Take the Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge

Mozilla has teamed up with the Afterschool Alliance to celebrate afterschool programs this October by creating the Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge .  The Webmaker Challenge is a simple activity that gives you and your afterschool youth a chance to unleash your creativity—and learn some coding—by making your own digital afterschool posters.   

As an added bonus, six participating programs will be chosen at random to win $500!

On Oct. 23, more than 1 million people around the country will take part in the 15^th annual Lights On Afterschool, and the Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge is a great way to engage youth and the community while teaching kids valuable coding skills. Digital media and technology are constantly changing the way that children learn and interact with the world around them, and it’s vital that we give today’s youth the skills and know-how required to read, write, and participate effectively on the web.

Nobody is better suited to help teach young people to be digitally literate than Mozilla. Mozilla is the global, nonprofit organization behind Firefox, a free browser used by over half a billion people around the world. Mozilla works with a worldwide community to create open source products and programs in the belief that the Web is a shared public resource to be cared for. Their mission is to teach the world to be web literate through proactive exploration of digital tools and hands-on making, teaching and learning.

The Webmaker Challenge is a simple, fun activity to help afterschool programs develop students’ webmaking and digital literacy skills. For the Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge, students will design their own digital poster in support of Lights On Afterschool and their afterschool program on Mozilla’s free Webmaker platform.

Here’s how you can participate:

1. Register your Lights On Afterschool event, and check that you plan to take the Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge. If you’ve already registered your event, email us at lightson@afterschoolalliance.org and let us know you’ll be taking the Webmaker Challenge! Make sure you use the same email that you used to register, so we know which event to modify.
2. Review the Webmaker Challenge Teaching Kit.
3. Register for our Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge webinar for educators.
4. Launch the Activity! Work with youth in your program to make digital posters highlighting the value of your afterschool program anytime in October to help celebrate Lights On Afterschool and build digital literacy skills.

Do you want to participate in the Lights On Afterschool Webmaker Challenge, but need to work offline? Mozilla also has plenty of other great activities you can try out! Just because you don’t have access to the internet doesn’t mean you can’t help kids learn valuable digital literacy skills.

How do I win the $500 Webmaker Challenge Award?

Six participating programs will be chosen at random to win $500. Two of these $500 awards will be given to programs that register for Lights On Afterschool and select the box for the Webmaker Challenge, and the other four $500 awards will be given to programs that complete the Webmaker Challenge activity and earn the Web Literacy Skill Sharer badge!