There are all sorts of discussions recently about the role of Youth Work and the web. Tim has produced his interim report ‘Youth Work & Social Networking‘, back in February a YoungScot report concluded that “Youth groups risk losing out to social networking sites like MySpace unless they rethink how best to attract teenagers” (a pretty dumb perspective in my opinion), and a discussion on the CYP Forums asks if social networking is a threat or an opportunity for Youth Work?

Add to that the ongoing discussions (and events) about how best to support young peoples ‘online safety’ and more positively how to effectively take advantage of the opportunities presented by using social media technologies.

Well all this earlier got me thinking about whether we’ll ever see a ‘virtual youth service’?!

(more…)

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Tags: innovation, social media, soft skills, youth work, youth work 2.0

Well according to facebook anyway! I have the highest IQ of my ‘friends’, I’m in the bottom third of attractiveness and according to my latest notification X amount of people are more popular than me - even more insulting given that I never added the applications that are apparently rating my ugliness & unpopularity!

One application I did have for a while (and swiftly got rid of) reported to me that not many of my ‘friends’ wanted to sleep with me. This I didn’t feel so insulted about given that the majority of my ‘friends’ are young people we’ve worked with, male, or family members (which narrows down the minority who apparently did want to sleep with me - or at least I hope so!).

Frankly though I’m bored of facebook and (more…)

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Tags: social networks, Society & Issues

According to ‘V’ a recent survey by them found that 70% of 16 - 25 year olds say they are “negatively perceived by the public”, and of the 3000 that took part in the survey 60% think this is unfair (which to me seems a surprisingly high amount that think it is fair?!) The survey also found that 49% of young people “believe young people do things which justify this negative opinion”.

Besides recognising the behavior of some young people doesn’t help their image, others to get the blame include celebrities (apparently Amy Winehouse topping the bad example list which is in conflict to the findings of a poll last month when supposedly she was voted as the “ultimate heroine among the UK’s youth!), and in the words of V’s Chief Executive “This survey reveals the growing gulf of understanding between the generations which is leading to young people being unfairly tarred with a negative image.”

Over on the CYPNow Forums Neil asks “How very sad. As a Youth Worker, it is really disappointing to see that nothing has changed. What have we got to do to change this image of our YP?”

Both comments seemingly assuming that because some young people feel that they are perceived negatively by ‘the public’ they actually are. This feeling by young people of (more…)

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Tags: age, positive images, prejudice, Society & Issues

A pet project I was planning was a website for people to rate their local parks. Not exclusively for young people but also for parents - one of the things about moving to a new area is trying to find local places to take the kids so I thought it could be handy to map out play parks and allow people to add comments & photos etc.

I also considered the possibility of building something to allow people to add their own designs and suggestions for improvements - all of this is still at the ‘one day I’ll get round to it stage’ for now though!

I was interested then to see the Department for Schools, Children & Families new website ‘playspace’ and I’ve just had a bit of fun playing with it! (link here)

Its actually a consultation disguised as a game where you can design your own park, so not quite as exciting as I’d hoped, but as far as consultations go its pretty good.

There are a few flaws in terms of consultation - firstly that (more…)

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Tags: Society & Issues

Animoto clip from the recent training with MORLO up in Anglesey who are planning a newsletter on regeneration in their local area.

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Tags: activities, events, film, Films & Social Media, social media

Just been watching this interesting slideshow by NASA on their perspectives on ‘Generation Y’ and their obvious concern for appealing/relating to/involving them.

I’m becoming more & more interested in whats happening outside of the youth work world with young people and it seems to me that theres a lot to learn from business in particular about how they seek to engage with young people.

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Tags: Society & Issues

I think I’ve spent more time in London these past 6 weeks than I have in the previous 10 years. Yesterday I went along with Ana (who’s working on the OnTheUp development) to the Innovation Exchanges Festival of Ideas.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect - the idea I’d submitted over on their website was OnTheUp which we’ve been developing further since the Social Innovation Camp. The ‘Festival’ was held at Amnesty International HQ and basically involved bringing together various people in the young people/youth work world along with potential commissioners and funders, and then encouraging them to talk to each other and see who might be interested in who.

It was good to meet up with David Wilcox again who was busy making more live films streamed from his mobile phone - besides capturing my ‘pitch’ he also got some of my thoughts about this kind of event (below). I’m a big fan of this more open approach to bringing people together and sharing ideas, experiences etc. - for me it has considerably more benefit than the alternative and more traditional conferences that in my opinion are rarely good value for money and usually involve familiar faces preaching familiar messages.

The theme yesterday was supporting ‘excluded young people’ and of course to be doing so in innovative ways given the agenda of the organisers. I think perhaps the audience wasn’t diverse enough to truly (more…)

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Tags: events, innovation, Innovation & Technology, Resources, youth work

We’ve just made a second resource available for free download and given it a makeover too!

Know Your Group Cards is a card based discussion activity designed to help groups discover the skills and qualities of members. The activity works best for groups that either already know each other or who have recently formed but members have some knowledge of each other.

The activity involves a self assessment sheet that allows each participants to rate their own various skills. There are then two sets of cards and the first set is placed in the middle of the group. Each member takes it in turns to take a card and then without anyone else seeing whats on the card they give ito to the person they think most appropriate.

After all the cards have been dished out the process is repeated with the second set of cards. When all cards have been allocated participants can look at the cards they have been issued and then if they wish they can choose to pass some on if they think they’re more appropriate for other members.

The activity is designed to provoke discussion and needs good facilitation, especially to be able to deal with situations where some members receive no cards (usually an indication this person isn’t well known rather than they have no skills!). The main purpose of the cards is to help groups consider what skills members have so that when they’re allocating tasks during activities and projects they put the skills available to the most effective use.

Know Your Group Cards can be downloaded for free from the Resources section.

Please note that to receive the free download you need to ‘checkout’ - you will then be sent a download link (please make sure you’re logged in to the resources section when you click the link).

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Tags: Resources, soft skills