Whether theres any plans to create something similar aimed at young people I don’t know but I always think its a good strategy to target children as young as possible for stuff like this so that it becomes second nature. The thinkuknow site also offers a downloadable ‘Hectors World Safety Button’ that ’swims’ in the top of the screen and if a child sees something they don’t like they can click the button which will cause the screen to be covered ‘until they get some help’. What the likelihood of a child using that button is I’m not sure as I’m pretty sure its in most childrens nature to be curious about everything!
The buttons only for Windows OS which seems a bit sloppy (can it be that hard to do the same for Macs & Linux?!)
I’m working on our new website at the moment and playing around with Slideshare to maybe embed some of our stuff on the new site.
While playing I found the slideshow below and thought it had some relevance - not only to anyone confused by ’social media’, ’social networks’, ’sns’, ‘web 2.0′ and so on, but also relevance in relation to the ‘get on board message’ that it really has, for those involved in youth work.
Theres a lot of talk about the use of social media with young people, I tried to expand on the potential the web has beyond this for practitioners in an earlier post, this slideshow also made me think theres also an overall need for youth organisations to start seeking dialogue rather than monologue through their online presence. Perhaps this could relate back to better ‘accountability’ too - youth services provided by organisations that encourage young people (and their staff) to engage online rather than just giving out information and opening times?
There were some good discussions over on UKYouthOnline about developing policies for interacting with young people online.
In particular there was a debate about whether youth workers should separate their personal social networking profiles from their ‘professional’ persona’s (and profiles) that they use to interact with young people professionally.
Well over in the US theres a proposed law to make it illegal for school teachers to have ’social networking friendships’ with children and young people. CNN has an article online including an interview with a teacher who does use a Myspace page to allow students to contact him.
The proposed law has come about following fears that ’social networking sites are breeding innapropriate behaviour between teachers and students’. In the CNN article an Education Lawyer says that having clear professional boundaries are important “You’ve got to establish it from Day One and say, ‘I’m not your buddy, I’m not your friend, I’m just your teacher.”
I wrote something similar in ‘What Makes a Good Paid Youth Worker‘ - that relationships with young people need to be on the basis of what you can professionally offer them - not just ‘friendship’. But of course social networking is all about how many ‘friends’ you have and now that services offer to show how many of your email contacts are registered with them it means that any person you’ve had email contact is likely to easily find your profile.
Of course you don’t have to accept ‘friend requests’ providing you can get over the fear of causing offence! I’m not quite sure what I think about this yet - on the one hand some good clear rigid guidelines could work fairly well, on the other hand there is a point that its similar to saying if you work in an area you can’t also be seen to socialise there.
Actually that reminds me of a situation I found myself in when I first started as a ‘Youth Development Worker’ on an estate. I also played for the local cricket club and through one of the players I became friends with somebody who invited me for a meet up in their house which happened to be on the estate where I worked. I did attend, only to discover it was his parents house and his little sister was a regular member of one of my youth clubs - she wasn’t there but I did wonder about how weird it would have been if she’d been at home while I was getting drunk with her brother and his mates in the back garden!
For youth and community work the boundaries will always be a bit more blurred than teaching but it will be interesting to follow what happens in Missouri and whether or not it has any impact over here.
According to the Office of National Statistics 15.23 Million households (61%) in the UK had access to the internet in 2007 and this was rising at roughly 1 million a year. Of these only 10% didn’t have broadband (down from 17% the previous year).
At the time of their survey 4% of 16 - 24 year olds had never used the internet, 90% had used it recently. Overall 16-24 year olds use the internet more than any other adult age group.
Of those that use the internet 70% of 16-24 year olds use it every day and 92% use it at least once a week.
18% of adults had accessed the internet via a mobile phone (no breakdown of age for this but I bet its higher for younger age groups - and I bet its increased rapidly since last year!)
