working for social change; exploring the details; generally quite nuanced
[Summary: all the one page guides now available on scribd]
After trying out Scribd to share my recent One Page Guide to Twitter I thought it might be handy to upload all the past guides. So – over here you will find all (currently 21) of the one page guides – including a new Blogging with WordPress introduction and a guide to registering a domain name created as part of a series I’m working on for local campaigning organisations.
Perhaps now it’s time to work on a one page guide to Scribd…
[Summary: Looking for local authorities to be part of joint-commissioning new Facebook/Bebo/MySpace tool for youth participation]
One of the action projects emerging from the Action Learning Set I’m currently involved in around Youth Participation & Social Network Sites is all about creating a new online tool to transform consultation with young people – and to go from dull form-filling to engaging ongoing dialogue between young people and those in local authorities who want to hear from them.
The action project team, sprearheaded by Tom Gaskin from Norfolk Blurb and with support from others including Jess Linacre have already got a series of great design ideas together working with SNS application developers Neontribe and now they are looking for other local authorities who want to pool resources to help build the best possible application.
So – if you are from a local authority, or similar organisation, and you could be interested in being part of the pilot and contributing towards the budget – then drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch with the action project team.
(Photo credit Balakov)
I’ve been trying to create a general purpose one page guide to Twitter for a while. I’ve made two attempts in the past for particular situations – although with the end of SMS based access to Twitter in the UK those guides are both out of date.
But – I think I’ve finally created a guide I’m happy with – with this guide created for an Action Learning Set on Youth Participation and Social Network Sites I’m currently co-facilitating – but written to work as an introduction in just about any circumstance.
You can get the PDF of this one page guide to Twitter from Scribd.com (look for the download link) or, as this guide, like all the other one page guides, is provided you can download an Open Office copy (ODT) to edit and re-purpose as you wish (just make sure you let me know about any updated versions).
(Thanks to Harry @ Neontribe for photos and feedback used in this guide)
Guide preview:
It’s always good when I discover one of the long term ToExplore items sitting at the top-right corner of my white board in the offices is actually already being done by someone else.
One of the items that’s been there for a while is trying to explore the idea of ‘Five-to-Nine Volunteering‘ in more depth – exploring how micro-volunteering tasks could be completed by commuters on the train or tube, or people sitting around with little to do.
Well, thanks to a post from Tessy I’ve just discovered The Extraordinaries – working on exactly that sort of mobile micro-volunteering concept – and getting close to launch.
Best of all, as the SlideShare below shows, The Extraordinaries is not just a project about crowd-sourcing small tasks, but the team involved see it as a hook to engage people in longer term volunteering.
[Summary: help us explore the role of social networks in the fight against AIDS]
The world has been managing the global AIDS epidemic for more than 25 years. 2031 will mark 50 years since the first report of AIDS. While great strides have been made, there are persisting as well as emerging challenges that must be addressed.
aids2031 is not about what we should do in 2031, but what we can do differently now, to change the face of the pandemic by 2031.
aids2031 is a consortium of partners who have come together to look at what we have learned about the AIDS response as well as consider the implications of the changing world around AIDS.
AIDS2031 Consortium
The world is changing. The way people communicate is changing. And AIDS communicators are thinking about how they need to respond.
How are Social Network Sites developing in different ways in different countries and communities?
What are the implications for AIDS communication and AIDS communicators?
Those are some of he questions I’m exploring on a research project led by Pete Cranston, and commissioned by the Communications Sub-Group of the AIDS2031 Consortium. And we could do with your help.
We know that Social Network Sites means many different things to different people – and that they are adopted and used in different ways in different communities. Only some of that it written up in literature, and our on-the-ground research partners can only cover four of five different countries and contexts. So – whether you work with local government in a UK inner city, you’re using social networks to connect with friends and family in countries across the world, of you’re not using social networks at all – we would really value your insights.
Take a look at the four questions on our project blog and please do take a few minutes to offer a comment or two.
(This is a short-term research project, so the blog is only open until the end of Feb – and we hope to share some of the initial research findings from the blog soon after.)
