BookofthewebNewOverview

 The Book of the Web: May 2011 Book Sprint

Thank you for being part of this experiment in envisioning a better future for the web. We look forward to three exciting days of collaboration, and appreciate your contribution to this work. This short document outlines our vision for the project and for this sprint.

The challenge

How do we help a large, general audience understand:
• What makes the Internet special?
• How does the Internet work?
• How can they make informed choices about how to use the Internet?

The vision

The purpose of The Book of the Web project is to ensure that 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.

The book is intended to serve two types of readers:
1. People who will use it as a playbook, like folks involved in consumer education programs, tech and media literacy, or tech book authors and bloggers.
2. People who want to understand the web better, including people who are already heavy tech users (like gamers and social media users) as well as tech-positive people who make more moderate use of the web.

The project

This week we begin the work of writing an open source marketing playbook for Internet literacy. This book will provide organizations and educators with messaging and resources they can remix to deliver digital literacy campaigns and education. The purpose of the sprint is to create an initial set of demonstration chapters that will provide useful content and help a larger audience understand how The Book of the Web can support their work.

In the course of this week we will:
• Write three chapters that will become part of The Book of the Web
• Refine the chapter template and project vision statement
• Identify the topics that should be covered in future chapters

We hope you will take the chapters we write this week (and later, the book as a whole) back home to your own work or organization. Turn it into campaigns, newsletters or courses: whatever serves your goals and needs. Then tell us how you're using it so we can keep developing the messaging and materials that are useful to leaders like you.

�Chapter themes

Based on Mozilla's work to date we have identified three chapters to write during this sprint:
1. Protecting my identity online
2. How (and why) to read a URL
3. Open video and why it matters

Chapter template

Introduction:
• Great to begin with a story or anecdote about one person or a small group (e.g. a family) so that it's concrete and relatable
• Why this topic matters and what is at stake for the reader
• Problem statement (pain point) and goal (implicit promise of how it can be better)
• Call to action: what are we asking the reader to change or contribute?
• Foreshadow structure of chapter: what will it cover & what will they learn

Know 5 things:
• The 5 things you need to know to understand this theme or topic
• Write for newbies: assume zero knowledge
• Can include glossary if that's useful
• Include at least one diagram (can be a placeholder)

Do 5 things:
• The 5 things you need to be able to do on this topic to be an effective Internet user
• Write in non-technical language
• Give step-by-step instructions (with screenshots if needed) on how to do this
• If possible, write in a way that transcends a specific piece of software: e.g. write about how to choose your social network privacy settings, not your Facebook privacy settings

5 ways to learn more:
• 5 ways you can deepen your knowledge or engagement with this issue
• Can include a wide range of ways to learn or engage more: recommended books, blogs or websites; organizations you can help out; tutorials to try; people to follow/learn from
• Callouts/captions to specify the benefit of pursuing each next step: e.g. "Teach your friends to be safe online"
• Include a "how to message this" aimed at advocacy organizations working on this topic

Conclusion
• Big-picture stakes: how the reader's actions add up to a different Internet for all of us
• Shadow vision: how things could go wrong
• Conclude with a positive vision of how the reader's efforts can contribute to a better outcome
• Recap with summary of key take-aways from chapter including "if you remember/act on JUST ONE THING from this chapter, make it…"

What happens after the sprint?

• These chapters will be designed and circulated online as PDFs and as an ebook.
• We will refine our project vision statement based on the outcome of the sprint.
• We will create a revised chapter template based on your work.
• We will encourage digital literacy organizations to use these initial chapters as remixable fodder for their campaigns, and to share insights on how we can make BOTW as useful as possible.
• We will plan a follow-up sprint to complete a full-length book.