The (late) Breakfast Society

  • Digital Youth Work – Appreciating the Environment

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    scissors
    November 8th, 2008masInnovation & Technology

    I’ve had a go at designing the framework for the first of the Open Source Youth Programme courses – titled ‘Appreciating the Environment’.

    In the film I’ve gone over how the course would actually work. What its lacking at the moment is the meaty bit in the middle – the practical activities that use digital technology & online resources to help young people appreciate their local environment. Take a look at the film and the rest will make sense….
    (Note that if you can’t view the text on the slides too well you can download them in pdf format from slideshare here)

    So now is an open appeal for suggestions of practical activities that could be used to help young people ‘Explore’, ‘Enjoy’ and ‘Experiment’ with their local environment.

    In the film I’ve already suggested using digital photography to take photos of local points of interest and uploading these to Flickr.

    Enjoy Explore Experiment
    Flickr activity: Use digital cameras/mobile phones to take photos of points of interest in the local area, upload to Flickr, add relevant tags and comment on others photos

    The next steps for me are to explore how to set up a site that allows everyone to properly collaborate & contribute to further ideas for the programme and getting this done has actually been very helpful for me to think about what kind of functionality will be needed (it will take a bit longer to actually get something up & running though!).

    In the meantime it would be brilliant to get some ideas in from people for activities to fit in the boxes above and then when the time comes I’ll move these over to the new space and then move on to developing the rest of the programme.

    If you want to view/use the slides without having to watch the film all over again you can get them via slideshare here

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  • ade
    hey mas - i was thinking of how to do something in the experiment side and this is not the best idea in the world but what about something that encourages the young people to come up with ideas for how the want to re-design, shape their local environment and link that to a FB page or local blog and encourage comments...
  • mas
    lol I realised after the experiment one is really hard isn't it?! I think your thinking is definitely along the right lines there though -the idea of being able to reshape your environment (or at least ideas for doing that). Theres a lot of online drawing tools that could be used for that and maybe something to look into would be online gardening stuff - I best theres something for designing your garden online so maybe somethings out there that could be adopted for community spaces and who knows maybe something with a widget to put into a social network??!

    I'm going to put some time in soonish to look at a range of ideas but for now please stick your thoughts up when you have them as even the ones that seem obscure & silly provoke good ones eventually ;-) (not that I mean your idea is obscure or silly Ade! its good)
  • mas
    Ade - hows about this?.....

    Get young people to take photos of an open space/area they'd like to change. Then use skitch http://skitch.com/ and get them to draw over the photos they have with their ideas as to how that space could be redeveloped. Completed ideas could then be uploaded somewhere for comments & ratings & the best ideas either built on for a project or sent to relevant authorities to consider - could be good for community play areas/skateboard parks etc.

    Only prob is I think skitch is mac only so we'd need some windows or purely online alternatives (am sure theres plenty)
  • Hi Mike, I've put a link to this blog on a new 'private' social networking site that we are developing for the participants on our Wiltshire "NVQ in Youth Work" course. It will be opened to the participants this week. It's our intention to offer a site where all the curriculum materials are available and were the 'tutors' are on-line at set times where they can support the participants. The internal verifier has agreed to go on-line monthly and support the development of the portfolios for the participants, which do seem to be a stumbling block. I, together with one of my colleagues, will trawl the net on a regular basis looking for interesting articles, blogs etc. that could inform their learning. If it develops well, and I do have a little fear about how and how often it will be used, we will be looking for some guest "presenters" to offer a perspective at various times. When we reach that stage, I'll be looking to fund this activity, in the same way that a college/uni would do for visiting lecturers/speakers. I am really interested in the plans you have for 'digital youth work' and will watch (and if I've got anything to offer - will comment) as it progresses. Best wishes, David
  • mas
    Thanks David and that sounds very interesting. I imagine it will take some time to pick up but I can't help thinking that at some stage its inevitable the youth work sector will finally take advantage of using the web more fully (although I've been saying the same thing for at least 5 years!).

    For now I'm exploring options for setting up a dedicated online space to develop the digital youth work idea - hopefully this won't take too long and once done I'll spread the word as much as possible. Good luck with the NVQ plans - is really good to hear about that sort of thing.
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