Disqus - Latest Comments for masyomo

Re: If you’re young your views really don’t count!

masyomo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:31:19 -0000

not for some years judging by the current dreary options to choose from, but you can live in hope :-)

Re: If you’re young your views really don’t count!

masyomo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:50:01 -0000

ah well if you're making a case for voting at much younger ages too ie. we're all citizens I'm interested in that albeit obviously all sorts of implications but I can agree that the right to vote doesn't have to be limited only to those classed as adults.

I'm not meaning that if its not a ground up campaign its invalid - I was relating it to something I saw recently (which unfortunately have lost) that discussed that non voting, or getting people to vote is much more important to politicians than it is to the general public ie. this is maybe a part of a bigger drive to get people into politics rather than seeking ways to engage people in ways that they wish to participate - that said the question of who's really pulling the strings is still very relevant.

Another thought maybe related - should the emphasis be on getting people engaged in politics, or getting politicians engaged with those they represent? (& from work I've done recently there is an issue with that at least at a local level)

Re: If you’re young your views really don’t count!

masyomo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:16:30 -0000

it doesn't make sense, but then neither does it if 16 year olds can't have other adult responsibilities too, so do you also lower the age at which people can buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, be sued, gamble, adopt children, get married without consent etc. etc. ?

Agree about the messiness but to me the solution isn't to make childhood shorter, I'd much rather we develop a society that values childhood and values the opinions of children and young people as they are - not simply grant 16+ year olds a right to vote and say well there you go now you've got a 'voice' - what then about 15 year olds does the argument have to be revisited in a few years time to lower it again and diminish childhood further?

I'm not against 16 year olds voting, frankly I don't care but then neither I think do many 16 year olds which is really my point - what difference will it actually make and what difference could instead be made if the time, effort and money was instead being directed at ensuring all young people are valued and listened to and not excluded in the ways like those cub scouts were in Parliament?

A relevant question to this debate is do you consider the votes for 16 campaign to be a truly ground up campaign?

Re: Limited access to youth clubs

bobweasel — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:11:45 -0000

Hi mas, sorry for the slow response!

I totally agree that not all youth work happens in youth clubs etc. I think my point above is really that there is a lack of understanding about what youth work is. I'm not against entertainment per se, I think it is PART of what youth work does. I suppose I get a bit frustrated that people think entertainment is the aim rather than the method.

I also agree that the distance between statutory and voluntary youth provision has widened quite a bit. This is really due to direction the government agenda has taken.

Re: Limited access to youth clubs

masyomo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:25:05 -0000

Youth work doesn't always happen in youth clubs/activities/provision - in fact there are many youth clubs & projects that probably think of youth work as a bit of a nonsense or in any case unnecessary and I think at least since I've been involved the distance between statutory and voluntary youth provision has widened quite a bit.

When I first started in youth work there was quite a lot of talk of 'youth work no longer being about table tennis' so presumably there was cause for the feeling that needed to be stressed!

Personally I'd argue that youth provision for young people in their spare time should be very much about entertainment/leisure with the skill of those providing the provision to use the things that interest them towards their personal development plus of course allowing for the fact that its a perfectly good purpose to simply allow children and young people to be children and young people in a safe place.

Re: An Alternative to Accreditation

masyomo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:01:03 -0000

excellent - I'll get a 'play space' up in a bit :-)

Re: An Alternative to Accreditation

masyomo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:59:16 -0000

Thanks Hilary. Maybe surprisingly I do agree that this *can* be built into in accreditation schemes. I think I've mentioned before that I would make use of accreditation schemes where appropriate - we integrated first aid courses, supported groups to use the Youth Achievement Awards and I was part of the Training Action Group for the National Association of Club for Young People helping to develop their Keystone Awards programme to gain accredited status (through the Open College Network). So I'm not completely anti-accreditation, I just think the emphasis is currently wrong.

Where a programme offers real development opportunities for young people and its possible to add in the ability to gain a certificate or qualification without having to significantly alter how that programme works I think it makes good sense to provide.

