Apologies for the crap title but hopefully a better name will emerge as this develops. Thanks for the comments in the previous posts following the weekends UKYouthOnline event. The summary of my learning from the event is that I think there needs to be more debate/consideration about using the web as a practical tool for supporting young peoples development (and also for youth practitioners to work more effectively and efficiently).

With that in mind I said that I would start getting some ideas up for planning a ‘digital youth work strategy’. I’ve already thought about how to approach this and wanted to get early thoughts up, so here goes……

The ’strategy’ itself is going to involve developing an online programme using a ‘positive development’ approach. Once I’ve laid out my own ideas I’m going to explore methods for inviting people to contribute and collaborate into the programme along the idea of creating an ‘open source digital youth service‘.
So here’s the early thinking for the strategy:

• Develop a rationale for the programme
• Develop the practical programme
• Identify relevant online tools & resources
• Develop delivery methods including consideration for supporting practitioners to use the tools
• Invite collaboration to refine the programme
• Consider evaluation methods & methods for user involvement
• Promote and publicise the programme
• Ongoing evaluation and refinement

Now some things to keep in mind:

1. The programme itself will be (more…)

   Related posts

   • What Youth Work on the Web will look like in 2009 (2)
   • What is Open Source Youth Work? (7)
   • Digital Youth Work - Appreciating the Environment (7)
   • Online Youth Work - Parental Involvement & Awareness? (2)
   • Identifying Soft Skills for the Social Innovation Camp (6)

   Tags: digital youth work, dyw, Education & Skills, Innovation & Technology, Participation & Citizenship, Resources, youth work 2.0

Childnet International have produced a guide to social networking for Parents, Carers and Teachers (download a copy from here).

In the guide they suggest five “P’s”:

• Positive: Stay positive about social networks
• Privacy: Make sure children understand how to protect themselves and their data
• Photos: Think about the kinds of pictures images used to represent yourself
• Postings: Think before you post (about yourself and others)
• Police: Encourage children to tell about inappropriate or illegal activity

(more detail about these within the guide)

Related posts

• Child Protection Online Scenarios (2)
• Appropriate Relations Online with Young People (4)
• Youth Work 2.0 - how to do it?….. (10)
• Why You Shouldn’t Use Social Media With Young People (9)
• What the F**k is Social Media?! (4)

Tags: dyw, social networks, Society & Issues

I’ve been having a play with Imbee - a “social network for kids, parents & teachers”. To sign up adults have to verify their identity by providing credit card details or alternatively you can provide a form of ‘Government ID (like a driving license) by fax or phone.

Children can sign up themselves but need to have their account authorised by their parents (who are sent an email requiring validation as above).

Teachers that register are able to sign up students in their classes and can even use downloadable lesson plans based on lessons to help students understand how to use the network. Thoughtfully the service also includes ‘Parental Permission Slips’ and after teachers sign up they are sent out a free ‘teachers pack’. Within class networks teachers can choose to be able to approve friend requests for students and also have the ability to reset their passwords.

The network itself is closed - theres no ability to search other users on the site, as its designed for interaction between ‘real’ friends.

Once in the site offers the usual stuff you’d expect - customising your profile, adding photos, videos, music, writing blogs etc. You can also create your own ‘trading cards’ to exchange with friends.

I think the design of the site could be improved (visually) but as a concept its a great idea. Its something Teachers (and Youth Workers?) can use to safely educate children/young people in using a social network. They can also take advantage of things like creating groups to manage projects. I think the involvement of parents is really good (and too often overlooked by many services).

What’s also interesting about this is that because of the closed nature, the focus is on the ’social networking’, compared to the likes of Myspace et al. where arguably theres a greater focus on promotion (self and corporate).

Related posts

• Youth Work 2.0 - how to do it?….. (10)
• What the F**k is Social Media?! (4)
• UkYouthOnline & Open Source Youth Work (5)
• How Will Youth Work Use The Web in 2009?… (11)
• Child Protection Online Scenarios (2)

Tags: dyw, Innovation & Technology, social networks, soft skills, youth work 2.0

Well of course you probably should! But before you do, here are some things to think about first….

