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This is a deprecated version of the BookoftheWeb project vision. Please view the current version here.

The Book of the Web A playbook for consumer education about the web

A Book Sprint is planned for May 9 - 13 2011 in Toronto. Info on venue and hotel options in the works.

Archived Outline, Archived Timeline, Archived Core Concepts, Archived Secrets of the Web, Archived Inspiration File, Archived Overview

THE CHALLENGE

An understanding of how the things we enjoy on the web came into existence is uncommon. What is the web? How did all these fun things come to be? Did the web and all that's in it 'just appear' or are there important ideas that effected the design and shape of what we know today? What building blocks were put in place to get us here?

An understanding of how the Internet and the web evolved and an understanding of how it shapes the way we live, work and create is crucial to taking charge of the role that the web plays in our day-to-day lives now and in the future.

THE VISION

We want to create foundational thinking and simple messaging that will underpin hundreds of web literacy programs that will:

“Ensure every single Internet user has the conceptual building blocks needed to be a smart, creative web citizen. ”

By creating this kind of universal awareness and understanding, we hope to:

• Help Internet users gain the confidence to make decisions about what tools to use and how to behave online.

• Include an ever-expanding number of people in the stewardship for the web, by helping them understand how their online choices affect the overall health of the web.

• Make meaningful conversations about the Internet as widespread and exciting as conversations about politics, religion or business.

We will achieve these goals by first developing a The Book of the Web: a web literacy playbook that feeds global campaigns around web literacy and citizenship.

THE STRATEGY

The Book of the Web is being authored to support and complement excellent efforts already under way. These include Mozilla Drumbeat (http://drumbeat.org/), 20 Things I Learned About the Web (http://www.20thingsilearned.com/), and An Open Web (http://openweb.flossmanuals.net) and others.

Building around a Book Sprint (http://en.flossmanuals.net/booksprints) in Spring 2011, we plan to:

• Carve out a list of ideas and topics that we think every web user should know about.

• Make these ideas simple for anyone to understand.

• Show people how and why these ideas and issues effect them.

• Recommend actions people can take.

• Create simple, rip-offable, remixable resources around these messages: stuff people can use to run education campaigns, courses, workshops, etc.

• Run large scale, peer-based consumer education campaign(s) about the web, why it matters and how to get the most out of it.

• Do all of this under a big tent but with diverse tactics. Everyone involved in writing the book (and beyond) may riff of the same messages, but deliver those messages totally differently.

The goal at the end of the week-long sprint is to have a finished book, something that all those who helped make it can use to start running campaigns right away.

The Book of the Web will be published in both electronic and print formats for broad distribution, with campaigns to leverage the book being designed before, during, and after the sprint.

And the Book of the Web will be a great read: smart, funny, exciting, surprising, imaginative. What we're creating isn't a textbook: it's a playbook. A playboook for consumer education campaigns about the web. A playbook that actually feels like play.

THE AUDIENCE

1. People who use it as a playbook

• People who will run consumer education campaigns about the web: Mozilla, Google, FreePress, CommonSenseMedia, etc. We're hoping for rough consensus on the things we want people to know about the web. So we're going to ask consumer educators to fill in one crucial blank:

If half the world knew ____ about the web, we'd be in way better shape.

• People who teach technology and media literacy at all levels. Schools. Libraries. Community tech centers. Idea is to give them a resource to start with as they do courses, workshops, experiments, etc.

• Tech book authors and bloggers who might re-use or re-purpose elements from the playbook in their own work.

We hope these audiences will: steal this book, remix it, use it any way they want. The book is modular fodder.

2. People who want to understand the web better

• Those who have an affinity for the web, such gamers, or are social media users.

• People who are web-positive/tech-positive, as opposed to tech skeptics.

Some of these folks will be reached by consumer education campaigns directly, others will have gained awareness through media literacy educators.

The most enthusiastic of these people might become evangelists themselves.

CONTENT

Examples of Book chapters may include:

• The Way The Internet Works (a la David Macaulay.

• Where does my computer end and the internet begin?

• What is the browser? What can it help *ME* do?

• How to read a URL. Why to read a URL.

• HTTP:// vs. HTTPS://. Same thing, right?

• CTRL-F: How to find something in a web page. And copy it. And paste it.

• Hover and learn: what extra things can links tell you.