Where a programme is directed by the objectives that somebody else has set for the purposes of providing accreditation but doesn't fit with the principles of allowing young people to find their own paths I'm not in favour of it. My experience is that its very hard to find accreditation with that kind of flexibility - I know that Youth Achievement Awards and ASDAN claim to be somewhere near this but I didn't find either flexible enough for the work I was doing.

My other issue is something I think the approach suggested here tackles much better and that is what do young people actually gain? If they do a series of things they're told to do in order to gain a certificate they may or may not take in what it is they were supposed to achieve or gain. If they're encouraged to reflect and consider their own personal developments I think they come out of an experience with a much better awareness of that development - and with this much more confidence to express what this is, and therefore putting them into a stronger position in things like interview situations.

That said, again you're quite right that this *can* be achieved by using accreditation too - if there's good consideration to the process, but its not achieved if people rely simply on the (usually questionable) value of the certificate. I have similar views about a curriculum too - on the one hand I see it as something to cover up lazy, unimaginative and unskilled work - on the other hand if structured properly it makes good sense for consistency and purpose (contradictory arguments like these keep me amused for ages!)

Re: Word Clouds for Personal Development

masyomo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:27:09 -0000

Hi Hilary - I'll get a step by step guide up for how to do this - hopefully tomorrow, if not within the next couple of days.

Re: An Alternative to Accreditation

masyomo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:55:46 -0000

@Chris & Jon (and anyone else interested) is it worth me setting up a blog to keep sharing ideas & developments on this? If so can get something up & send round a log-in for anyone interested in contributing ideas for approaches to measuring outcomes/development etc.

Re: An Alternative to Accreditation

masyomo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:29:23 -0000

lol :-) Its the same with the offline stuff I've made - most of the resources have been through at least 3 revisions and even now I'm looking foward to the next reprint of one of them so I cam make some updates.

Look forward to your apps - am going to play some more with spreadsheets later in the week and see if I can revise any of the gadgets available - thinking a version of the word cloud as a timeline would be interesting.

Re: An Alternative to Accreditation

masyomo — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:43:41 -0000

Hi Chris - I learned the truth of your first statement the hard way - three quarters of the time developing OnTheUp was getting carried away with the possibilities.

I think a 'pathway for progression' is very important and it is another thing that some good learning can be taken from the uniformed youth movements. For volunteers and Trainers we had progression from 'participant', to 'volunteer' (occasional & regular), to 'apprentice trainer', then 'trainer' and finally 'lead trainer'. Alongside this was the idea of 'competencies' - these were different areas and skills related to delivering training that young people needed to become 'competent' in - initially to be able to do, then to be able to train/support others, and then ultimately to be able to 'train trainers'. These were written out in some detail and we did initially begin an assessment method with ratings and personal diaries and each person supported by a peer mentor - but soon realised the key thing with regard to assessing competence was about having relationships and plenty of conversations. This worked well with a fairly close knit group like ours but of course would be more complicated to 'scale' or roll out for bigger organisations. That said my opinion from this is that the value lies in the skills of those leading it and if you can find good people you're better off anyway.

As for competition, I'm in favour of it. Its just that in this particular context its not really possible as the 'ratings' aren't based on any particular standards, yet there is a danger that it could be seen that there is (ie. 10 = perfect (more likely over confident!)) and so needs careful facilitation. You're quite right the perception of competition can be helpful though if managed properly.

We considered SNS applications during the Social Innovation Camp weekend and there probably is some use for them. The question is whether or not young people would use them, plus which network do you choose (are all the young people you work with regularly on one?) and so on. I've just posted up an example of how google spreadsheets could be used for capturing word clouds of skills during projects - something like this could work well if it also allowed young people to submit their responses during projects using a central form, or on a weekly emailed form, or through facebook/bebo applications etc. etc. the more options the better! What I like too about using google spreadsheets is that the data comes in to a format that most people could easily start to manipulate really easily so I'm going to explore this a bit more.

As for playing around yourself please do! I think the more ideas like this and variations/spin offs etc. the better, hopefully then more within the sector will start to see potential for using technology within their work.

