Today I’ve been at UkYouthOnline (I’m now on the train home). It was one of the most pleasant youth work related events I’ve been to and I hope that enough people can persuade (& support) Tim to plan another!

One of the things that stood out for me during the day was how little consideration is given by practitioners to how they can use web technologies to be more productive/effective/efficient. Instead it feels slightly as though many people are so concerned with young peoples use of social networks and social media, that they end up only focussing on those things - there’s a sense of “we need to get on board or catch up with the kids”, but I wonder whether this means people end up taking their eye off the ball and are actually missing out on the most effective way to get to grips with the technology - using it for yourself!

Midway through the day Dave Briggs organised the ‘Social Media Game‘. I joined the group challenged with considering ‘Youth Workers Collaborating’, because I’ve written about this recently. The things that came out of the subsequent discussions for me were:

• People need to meet in real life to want to collaborate
• The approach and attitudes of youth workers needs to change for them to want to collaborate

For point one, of course they don’t really - the web is full of collaborators who have never met in real life. But in youth work at the moment (more…)

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Tags: Innovation & Technology, social media, social networks, 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)

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Tags: social networks, Society & Issues

“You’re already involved” is the strapline of the Bebo Battlefront Campaign - a campaign designed to encourage young people to use social media for social change.

One of the campaigns up there is Ginger Lib - I picked up on this because its something Kirsty has (quite rightly) been campaigning for for many years.

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Tags: campaign, social media, social networks

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).

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Tags: 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…)

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

Heres a short film about the making of  ‘Hectors World’. You can see the Hectors World films on the thinkuknow website, set up by the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre.

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?!)

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Tags: age, Education & Skills, film, innovation, social media, social networks

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?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing)

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Tags: innovation, Innovation & Technology, social media, social networks, youth work 2.0

In the last post I wrote about a proposal in the US to make it illegal for school teachers to have ’social networking friendships’ with students. Personally I’ll be surprised if it actually happens and much more surprised if it happened in the UK, but I think most people are in agreement that guidance for people working with young people online is needed.

In the discussions on UKYouthOnline there were suggestions to adapt the guidelines Detached Youth Workers use. This makes good sense as a starting point with obvious similarities of workers ‘reaching out’ into young peoples space.

I think though that online working policies will also need to take into account the unique nature of ‘being virtual’ - an example I gave in the comments in the last post being that its much harder to be clearer about when somebody is actually working when they’re online compared to when you see somebody in person.

An exercise we used to run with new Trainers was that we gave them a variety of scenarios and asked them how they would deal with them. We then related their answers to our Child Protection Policy - the idea being to help them understand the policy and also to understand how to cope with different situations. The twist when we did this was that all the scenarios we used were real - they had actually happened at some time during courses we run.

I was trying to think of some online scenarios that could be used in a similar way and that might help with drawing up some guidelines - so heres my efforts so far…..

Scenarios:

• In an instant messenger conversation a 14 year old young person reveals they are planning to go out later and get drunk
• A young person replies to a blog/forum post and includes their mobile phone number
• The profile picture of a 16 year old female on an instant messenger shows her naked
• A young person comments on photos they have seen on one of the youth workers social network profiles in which the youth worker “is pissed out of their face”
• One of the young people in your ‘friends list’ appears in the news feed requesting that a photo another young person has put up is removed because it shows her underwear - the person who posted the photo refuses and the photo is highlighted on your feed
• A young person contacts you because they are in an online conversation with another young person who is threatening to commit suicide imminently and they don’t know what to do
• A parent complains that a youth worker has been having conversations with their child very late at night online

Some more simply dealt with than others, but all things that have actually happened! I’m sure there are more too and no doubt plenty of other people have had their own experiences. Maybe it would be good to think up some worst case scenarios and from that figure out the things that would need to be in place to protect both young people and workers?

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Tags: innovation, Innovation & Technology, policy, social networks, Society & Issues, youth work, youth work 2.0