Reasons given for not using the internet more (%) (by adults 16+):
Lack of time
52
Other reason
24
Lack of skills or knowledge
21
Connection is too slow
12
Security or privacy concerns
10
Cost of online content
9
Could incur additional connection and download costs
5
Not enough interesting content on the Internet
2
Some stats taken from the IPPR report ‘Behind the Screen: The hidden life of youth online’
80% of 12 to 15 year olds own a mobile phone
80% of 5 to 15 year olds have access to the internet at home
In addition to home access young people have access in schools, libraries, internet cafes as well as through digital TV, mobile phones and games consoles
99% of schools have internet access (access is largely restricted but restrictions like filters are seen to be easily bypassed by young people) Continue Reading »
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 concludedthat “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’?!
I think the first film I edited was in 1998. I’d used a (huge) Sony camcorder to film a watersports weekend that I’d taken some girls to from the youth club (it involved camping in a field near Holme Pierrepont much to the despair of the accompanying female worker I’d dragged along!). At that time I borrowed some sort of console and the footage was edited on my TV at home onto a video cassette! (The console in the pic is just an example I don’t think it was that fancy!).
When I started work on the Young Movers programme we decided that a film of each course would be a good evaluation method and that by getting young people to talk about what they intended to do following the training this would help with a bit of reflective learning. The Chief Executive was so keen on the idea he went straight out and bought a new Panasonic digital camcorder which he plonked on by desk the next day (in fact I think they still use it!). Back then I was a Windows user - we had no idea how to edit digital video, so a trip to Dixons (now Currys) and the helpful salesperson recommended ‘Dazzle Moviestar’.
Well what a bloody nightmare that was! Once I’d figured out how to use Continue Reading »
Five banners down, 40 new people, Five 3D maps cleared, 80 odd pictures and a sandwich spread later- and its only day one!
Myself and 3 volunteers began training in Letterkenny, Ireland today as part of a Leadership through the arts project. We will be running the one-day course for 3 days, with 6 new groups every morning, so we will meet and work with over a hundred different people! Apart from a slightly delayed flight and a forgotten driving license, we got off to a good start this morning with a new idea we were piloting.
The idea came from the current resource we use, prospective. Prospective aims to make participants consider and make a link between their community, the people and resources in it, issues those people face and opportunities which would allow them make a positive contribution. We decided to take a more practical approach to this method incorporating arts to have participants create a 3D sculpture for their map and then using a bit of social media by way of films to present the different aspects of their area. There were positive and negative aspects to this method in comparison to the resource so this has allowed us to identify what works best. Thats why it’s great we are doing it again tomorrow!
Due to the late arrival in Ireland and the extremely early start, unfortunately we haven’t had much time to enjoy Donegal, so hopefully tomorrow we’ll be more up for a mission! As for traveling out here alone, everythings gone to plan so far (apart from a few currency worries!!), so the long term planning and folders full of addresses, bookings, session notes etc paid off!!
We started this blog less than a year ago last July. It wasn’t our first attempt - we ran one for a short while before going to Tanzania in 2005 but it never really took off. I for one just never ‘got into it’ and I didn’t much see the point. I knew what we were doing back then would be interesting but I wasn’t sure it was interesting enough to other people to bother writing about (after all who reads blogs?!).
About 2 years ago we then started to develop an online volunteer network for young people involved with the programme we used to run. From this I became much more interested in the use of online networking and I searched Continue Reading »
There are all sorts of discussions recently about the role of Youth Work and the web. Tim has produced his interim report ‘
I think the first film I edited was in 1998. I’d used a (huge) Sony camcorder to film a watersports weekend that I’d taken some girls to from the youth club (it involved camping in a field near Holme Pierrepont much to the despair of the accompanying female worker I’d dragged along!). At that time I borrowed some sort of console and the footage was edited on my TV at home onto a video cassette! (The console in the pic is just an example I don’t think it was that fancy!).
We started this blog less than a year ago last July. It wasn’t our first attempt - we ran one for a short while before going to Tanzania in 2005 but it never really took off. I for one just never ‘got into it’ and I didn’t much see the point. I knew what we were doing back then would be interesting but I wasn’t sure it was interesting enough to other people to bother writing about (after all who reads blogs?!).