I was speaking yesterday at the DigiTV Stakeholder Event alongside Steven Flower of Substance/Plings – exploring how information providers can ensure their information and services are ready not just to feed into the ‘channels’ young people use, but also into the networks and social networks through which young people and the wider population are increasingly accessing information*.
Presentation slides
If you were at the event and are looking for the slides I promised to share, you can find them as a a PDF download here or Slideshare here.
The future of TV
The last time I lived in a household with a TV was 2003 and that was an old analogue set, so I’ve not yet got my head fully around the current versions of digital TV. Which meant that and hearing Ian Valentine from Miniweb (and formally from the R&D team at Sky) speak about both the present and the future of digital TV was a bit of an eye-opener for me. The convergence of TV set and always-on broadband internet connection looks set to have some really interesting implications.
Below are a few quick reflections on some of the content of yesterday:
Even so, I’m sticking to the Radio.
I love the social media game model. It works in so many contexts.
So, over at the Plings blog you’ll find the ‘Plings Out Game’, or in more general terms – a planning game for exploring different communications tools that youth services could use as part of promoting positive activities.
[Summary: Practical questions to use in e-safety education when working with social media and social networking sites]
Later this month the House of Lords will be spending two and a half hours discussing young people and social networking sites in a debate initiated by Lord Toby Harris. As Shane McCracken has pointed out, a focus on “the adequacy of safeguards to protect [young people’s] privacy and interests” risks as debate leading towards legislation to restrict and control how social network sites function or young people’s use of them. However, even if Shane’s more hopefuly scenario of “increased awareness about the need to educate young people and parents about internet privacy issues” results, we could still end up heading in the wrong direction.
Far too often e-safety education places it’s focus on communicating ‘safety messages’ which are either counter-intuitive to the active social network using young person (‘don’t share any personal information online’) or which end over-detailed, complex or in contradiction with the way social network sites operate (‘use a nick name’ – ‘but it asks for a real name’). Plus, being aware of a safety message and putting its content into practice are two very different things.
In a project I’ve been working on for the Brent Local Safeguarding Children Board E-Safety Subcommittee we’ve tried to explore how, instead of a focus on safety messages, we can use critical questions* to structure education about safe use of social media, whilst promoting the opportunities that new technologies offer at the same time. Using a critical questions approach can enable professionals to facilitate young people’s own exploration of safe and effective uses of new media, without the professional needed to be a new-media expert.
Here’s the current working draft of our question-bank:
All these questions were designed be asked in the context of some form of purpose driven online-communication – such as using a blog, social network or social messaging tool to run a campaign on a local issue. The questions are divided into six sections.
1) Think about: the idea
2) Think about: intended audience
3) Think about: the impact of the information or media you are sharing
4) Think about: identity
Thinking about how you have/will share this information or media:
5) Think about: interaction
Thinking about information or media that you have shared:
6) Think about: each other
Using critical questions
Whilst these questions don’t give explicit safety messages – in encouraging young people to develop their own understand and literacy with digital tools they are designed to act as a vehicle for exploring safety messages. In Brent I’m hoping that, with continued development, they will form the backbone of a programme encouraging young people to develop their digital literacy whilst creating and sharing online content about their local area.
However, I believe that moving from a ‘safety messages’ to a ‘critical questions’ and a ‘literacy building’ frame of engagement with social networking and social media also has other implications:
Some questions for you
I’ve not yet had chance to pilot and evaluate the critical questions framework in depth – and I’m keen to make sure it continues to develop to be as useful as possible in ensuring young people take up online opportunities in safe and effective ways. I would really value feedback from anyone working on e-safety:
*Critical questions – as in ‘constructive criticism’ or ‘questions that make you think and re-evaluate activity or behaviour’.
Beth Kanter has very kindly been tweeting about the One Page Guides I put together early last year – as she is planning to use some as part of the We Are Media (check it out if you’ve not already taken a look!) project. If you’ve just arrived here looking for them, you can find all the posts on this blog with How To one pagers on here.
