Tim's Blog – Page 38 – working for social change; exploring the details; generally quite nuanced

Links round up: research ethics, positive youth development and oxfam youth board

Published at last - Positive Youth Development Literature Review To help with clearing the 'To Blog' list before the Christmas Break – here's a quick round up of links that may be of interest…

(Welcome to any new subscribers who have arrived since the flurry of one page guides earlier this week. There will be more of those in the New Year – for now the blog returns to it's general eclectic focus linking youth participation, social change and social media.)

Youth Participation and Youth Work

The newly launched Young Researcher Network are making use of their new blog to ask for your responses to their Everyday Ethics research questions. Q1. What have been the ethical dilemmas you have experienced doing research?
The NYA have published a new report on young people's access to transport, plus a literature review unpacking Positive Youth Development models for youth work programmes for an English audience (which I co-authored… more on that soon….)

Children and Young People Now magazine have entered the blogosphere with a new community site. It's a little light on content and interaction at the moment – but a welcome addition to creating a space for growing the online community of youth work professionals.

Social Justice

Oxfam GB are recruiting new Youth Board members. Open to young people in the UK aged 16 to 25. As an outgoing board member after a two-year term I'd be more than happy to answer any questions about what is involved.
Rachel (my wife) has just started working with the Intercultural Communication and Leadership School in Leicester. They'll be running a number of courses in 2008 for young leaders from different communities from across the city. And of course, one of Rachel's first tasks has been to get the ICLS Leicester Facebook group up and running over here.

Cool stuff

I spotted this post via Ewan: Building an interactive whiteboard with Nintendo Wii controllers – a New Year project perhaps.

One page guides: voicethread and motionbox online video editing

Sharing stories with voice thread These two one page guides were written very specifically for the Young Researcher Network launch conference and look at online video editing and using the voicethread tool for collaboratively narrating slide shows and presentations.

I was introduced to VoiceThread by Al Upton and the miniLegends during the 31-days to a better blog challenge this summer. It's a really interesting tool, and so, with this one page guide my aim has been to offer an introduction to VoiceThread, but to leave open to discussion it's possible applications. I'd love to hear stories from those who have used VoiceThread in any consultation, participation or youth work contexts.

You can download the introduction to VoiceThread as a word file here (PDF coming when I get hold of a better PDF convertor which handles translucency without it looking horrible…).

Online Video with Motionbox The second guide outlines how you can edit video online using MotionBox. For users whose computer systems are firmly locked down by the corporate or local authority IT department, online editing may well present one of the best options for quickly creating and sharing effective video content.

You can download the Online Video Editing with Motionbox guide as a PDF here, or grab the original word file to modify from here.

MotionBox is one of many tools that have recently emerged for editing video online. I chose it for this guide as, of those I knew at the time, it seemed to offer the best 'walled garden' of video content that I felt comfortable using with a group of young people aged 13 to 25. I'm planning to explore JayCut as an alernative tool worthy of a one page guide soon.

Does anyone reading have experience with other online video editing tools? Which would you recommend?

Attachment: Sharing stores- with voicethread.doc
Attachment: Online video – with motion box.pdf
Attachment: Online video – with motion box.doc

One page guides: online mapping & google earth

These two one page guides were written for the Young Researcher Network launch conference where they were used as part of a session introducing social media tools for young researchers.

I've always found geographic and mapping visualisations to be really helpful in participation projects (as in this series of workshops on the local offer), and so these two guides explore how Google Earth and the My Maps feature of Google Maps can be used to add an online dimension to community mapping projects.

In the 'Custom Online Maps – with maps.google.com' guide I've tried a new technique, picking up on the annotated screen shot style of Sue Waters (example here) to show the different options available on My Maps.

You can download 'Custom Online Maps – with maps.google.com' here as a PDF for printing, or if you want to edit and adapt a copy, grab the original word file here.

The 'Mapping your community with Google Earth' guide explains:

Google Earth allows you to view high resolution satellite images of your local area on a 3D globe.

You can add annotations and notes onto Google earth to record information about your area.

You can add lines and shapes to mark out particular areas on your map.
You can share your annotations so that they can be accessed on Google Maps (maps.google.co.uk) or in other mapping tools.

You can download the 'Mapping your community with Google Earth' guide as a PDF here, or as a word document for editing it is available here.

This guide is only a very brief introduction and is very specific in having been designed for a 25 minute mini-workshop introducing Google Earth. I'm mainly sharing here for those who were at the workshop and have asked for a copy…

The Young Researcher Network launch conference where the workshop took place also explored how you can use Flickr to create a photo map. There is an earlier guide that mentions that to be found here.

Attachment: Online maps.pdf
Attachment: Google Earth.pdf
Attachment: Google Earth.doc
Attachment: Online maps.doc

One page guide: online surveys

Online surveys I wrote this one page guide on running an online survey in response to a suggestion from Damien at ChangeMakers Virtual Volunteering programme, and to go towards a section on online consultation and participation I've been putting together for Participation Works.

You can download the guide for printing here (PDF), or for editing here (Word doc).

The guide gives an overview of setting up and running an online survey with SurveyGizmo.com. The sharp-eyed reader will notice that in fact the screen-shot in the guide is of a SurveyMonkey survey. This is no particular reason for this other than I had that particular survey open at the time. And it shows diversity.

