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 ‘markup’ to indicate links and formatting.
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.
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.
The concept for these guides is fairly simple, although one I'm still experimenting with.
The goal is that each sheet should take someone from not knowing what a particular social media tool is, nor how they would use it – to at least having taken the first steps to using it in a sensible and sustainable way. And it should do that in no more than one side of A4.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
And how different is a 36 year old from a 45 year old?
You will probably agree with me that the difference in the first case is a lot more significant than that in the second.
So how come the 36 year old and 45 year old are likely to find themselves getting their own age brackets on many surveys (are you aged: 25 – 35?, 36 – 45?, 46 – 55? etc.) when the 6 year old and 15 year old will most likely find themelves lumped together a in the 0 – 19 bracket?
Ok. Here are some possible reasons:
Reason #1: Relevance . We don't generally get 6 year olds to fill in surveys. And indeed, if your survey is about insurance product choice then I would suggest you're right to avoid burdening a child with questions about attitudes towards fiscal risk.
However – if you survey is about some relatively universal experience without a legal limit on who might be participating in it – like, for example, spending time in a community space, accessing the internet or feeling save (or not) crossing the road – then perhaps you should be including the 6 year old and certainly the 15 year old, in your survey.
Reason #2:Limited sample. We may suceed in surveying the 6 year old and the 15 year old, (and the 7 through 14 year olds) but we just don't manage to survey all that many of them compared to, for example, the number of 25 – 34 year olds we survey. So we put the 0 – 19 year olds together in a big category to give us a statistically significant group.
Reason #3: Skills. Carrying out a survey with children and young people can require specific skills and training that many researchers may lack.
Reason #4: Consent and ethics. There may be questions around the capacity of children and young people to give informed consent to taking part in a survey, and about whether the survey will raise questions on issues children should be protected from thinking about.
Do the reasons cut it?
Not really. Reason #1, 'Relevance', is important. It should tell us that as soon as a survey significantly covers issues that are relevant to young people they should be included in the survey data. Issues #2, 3 & 4 are ones we can and should work around.
Why does it matter?
Without including children and young people in the surveys and datasets being used by policy makers and practioners to make decisions on a day-to-day basis, we make children and young people 'statistically invisible'. And that can have a big (quite possibly very negative) impact on decisions made that affect children and young people's lives.
Engaging effectively and honestly with the social web involves listening a lot more than you speak; reading a lot more than you write.
One of the first tools I introduce to clients interested in exploring social media is some form of RSS reader. An RSS reader is a tool to agregate conversations and information from across the social web into one place – making it easier to listen as a foundation for engaging.
Recently, my reader of choice (for those starting out) has been NetVibes. So, here is the next in my series of one page guides – this time looking at NetVibes.
The guide is Creative Commons licenced, so you are welcome to use it in your own work, and to adapt it (Word copy attached below) to contextualise it for different audiences or groups.
For example: In the original copy of this guide I wrote for a client I created a customised NetVibes tab with a range of tools they might find useful and provided a TinyURL link to this as the first step of getting started, instead of pointing people straight to the front page of NetVibes. That way, users could immediately see how NetVibes was relevant to them, instead of first encountering the standard NetVibes modules and tools which are set up for a very different audience.
I'd love to hear about any use you make of this guide.
Given it's Open Space flavour the Digital Media Literacy Summit on Thursday (8th Nov) at the Channel 4 building in London didn't exactly come up with a set of clear action points for building digital media literacy, but it did offer some key insights that can help us on the way.
That said, if the event was a Summit, then participants had climbed to it from many different directions, and I suspect in fact all we have done so far is to move towards a basecamp where we need to consolidate, take stock, and then climp the real peak.
Building the basecamp
I was tasked with capturing interviews with the key speakers at the event, and young reporters from MediaSnackers were roaming the event capturing vox pop interviews with delegates. All the videos are available on the Policy Unplugged website, but below I've tried to weave together a summary of the voices I heard and the threads of conversation that ran throughout the day.
Links in Bold point to the short ( < 3 mins) video interviews with speakers from the Summit that I was tasked to capture on the day.