• Making good passwords

• Who has my data (aka email, contacts, etc)? Can I get it back?

• Me online. What makes up my online identity? Am I in control?

• Email and my identity: what can people do if they have my email passowrd?

• Who are my 'friends'? Where do I keep them? (social graph storage)

• Downloading vs. streaming. Lock vs. unlocked. How do I control my media?

• What is an app? What is a web app?

• HTML as LEGO: what building blocks does the web offer us?

• View source: what web pages look like under the hood, and why our ability open the hood is so important.

• What is an API?

• Selecting tools and technologies: how do my choices impact the internet and my friends?

• What else?

We will refine this list in advance so that we can actually do writing on these topics at the Book Sprint.

PRODUCTION

Pre-production

Content for the book will be scoped and refined through a collaborative and iterative process that invites anyone interested to weigh in.

We anticipate the following milestones leading up to the book sprint:

• Compile a list of The Ingredients of the Web: a list of the most important Internet concepts that make the difference between loving the web and hating every minute you're at the keyboard. What are those key ideas? You tell us.

• Compile a list of The Secrets of the Web: The difference between Internet lovers and Internet skeptics isn't In what they knew the day they first got online; it's what they've learned since then. Internet enthusiasts learn to love the web because they've learned about the web. The Secrets of the Web will share the resources that help explain the most important concepts online.

• Brainstorm topic areas and identify up to 10 areas of focus for the sprint by 15 February, 2011.

• Define the scope of the book.

• Identify book sprint participants to collaboratively build the "frame" for each topic.

• Bring on board illustrators.

• Design templates for conveying specific types of information eg. practical how to, educational text, 'what is?' pages etc.

• Design pre-sprint engagement and outreach strategies to invite input and ideas in each topic topic area, in the time leading up to the Book Sprint.

The Book Sprint is tentatively planned for the week of 9 May 2011 in Toronto, Ontario or Boston, Massachusetts. Release party at 1800 local time on the final night.

Production

Onsite during the Book Sprint we will:

• Bring people together in groups dedicated to developing specific content and strategies.

• Groups will be set tasks to complete a specific content base, or they might be given the task of designing campaign and communication strategies around specific themes.

• Where necessary groups will be facilitated to workshop ideas.

• Illustrators will be a part of each group to help identify and create the necessary visual communication components on the fly.

• Proof readers with a sensitivity for dynamic content generation and real-time proofing will be utilised on site and remotely to clean up finished content and revisions as they come to hand.

Post Production

After the Book Sprint we anticipate the following steps:

• The Campaign of the Web: Once we've created a version of the Book of the Web, we'll launch a global campaign that shares the secrets of the web with people all over the world. With your help, millions of Internet users could find it easier to understand what's at stake and what can be done, and to educate friends, family and strangers about the same

• Establish, resource and manage the translations.

• Book of the Web will be turned into a fully interactive, engaging online experience that can be read online or on a mobile or tablet device. This electronic publication will be developed as a collaboration between Mozilla's development team and Emily Carr's design team, drawing on the resources and ideas of the larger Book of the Web community.

PARTICIPANTS

[The list below is just for brainstorming purposes] [still need to figure out who and how many. up to 50?]

• Al McDonald and BoCoup
• Alan Emtage
• Baratunde from the Onion
• Barbara von Schewick
• Beth Kanter
• Cindy Southworth/Leone Kraus/folks thinking about safety online
• CommonCraft (Lee & Saatchi Lefever)
• CommonSense Media
• Culture jamming folks
• Designers. illustrators and visual people
• FreePress
• Ford Foundation
• Google people working on web education
• Hackasaurus team
• John Palfry, Berkman
• John Udell
• John Willinsky, PKP
• Jane Finette (Mozilla - User Education)
• Knight Foundation, especially Jessie's project
• MacArthur foundation learning networks
• Media Access Projects
• Mitchell Baker
• Public Knowledge
• Rob Cottingham
• Tim Berners Lee
• Tim Wu
• Water Down
• Web Foundation
• Web standards gurus, Christian Heilmann?
• XKCD
• Teachers
• Archive.org
• WMF
• Privacy People
• EFF
• CC
• WMF

Other desired types of participants

• Visual facilitator
• People who know how to speak to a mass audience

Book Sprint Organizers

• Mark Surman
• Adam Hyde
• Alex Samuel
• Allen Gunn