1. You haven’t bothered to think about why you’re using it
2. You don’t know how to use it
3. You haven’t thought about how you’re going to manage it
4. You don’t have your own website
5. Your website is crap!
6. Because you think it makes you look cool
7. You haven’t considered what to do if things go wrong

You haven’t bothered to think about why you’re using it

There’s a vast range of options now from social networking sites like Bebo, Myspace, Facebook to video sharing like YouTube, Vimeo, Jumpcut & photo sharing like Flickr & Picasa, then there’s a whole load more things like Twitter and all sorts of stuff designed to encourage people to share, exchange & network.

• So which of these are you using and why?
• What are you hoping to achieve?

Is it that you need a place for young people to share their photos for a media project or to exchange views about their local area? Are you trying to campaign or (more…)

Related posts

• What the F**k is Social Media?! (4)
• UkYouthOnline & Open Source Youth Work (5)
• How Will Youth Work Use The Web in 2009?… (11)
• Child Protection Online Scenarios (2)
• Appropriate Relations Online with Young People (4)

Tags: dyw, policy, social media, social networks, youth work 2.0

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 (more…)

Related posts

• Youth Work 2.0 - how to do it?….. (10)
• Identifying Soft Skills for the Social Innovation Camp (6)
• Youth Service 2.0 - the future of Youth Work? (8)
• Festival of Ideas (2)
• Child Protection Online Scenarios (2)

Tags: dyw, innovation, Innovation & Technology, Resources, soft skills, 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

Related posts

• The Pathway to Participation (4)
• Research Report into Training for Young Peoples Community Involvement (3)
• Research Report into Peer Education (2)
• Free Resource no.1 Group Assessments (2)
• Youth Work Guide to Blogging (8)

Tags: res, Resources, soft skills

When putting together a training course I try to adapt the resources and the different training activities to suit the needs of the people/organisation that has commissioned the training. Obviously the first this is done its very time consuming, and then over time it becomes easier as you have more ideas and experiences to draw on - but you still have to ask the same question before putting together each programme - “what do people want to achieve and how can we best help them do it?”

What bothers me with the ‘accreditation culture’ is that the thinking can be shifted from what do people need? to how do I get them to tick the boxes? And providing ways to help people realise which boxes to tick isn’t going to encourage more consideration to the former - hence I have one less thing on my todo list!

Thinking about this reminded me of some work we did with a school using the International Baccalaureate. We were working with some students at the start of their school year and at the beginning of their studies one of the things they had to do was to choose themselves how they were going to demonstrate to their teachers that they had gained the necessary understanding of their subject - so instead of the teacher issuing out an assignment or an exam, the students chose their own manner of assessment. I much prefer the idea of young people being able to choose their own method of assessment - not because it makes things easy, it shouldn’t! But because arguably its fairer and more relevant to real life - afterall if you get asked to do a pitch in your employment do you choose to do so using a method you’re not good at, or using one that helps you get your point across the best?

Related posts

• The Pathway to Participation (4)
• Supporting Young People in Meetings & Decision Making - Kirsty Taylor, YoMo @ PIP 07 (0)
• Social Innovation Camp 2008 (4)
• Social Innovation Camp - Brief (1)
• Research Report into Training for Young Peoples Community Involvement (3)

Tags: Resources, soft skills

I’ve done quite a bit more on this but I’ve stopped myself because I’m sure other people will be wanting some flexibility and opportunities to be creative over the weekend - so hopefully I’ve now got a clear brief but not too rigid to allow for some further innovation.

You can read the brief in the attached pdf. The first page gives an overview of the purpose of the Personal Development Report concept, and this is followed by some ‘case studies’ illustrating how different people might use the system. I had quite a few further examples but I think this is enough to give people a picture.

So now its a case of taking along these ideas tomorrow and hoping that there will be a few people interested in developing the idea further. If so I think one of the interesting debates will be about which model to use for sustainability and I think there are several opportunities towards this (but I’ll save the discussion for the weekend!).

So fingers crossed that I’m lucky enough to meet up with some enthusiastic talented people (well I’m sure I will but lets hope they want to work on this idea!). Personally I can see all sorts of potential and there is a strong need for a system like especially if we can make the use of what technology has to offer now. I can also see a system like this paving the way for many similar ones by various award schemes etc.

Related posts

• The Pathway to Participation (4)
• Supporting Young People in Meetings & Decision Making - Kirsty Taylor, YoMo @ PIP 07 (0)
• Social Innovation Camp 2008 (4)
• Research Report into Training for Young Peoples Community Involvement (3)
• Research Report into Peer Education (2)

Tags: Resources, soft skills