I’ve been meaning to do some work to tidy up and update the One Page Guides for a while now – but so far the opportunity has escaped me. However, as all of the guides are available under a Creative Commons licence you are very much encouraged to take them, update them, rebrand and remix them to suit your own projects and purposes. If you do make any updates to make these guides fit with the way some of the websites and services they describe have changed – please do let me know so I can replace the current versions with your latest copies.
Why one pagers?
Whilst some people are not so fond of the one-side-of-A4 format – I still find in tremendously useful in helping social media beginners to get started using new online tools, and as a great memory jogger for those who like instructions to refer back to. The reality is, that even in the age of rich media, screen casts and blog posts on just about anything you could want to do with social media – most of the people I’ve run training for still work from scribbled notes they have taken in their notebooks from those videos and blog posts. So I’ve found it’s useful to provide pre-prepared supportive guides to go alongside any more flashy training and development resources.
In first creating these resources I also found the discipline of trying to explain a social media tool within the confines of one side of paper to be a really useful one. Unlike a blog post which can go on and on, or a video or screen cast which can always be added to – the limitations of A4 mean you have to communicate only the essential messages about an online tool – and that can really help make it feel manageable and accessible to the social media beginner.
The trouble with one pagers
For all their value – the one page guide is a bit of a beast. Web sites and services are always changing and the guides need updating. But it’s not as easy as editing a blog post – and I’ve found myself endlessly fiddling with layouts when I’ve had to tweak a guide to fit in a new step in a registration process, or to update the screen shots when a service is redesigned.
And whilst designing a one page guide with a specific task and audience in mind works really well, trying to create more general guides, that can be used in different contexts and settings can get a lot more challenging for anything but the simplest of online tools.
The future of one pagers
Whilst not everyone uses tabbed browsers, or is comfortable with a list of URLs and searching for their own How To resources, the ‘print out and keep’ one page guide still has a role. But collating and keeping them updated will remain a challenge. I’m certainly hoping to produce and share some more guides soon – but I’m also reflecting on how there might be a more sustainable supply and stock of these kinds of resources…
If you’ve got ideas, suggestions and reflections on the humble one-pager for social media teaching then I would love to hear them.
[Summary: Yes, it’s time for another 2.0 titled workshop idea. Political theory at BarCampUKGovWeb09 this time]
In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading along to BarCampUKGovWeb09 (you can find my blogging from 08 here) and amongst lots of talking about young people, the web, social network sites and positive activity information I’m hoping to host a session that take’s a step back, strokes it’s beard and get’s a bit philosophical.
But of course, in true social media style, the title includes the ever-used 2.0 designation. Here’s the pitch from the BarCampUKGovWeb09 Ning:
Political Theory 2.0
People have been thinking about government and democracy for thousands of years. But what does all the theorizing from Plato through to Hobbes, Rousseau and Rawls mean when we’re living in a digital world?
Can political theory offer us a framework for better understanding e-democracy and engagement initiatives? What sort of democracy are we building?
This would be a session to workshop an e-democracy/engagement/government initiative with a bit of political philosophy – so either bring your favorite e-project ideas along, or your favorite political theorist and we’ll explore what they have to say to each other…
I’ve already had some great conversations with Paul Evans in working up the session idea – and he has kicked of the discussion with some ideas of what major political theorists might think of today’s e-democracy world:
– Machiavelli would probably have advised his Prince against blogging (but would have told him to lurk and listen)
– Hobbes would probably have said that Machiavelli had a point
– John Stuart Mill would have wanted to see your qualifications before he read your comments
– Tom Paine would have wanted you to be elected before you had any influence
– Edmund Burke would have wanted to be assured that pressure groups had no ability to do anything apart from provide evidence that the elected representatives could sort through
– Schumpeter would have annoyed absolutely everyone in the e-democracy sphere
I’m inclined to think many political theorists might be able to offer us constructive as well as critical points – and I’m really looking forward to taking this exploration further.
If you’re interesting in this exploration too, and you are going to be at BarCampUKGovWeb09 (and even if you’re not…) then join us in planning for the session on the BarCamp network.