Paragraphs/sentences in italics show where I'm adding my own commentary or analysis to this summary rather than reflecting on the words of others.
The Digital Media Literacy Summit 2007
Peter Packer, a strategy adviser to the UK Film Council and Media Literacy Task Force, and involved in the convening of the event offered an overview of the media literacy taskforce and it's role in the the debate over digital media literacy in the UK – explaining the importance of building a media literacy that allows individuals to:
Analyse media, understanding its context and the reasons for which it was created.
and
Create media, and understand the creation process.
The charter for media literacy goes some way to expanding upon that. The theme of allowing individual to develop media literacy through creating media was one picked up by Dick Penny from the Watershed in Bristol, who emphasised that digital media literacy is no different from other forms of literacy, and that there have been cultural organisations engaging citizens 'from the edges' in media creation for a long time.
In this mediasnackers Vox Pop Joven and Tom captured a range of definitions of media literacy from around the floor of the conference. Katie and Shadeeka also captured a range of defintions from delegates. For some, digital media literacy isn't about technology – but for others, understanding the devices and the tools is crucial. To an extent, individuals definitions of digital media literacy may appear to map onto whether they are concerned with the analysis of media by the consumer, or the creation of media by the citizen.
The importance of access was a key concern. This arose both in terms of accessing the equipment to connect to the digital media world (as this interview with delegates by MediaSnackers Yaz and Clare shows), and in terms of being able to access social media and digital media spaces in schools and learning environments without being subject to locked-down internet access with blocks on anything interactive.
Controlling content access continued to crop up as a theme – without, it seemed, a clear argument during the day to analyse the role 'intelligent blocking' software has to play in building media literacy. (Without that argument, it might seem blocking just puts off the need for certain 'tough' forms of digital media literacy). It may be that a connected, but arguably separate, debate about internet safety was finding itself tangled up in the day's proceedings.
Whereas Ewan identifies schools as the key location for building digital media literacy, I spoke to Raemmel and Furqan in this vox-pop interview to highlight the role of Youth Work in supporting young people to develop the skills to safely navigate the social aspects of digital media in a world of social networks.
As the event moved from presentations to an open space format, it was clear that there were a lot of questions still to answer. Including:
Is digital media literacy really a new cannon? How much does the technology change things?
The accessiblity of the digital realm to those with learning disabilities was the subject of one open space group, and others tackled the question of digital media literacy for older people. The need for an inclusive digital media literacy agenda was certainly felt.
An ongoing conversation
As I said in opening, this wasn't a summit that lead to a shared conclusion. It launched conversations threads that now need to be tracked forward and woven together.
The inputs were not only in the open space discussions and in speeches from the platform, but were being shared through the blogosphere as live blogs and have been shared in blog posts since (this one amongst them). A quick blog search today turns up a great live-blogged sumamry from Ewan, addressing questions of age and access, and a reflective summary of the day from social media strategist Katie Lips. I'm sure there is more to come…
Update
The Policy Unplugged site where these videos are hosted has been a little intermittent. You can find all of the videos on this youtube channel or using the player below
It continues to suprise me how often different standards are uncritically applied to young people and to adults. The justification for the difference is assumed, but never articulated.
In his speech at the Digital Media Literacy Summit today James Purnell, MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, robustly argued that government shouldn't attempt to censor access to digital media – but quickly noted and praised not long after work going on to develop and certify software that allows parents to block young people's access to 'harmful material'.
I'm not going to go as far as the child liberationists to argue that media censorship for children and young people and not adults is an arbitary imposition without grounds. But I would suggest we need more critical thought about the risks of uncritically talking about a blocking approach to young people's media access and to the protection of young people online.
What do you think?
(I've been acting a social media reporter at the Summit today. You can see some of the videos I captured at http://uk.youtube.com/digitalmedialiteracy. More coming on Monday when I get chance to edit them…)
(The twitter post: Well, it had to come sooner or later…)
I've just returned from an event in Chester (YOMO's Practical Ideas for Participation gathering) where we were making use of a tool called twitter to collect and share instant feedback throughout the event direct from people's mobile phones. The image above shows the feedback we got at the end of the event, all sent in by text message.
