part of what is described as a work in progress. We may hear more from Mozilla about badges and certification surrounding web literacy. In the meantime, you can participate in the project, with details here.