Collaborating in Youth Work

August 6th, 2008 by mas | Filed under Innovation & Technology, Resources.

An opinion piece I wrote for Children & Young People Now has been published this week - you can read it online here.

The basic points I was making are:

  • Online technology isn’t just about doing cool stuff with young people - its something youth workers should be looking to use as part of their own productivity
  • There’s massive potential for collaboration within the sector - however this requires more people to make better use of online tools and of course to seek to interact

A few months back DK at Mediasnackers, Tim Davies and myself started planning a campaign to find the first statutory youth work blogger. As it turned out the campaign wouldn’t be needed as DK had already done enough on his travels to inspire Hilary Mason to give blogging a go - something she continues to do very well.

Theres been a few more pop up since, and assuming this continues to grow, there should soon be a youth work blogging wilderness, albeit a scarce one. This is great to see and very interesting to read about peoples experiences and opinions, but I think we also need people to start looking to go a stage further.

I’m not sure if ‘Open Source‘ is a term yet understood by the average person - assuming its not, a basic description for ‘Open Source Software’ would be that (often very skilled) people decide to create a piece of software, and rather than sell it in the conventional sense, they put it online for free. They don’t just make the software free, they make the code available too. This means that other people around the world can play with the code themselves and adapt it for their own needs. What often happens is that people who make improvements to the code share their additions and then begin to collaborate with others doing the same. This then expands further with people then developing ‘add-ons’ or new versions and so on.

People do this for free - or in terms more familiar to youth work - they volunteer their time to contribute towards an online community.

So what would it take to get a version of ‘Open Source Youth Work’? Quite a lot I expect - firstly we need more people using online resources - more people blogging, more people using places like the online network Tim has set up at UKyouthonline.

Secondly we need a culture shift - we need people not afraid of putting their ideas and opinions in the open. This isn’t just a personal change in attitude either as for many it won’t happen until the authorities they work for seek to embrace online technology and encourage their staff to use it.

Thirdly and crucially we need people to contribute to those ideas put out there - we need people commenting on blogs and responding on forums, replying to films and online slideshows.

And all this has to happen in the open - it can’t be done behind the closed doors of email, it needs to be available to as wide an audience as possible so that we can have input from the huge amount of skills and experiences out there.

Take for example the recent plans to create a new ‘leadership academy for young people‘. The linked article says that over 100 organisations have been involved in developments so far with 20 likely to play a ‘meaningful role’ - yet this is just the tiniest amount from the huge amounts of skilled people and organisations out there involved with leadership training. Imagine if this was instead being done as an open online collaboration and the potential not just for so many more people to contribute to development (including young people), but also how much quicker the wider sector could come to understand what it is to be about.

Right now of course this isn’t likely to happen - we function in a culture of protectionism, of organisations conscious of competing for funding and not wanting to reveal their secrets. The real question perhaps then is do organisations regard the potential to collaborate as an opportunity or a threat?

Related posts

« Supporting the Transition to Adulthood
Stats & Figures - Young People & The Web »

Viewing 2 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Firstly thanks Mike for the complement about my blogging. I still feel like it's early days but I'm definately enjoying the experience.

    Secondly, I agree about encouraging and developing collaboration. I have learnt so much from being on line blogging. There are the online forums such as UKYouthonline that Tim has set up but I have benefited equally from seeing what other people have written, who they are talking to and learning from their experiences. Just by being online I have expanded my knowledge not only of what is out there but also about what might be possible.

    We've started to encourage our staff to explore and look at what is out there. As a Senior Management Team working across the county we are slowly starting to expand the ways in which we meet and collaborate on work without having to be in the same place but this is a slow process. The main thing that has struck me is just how far removed working in this way is for many of my colleagues and how much we need to do in order to give them the skills and confidence to share their views, experiences and off the wall ideas.

    But....I think (optimistically!) that as the community grows, as we develop the skills and understanding of how this way of working can enhance our own work, then we will gradually see more collaboration and sharing of ideas....or so I hope!
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks Hilary - and thats a great endorsement of what I think the potential is. It just needs a few more people to follow in your footsteps and it will certainly grow and become more useful - in fact really its inevitable that at some point the youth sector will see online technology as integral to at least some of what it does, it would be nice though to see the sector become pioneers rather than struggling to catch up as it currently is.

    Much like the projects young people set up with us though it always needs a few people to get things going in the first place.

Trackbacks

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus
Tags