This has been my first large-scale experiment with twitter, and so shared below you will find:
A quick account of how we used twitter and a creative commons briefing you can adapt for using twitter at your conferences.
A reflection on the potential for twitter as a consultation/participation tool, and an invitation to suggest a pilot project.
Conference twitter for feedback We set up a conference twitter account, and asked delegates to follow our account via mobile phone (by sending two sign-up text messages).
Throughout the event we were able to send instant text messages to all delegates – letting them know about what was coming up next, and inviting feedback. And delegates were able to text in their reflections, questions and feedback – with their views instantly appearing on the 'twitter wall' projected up on the main room, and on tickers running along the top of each powerpoint presentation being given.
It cost us nothing to set up. And it provided some really insightful gut-reaction instant feedback throughout the event.
The briefing paper I used to get people started using twitter at the event is attached at the bottom of this post.
It's not quite the same as the rest of the 'One pager…' series, as you will need to adapt this to your context if you want to use it. You will find comments in the margins giving you information on what you need to get set up for that.
Community twitter for consultation and participation
Twitter is a very flexible platform for building social networks. In general, it will work something like this:
People opt to follow your updates via the web, their mobile phone, or an instant messenger (gtalk).
You write an update.
Your followers receive your update on the web, by instant message or by text.
They can reply to you by instant message, web or text message either public ally, or privately.
You can read all the responses by phone, on the web or by instant message.
It doesn't cost anything more than the standard cost of any text messages involved.
If you are asking for public replies, then it would be possible to share the question and replies with others by pointing them to your twitter page on the web.
Some twitter users treat it as a way of keeping in touch with a geographically dispersed team. Some twitter users micro-blog using it to alert others to what they are up to.
But, if you're thinking what I'm thinking – you might spot that there is a powerful tool for youth participation here. Imagine this scenario:
People opt to follow your updates via the web, their mobile phone, or an instant messenger (gtalk) – you ask young people across the community to follow your updates by phone, building up a large groups of 250 'followers' across the community.
You write an update – when you need to gauge ideas in the area on a particular issue. You pose a short question.
Your followers receive your update on the web, by instant message or by text – hopefully as many as possible receive the message by text soon after you send it.
They can reply to you by instant message, web or text message either public ally, or privately – you ask for public replies and within an hour you have short text feedback and ideas from 90 young people. You send a text an hour later thanking everyone from feedback and letting them know you no longer need replies.
You can read all the responses by phone, on the web or by instant message – instantly gaining a deeper insight into different young people's views on an issue. If this helps you make a decision or make a change, you can send an update to provide instant feedback,
It doesn't cost anything more than the standard cost of any text messages involved.
If you are asking for public replies, then it would be possible to share the question and replies with others by pointing them to your twitter page on the web – you could send a link to the views to a local councilor to ask them to read young peoples views directly.
I'm not aware of any groups making use of twitter in this way yet (though I would be suspired if there aren't some out there applying it like this – do get in touch) and I would be very interested in supporting a pilot project.
Other applications
For more on applications of Twitter, you might want to check out
The twitter fan wink – that looks at many of the different tools that twitter fans have built to access, use and 'mash-up' information flowing through the service.
Another post in the one page getting started series. This time taking a look at the humble wiki.
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Reason #1: Relevance . We don't generally get 6 year olds to fill in surveys. And indeed, if your survey is about insurance product choice then I would suggest you're right to avoid burdening a child with questions about attitudes towards fiscal risk.
Given it's 
I was tasked with capturing interviews with the key speakers at the event, and young reporters from 
In this mediasnackers Vox Pop Joven and Tom captured 
In his keynote speech (and interview afterwards) James Purnell MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, 
Is digital media literacy really a new cannon? How much does the technology change things?
As I said in opening, this wasn't a summit that lead to a shared conclusion. It launched conversations threads that now need to be tracked forward and woven together.
In his speech at the 
It cost us nothing to set up. And it provided some really insightful gut-reaction instant feedback throughout the event.