Re: Getting Online (part 1)

masyomo — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:53:21 -0000

Hi Tim - that model fits very nicely. Its good to see ideas moving towards opportunities for personal development. Also great to see other things that can potentially be integrated into an overall programme. Still got to work out the best methods for sharing, collating, collaborating etc. but will get to that in time!

Re: An Alternative to Accreditation

masyomo — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:34:48 -0000

Hi Jon - the measuring of whole agencies/big projects was what we were getting into with OnTheUp. It became a bit silly really with lots of talk of how data could be captured and then reports tailored to support funders etc. to be able to assess particular aspects of things they'd funded and whether they were meeting certain needs as well as identifying unexpected outcomes. I say silly because it needs to start from a more basic development first so getting a simpler paper version would be really useful. With time and development though yes it could definitely achieve this and a lot more. One of the biggest challenges is deciding on the methods for obtaining the ratings - we looked at timelines, sms responses and so on, but actually in my experience young people generally seem to quite like doing little rating type exercises so it maybe that this is still the best option.

Will get some thoughts up about a paper based 'prototype' in the next few days.

Re: Spot the Wordle

masyomo — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:39:01 -0000

I think yours is number 4 Tony (confusingly the third one - 2nd on the left from top!). My list of who's who got deleted along with the rest of the last three weeks work so I could be wrong though.

Re: Interested in gaining support of local councillors?

masyomo — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:41:22 -0000

Update: three groups confirmed now so just one remaining - but please do get in touch if interested as its an outside possibility that we may be able to involve more or there could be drop out

Re: Comment on targeted youth work

masyomo — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:38:45 -0000

I think its a very narrow minded approach I've had experience of proving that an all inclusive approach has better results if done in mind that it is still the minority that take up the most of your time.

I'll be very surprised if expressing these views will make any difference though or in fact if they even get noticed. Good to hear like minded views though :-)

Re: Pants!!

masyomo — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:58:03 -0000

lol thats exactly what I'm telling myself ;-)

I'm going to have a look into NAS drives - not sure if time machine works with them but it'll overcome me being too lazy to plug in the USB!

Re: How Will Youth Work Use The Web in 2009?…

Nic Pearse — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:19:34 -0000

Hi sorry for the delay in responding. YOu are right it is a custom CMS system. Basically there are two components: the web bit, that allows an authority to create mini sites for all its organisations and for them to input/control content. The tools are the more valuable element accessed through an extranet. Basically organisations record their own data on what they are doing and this is assembled into a set of reports that enables then to see and record their own performance. This data is then aggregated at a higher level to show managers how they are doing overall. If you click the curriculum tab on the homepage, a menu is available on the right showing curriculum headings based upon the five outcomes. These contain further sub headings that are used to categorise work - thus the work becomes more "countable" Eleven authorities use this core curriculum, enabling comparison between authorities. member organisations create and store "content" i.e. session plans for youth work in the curriculum bank and these are made available to all registered users of the system. Anyone want a demo, then email me and I will talk you through it.

Re: School using Second Life for lessons

masyomo — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:39:56 -0000

thanks DK - will have a listen once my broadband gets fixed!

Re: Spot the Wordle

masyomo — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:02:08 -0000

thats a bit of fun - see if you can sneak a word in without being spotted and get your blog 'wordled' in a few weeks to see if it can be spotted! Think I'd need to widen my vocabulary a bit though!

Re: Comment on targeted youth work

masyomo — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:02:33 -0000

thanks for the pointer - have left a reply. Does she really expect replies though? (most of those who write for CYPNow don't seem to engage a great deal)

Re: Spot the Wordle

masyomo — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:51:20 -0000

lol well maybe now it will become 'February' ;-) We should try a competition to see if anyone can sneak in a word into their writing that becomes a 'big' word!

Re: How safe is your data during the recession?

masyomo — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:56:52 -0000

Hi Lucy - its partly a note to self to get in to good habits, particularly backing up :-)

Re: Spot the Wordle

masyomo — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:26:25 -0000

ah too easy - well spotted ;-)

Re: Spot the Wordle

masyomo — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:12:58 -0000

lol I hope theres nothing unintentionally too revealing! Actually I noticed I need to say 'actually' a lot less :-)