Thinking about this weekends upcoming event UKYouthOnline has got me thinking again about OnTheUp. OnTheUp was the idea that came out of ‘Personal Development Reports‘ that I originally submitted to the Social Innovation Camp earlier in the year. I haven’t yet managed to dedicate the time to developing the idea further as I’d have hoped, and in retrospect I think that perhaps the Social Innovation Camp experience slightly hampered development in that what started out as an attempt to develop a tool to support informal learning became more focussed on being able to somehow develop this into ‘the next big website’.

I do think online technology could be a brilliant tool for ’solving’ this problem - but it needs a bit more thought than just banging out a site. So I’ve gone right back to the start to have a think about what that problem actually is.

I first became aware that there was a ‘problem’ quite early on in the development of the Young Movers programme. Young Movers was initially based on a loose remit of creating a programme for young people in citizenship. My take on this was to try and develop a programme that would help young people to become ‘good citizens’ - this meaning they would be the sort of people any community would be proud of and who would (more…)

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Tags: dyw, Education & Skills, innovation, Innovation & Technology, soft skills, youth work 2.0

I was reading this discussion about ‘Using Technology in Education‘ that includes a list of gut reaction responses by educators as to what their fears are about using technology. Some of the things I picked out from that list include:

• I feel like a dinosaur in a world of eagles.
• Not knowing the next step without assistance.
• The kids will know WAY more than I do.
• Not being able to troubleshoot when the kids run into glitches.
• Can’t figure how to do things.
• Biggest fear when things don’t work especially when the kids are flying along, it is so deflating.
• Not knowing how to do a task.
• Looking stupid
• My ineptitude will be revealed to the kids

So can you teach something without being an expert in it first?

That reminds me of conversations we had in the early days of supporting young people to deliver our training. By far the biggest concern young Trainers had with us was that they wouldn’t/weren’t taken seriously - particularly by adult youth workers. This was for a mixture of reasons - the obvious factor of age (very young people being asked to ‘instruct’ much older and sometimes elderly people), being inexperienced, and also because very often young Trainers would end up running a session that wasn’t within their normal expertise.

(Its probably also worth making a point that another factor was the attitudes from some Youth Workers who would make it very well known how ‘qualified’ and ‘experienced’ they were - an attitude I found bewildering given the purpose of their employment!)

How we supported young people to overcome this was to explain they should never assume they are more knowledgeable than the people in their sessions (young or old), and that actually this was not important. What was important was that they were experts in how we did things - they understood the course programme, the structure of the sessions, and our approach to delivering training. Their role was not to ‘educate’, but to facilitate a process through which participants would share knowledge and ideas (and therefore learn).

Everyone who’s ever done any teaching/training/coaching will be very aware that the teacher learns a considerable amount themselves through putting together and delivering teaching.

So I wonder how many of you that are involved with educating feel that in order to educate young people you have to first be an ‘expert’ yourself? Do you need to understand all aspects? or do you instead need to be willing to give things a go, experiment, explore and go on a learning journey with young people? Afterall if you’re not prepared to give something a go because you don’t understand it what sort of example is that?!

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Tags: Education & Skills, innovation, Innovation & Technology, soft skills

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: dyw, Innovation & Technology, social networks, soft skills, 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…)

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

Tims stuck a few thoughts down over on the NYA blogs about ‘Youth Work 2.0‘ and Hilary mentions in her blog that they are looking into ideas for a ‘Virtual Connexions Centre‘

I’ve been thinking about the concept too but haven’t yet come up with any ideas as to how an online youth service might actually look. Its easy to see how lots of information can be stuck online and lots of ways to support young people to access that information - whats not so easy though is to think of how a ‘virtual service’ could support young peoples development through their actions ie. not just digesting information but actually motivating and supporting them to do things that are self developmental, and of course being able to record those experiences and developments and attribute them to the online service.

The challenge that really interests me is in the use of the web as a ‘positive/purposeful activity’. Years ago when I started designing training courses for young people it was a challenge to convince people about the use of leisure/recreational activities within training courses and how these could be the most effective medium for getting young people involved in community activities. Looking back now it seems relatively simple but I was thinking about how I’d approached that as a challenge and whether a similar approach could be used here.

So very quickly I drew up some challenges that an online youth service could set out to achieve: (more…)

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

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

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

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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?

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Tags: Resources, soft skills