As with all the guides in this series, it is aimed at someone who has perhaps heard of online surveys (or blogs, rss and wikis etc.), but doesn't really know what they have to offer or how to get started. The guide is designed to at least show that it's not that scary – and that these online tools have real practical applications.

I'm planning to experiment with some more 'platform agnostic' guides in the near future – but so far I've found that because every provider names things slightly differently ('analyse responses', 'create report' etc.) it gets quite difficult to create something that will help a new user feel secure rather than worried…

Attachment: Online Surveys.pdf
Attachment: Online Surveys.doc

One page guide: introducing wikis

Another post in the one page getting started series. This time taking a look at the humble wiki.

From the document:

A wiki page is a bit like a whiteboard. All you need is a marker pen and you can change the content of the whiteboard. On a wiki page, just search for the edit link and you can change the page contents directly from your web browser.

Unlike a whiteboard, however, a wiki will store a history of page changes so you can see how a page has changed over time, and can bring back an old version if you want to.

A wiki website is build up of interlinked wiki pages. It is easy to create new pages. Wiki pages are usually created in plain text with special â€˜markupâ€™ to indicate links and formatting.

You can download the guide for printing here, or for editing here.

Because of the group I designed it for, this version of the guide suggests that users get familiar with the wiki concept by trying to edit a relevant page on Wikipedia, and then uses Wikispaces as it's example of a build-your-own wiki. This may not be suitable for all groups – but, as the sheet is Creative Commons licenced you are free to apapt it to suit the context you are working in.

A few wiki links:

Wiki Patterns – a toolbox of patterns & anti-patterns that will make a wiki work – and a guide to the different stages of introducing a wiki into a group or organisation setting.

I particularly like the Barn Raising pattern, which reminds me, Watford Gap and I had earlier this year thought about a UK not-for-profit bit of wiki barn-raising on Wikipedia. A new-years-resolution project for 2008 perhaps..
Wikis in plain english – excelent video introduction to wiki concepts by Common Craft.
Wikispaces – Free hosted wiki of choice for most of the mini-collaborative projects I've come across.
DokuWiki – a suprisingly powerful and effective wiki system to install on your own servers or intranet. My wiki of choice for keeping myself organised on a day-to-day basis.

Attachment: 8 – Wiki in One Page.pdf
Attachment: 8 – Wiki General.doc

Online video for policy and participation: discussion starters

Common Craft Video

A quick pointer to two interesting sets of online videos that could be useful to youth workers and participation workers:

Youth-led media makers Catch 21 Productions have a YouTube channel where this week they've shared some short 'newsbite' video inputs on current policy issues. Nothing flashy. Just a really well scripted video perfect to introduce the issues in a group discussion. Here's their newsbite on sex education…

You can find more of the newsbites over here. And with YouTube you can subscribe to the channel to get updates by e-mail when new videos are available – meaning that if Catch 21 keep up the great work you can always have a video on hand for help exploring contemporary topics with any youth groups you are working with.

And I've recently discovered that explanation experts Common Craft not only offer the low-down on social media tools, but have also turned their technique to explaining School Finance in Calafornia. .

Ok, so unless you are in Calafornia this particular video may not be very useful to you – but it certainly raises questions for me about ways this style of video could provide stimulus and context for deeper consultation on complex issues.

What do you think? Have you seen other good examples of online video that could be used in youth work and participation work contexts?

(This post has two embedded videos in. If you're reading this in an e-mail update or an RSS reader you may not see the videos. Simply click through the title to the full post to view the videos.)

Youth work and social networking: starting with a survey

Appologies to any youth workers out there (particularly if you've got a participation remit) – I seem to be asking quite a lot of you this evening – but, after weeks of preparation I can happily announce the launch of the 'Youth Work and Social Networking' survey as part of a wider research project I'm working on for The National Youth Agency.

To quote from the post I've just written over on the project blog.

How are youth workers using online social networking tools themselves and in a professional context? And what is the role of youth work in supporting young people's interaction with online social networking?

Those are two of the questions we're hoping to get a little closer to answering through this online survey.

If you are a Youth Worker in England and you can spare up to 25 minutes of your time, then please do head over and complete the survey online before the 21st January 2008.

Your answers will inform a series of focus groups and action research projects running between February and April, and will feed directly into the final project report due in mid 2008.

I'm collaborating on the research project with Pete Cranston and just through our initial conversations and early background reading, a wealth of fascinating sub-questions about how youth work interacts with online social networking have been thrown up. So I'm hopefuly that through the survey we'll soon start to see the outlines of some answers emerging – although I'm sure as many questions will be raised as answered!

We're targetting the survey at 22 specific local authorities, but other youth work professionals from England are very much welcome and encouraged to complete the survey also.

What tech tools would you use for engaging young people in decision making?

Using VoiceThread for Consultation and Participation

I've been asked by Participation Works to put together a series of pages on 'Technologies for Youth Participation' – so I'm looking out for all manor of technologies and tools that can be used to engage young people effectively in decision making and creating change.

From offline electronic voting keypads and twittering at events, through to collaborative online forums that allow young people to influence a policy process over the long term – I'm interested in hearing from you about:

processes you might have been involved in that have used technology to engage young people in decision making

and/or
new and existing tools that you think have real potential for young people's participation in decision making and why

Drop me a line or use the comments to share your stories and suggestions.

As an aside, it's great to see Participation Works getting ever closer to fully joining the social media world with the addition this week of 'Share This' links, and the news that Takover Day at PW brought participation workers blogging a step nearer.

PW introduces share this link