Tim's Blog

[Summary: Can you help us scale up training, process and practice innovations to take us towards Youth Work 2.0]

I’m on the way home from two days of 2gether08 festival. It’s been an intense two days of idea exploration and this afternoon I took advantage of a design clinic session from Think Public to focus down some of the ideas I’ve been exploring with others over the festival into a 3 minute ‘pitch’ to the assembled crowd at the closing plenary. Well, at least, that’s what ended up happening. Here’s a bit of an overview of how it happened:

A diary entry from Thursday 3rd July 2008.

2pm. Standing outside the Think Public shed at 2gether08 festival wondering whether or not to approach them and take up my booked slot exploring Youth Work 2.0.

Today's discussions at 2gether08 brought me back again to a realisation that youth work, and wider informal education, is not on very many people’s radar.

When we talk young people and education, conversations very quickly turn into conversations about schools and colleges - capturing only a small part of young peoples education. Only 9 minutes, in fact, of every hour in young people’s waking day is spent in school (and that’s just for the young people who are actually in school...).

Not all of the remaining 51 minutes of each hour will be spent in informal education, and for many young people, access to supported informal education is really limited (statutory youth services are only resourced to support on average 30% of their local 13 - 19 year old populations) - but, supported and unsupported informal education really mustn’t be forgotten and is something that, in a web 2.0 social media world, we should be paying a lot more attention to.

I've been looking for a while for a space where all the conversations around work with young people and new technologies/social media/web 2.0 can come together.

I've not found it. So I've set one up.

So - if you're interested in exploring what social media means for youth services, participation projects, IAG, or any other organisations providing support, advice and activities to young people - do come and join us over on the UK Youth Online Ning network.

You can create your own profile, find others with shared interests, post questions and share your learning.

After being encouraged by Steve Bridger's post to ask what Fair Trade 2.0 might look like - I've found myself responding to Mike Amos-Simpson this evening on Youth Work 2.0.

You can find my sketch of possible options for Youth Work 2.0 over here - and I promise that's the last Something 2.0 post here for a while...

Just a quick pointer to the Interim Report of the Youth Work and Social Networking project I've been working on with Pete Cranston over the last few months.

This turned into a far longer report and piece of work than I'd anticipated - but I hope it sets out some clear foundations for the next phase of research - working on the practical 'How To' of moving from where we now, to a place where an effective youth work perspective and practice in responding to online social networks is in place.

You can read more on the project blog over here.... and I'd really welcome any feedback or reflections through the comments or by e-mail.

This is a post I've been wanting to put together for a while. Hopefully the phase 1 report from the Youth Work and Social Networking project I'm co-researching with Pete Cranston will be out soon (sending if off for formatting tomorrow...) - but as that looks like it will be about 15,000 words of literature review, survey and focus group write up, I thought it would be useful to put together a list of the literature that has most influenced or challenged my thinking.

On Monday I gave a presentation to the Ofcom/Oxford Internet Institute seminar on Social Networks about some of what we have discovered so far in the Youth Work and Social Networking research project.

A few people have asked me for the slides - so I've put them up on the project blog over here.

More results from the research will be available soon...

Update: a webcast of the presentation is now online here. My piece starts 59 minutes into session 1.

I came across Andreas' work at nonformality.org when he added to the reasons why youth workers should be blogging. And now Andreas and the team at the National Youth Agency of Estonia are taking the initative to kick start even more dialogue about how the informal learning sector across Europe can get far more engaged with the web by pulling together a Networking Seminar in Tallin, May 30 - 31, 2008.

From the Seminar flyer:

The context - why?

Two of the reasons I gave in my recent post '7 reasons why youth workers should be blogging' were to share resources, and to build networks.

Well, following some blog-based networking and discussion sparked by that post, I've just logged on to find Mas from the the YOMO Breakfast Society blog has drafted a fantastic 'getting started guide' for youth work blogging resource. And DK from MediaSnackers who has been taking advantage of his speaking gigs around the country to encourage youth service blogging is proposing a video intro as well. Blogging and collaboration in action.

This is cross-posted from 'Tim on Youth Work' over on the C&YPN blogs. If you want to leave a comment, that's probably the best place to head to.

On the back page of this months Youth Work Now Michael Bracey highlights the lack of engagement between youth work and new technology. Search online for 'Youth Work' and you find very little from anyone outside of the world of youth ministry. And I've not yet managed to find a single one of the 27,000 statutory sector youth workers out there blogging about youth work!*