We Share Stuff recently received funding from Becta as part of the Learning Revolution to develop a web based group mentoring service — it’s called Five Minute Mentors and is based around the idea of quick video chats.

5 Minute Mentors enables co-mentoring within existing groups: Individuals request help and advice from other group members on specific topics. This takes place outside of the meeting/learning schedule and both mentor and mentee can choose the best available time slot for their conversation. All sessions are limited to five minutes ensuring minimal time outlay for both parties. Privacy and security are priorities and the application ensures no personal information is given out unwittingly by either party.

5MM aims to promote shared knowledge, improving the learning experience for all.

We’re looking for existing learner groups to be involved at this early stage. As part of the pilot for the project we are actively looking for suitable groups – at all levels of ability, subject knowledge and technical know-how – to help us fully beta-test the application, iron out any functional issues and provide feedback for improvements to the finished service. Our development costs are covered by the funding, so any involvement of your organisation in this project would not require any financial outlay by you or the group members/learners testing the service.

We’re blogging all about the development over at fiveminutementors.com.

We’re really pleased to announce what we think is the first officially accredited course in understanding and using social media for those with no previous experience. We Share Stuff has developed the course and it’s now part of the OCN framework (WSS are an OCN Centre), as three units of 10 learning hours each.

As it’s platform agnostic (it doesn’t prescribe certain sites or tools) and also driven by the learners as to use, it’s applicable to anyone that wants to get to grips with the social web and gain the confidence to get involved.

We envisage it being useful to businesses, young people — almost anyone — with the bonus of a real qualification at the end of it. We’re now looking for opportunities to deliver it… the fun starts here.

Check out the full details and the course itself here.

As an organisation that does nothing apart from sharing its skills (and some basic admin of course, and chatting and coffee) it’s lovely to have someone share skills that we need with us. And so we’re extremely happy to have had Lyndsey Michaels working with us for the last month or so.

Lyndsey has tons of experience in marketing and communications as well as being someone who understands the tricky business of bid-writing, she’s already become a hugely valuable member of the We Share Stuff team. She’s managed to smooth our bid-writing process out, slapped us into shape about focusing on the right bits at the right time — and been a refreshing presence in our meetings.

Like all of us, We Share Stuff isn’t a full-full-time job, so if you’d like Lyndsey to work with you I’m sure she’d be happy for you to get in touch.

Digital Mentors are people we work with to help to train, advise and inspire our clients in the use of social technology. Our clients are usually defined as “digitally excluded”, but may also be socially excluded too — we focus a lot of our work on NEETs – young people not in employment, education or training.

Digital Mentors need to either be working with social media, or using it personally on a regular basis — doing it as part of the rest of their activities, not something separate. We Share Stuff feels that the use of social technology shouldn’t be seen as different, difficult, or “something else to learn”, but simply another way to connect and create.

Digital Mentors need to be confident in trying new tools and networks, passing that confidence on to others — our aim is to use informal learning, letting clients chose their own reasons for interacting. That means that we don’t prescribe types of content, sites or tools to use, but instead help instil the knowledge to choose the appropriate way for each task and the basic skills and confidence to learn the rules and techniques of the tools.

We are an accredited OCN (Open College Network) provider and are working on our own social media course that will fit into QCF framework. No previous teaching or assessment experience or qualifications are necessary, but there may be opportunities to gain them.

As our work is project based, we need to be able to engage freelancers to help deliver training — work may not be regular, and we will have a team for each project. Some availability in normal working hours is much preferred. We’re based in Birmingham (UK) so most of our work is based in and around the West Midlands.

Our Digital Mentors need to be comfortable with working with young people, and in some instances may require a CRB certificate and/or public liabilities insurance (we will both advise and help on these issues).

Drop us a line in the first instance, and we’ll talk.

We’ve just heard some good news. The proposal we put forward to run an accredited training programme with Sandwell Youth Offending Team has been accepted. We start delivering our social media flavoured course from September. The course is designed to give young people a range of resources, skills and a qualification in support to them finding employment, training or going into education.

Once we have the course underway, we will share the hows and whats in more detail right here.

Just a quick update on proceedings. As you can see, we’ve trimmed down our logo and site. The site is now a tad faster, looks cleaner and we’ve tried to explain what we do a little better too. A lot of behind the scenes stuff is happening, we’ll update on new projects as and when we get the go ahead.

It was very gratifying to see We Share Stuff mentioned in the third issue of Wired magazine’s new UK edition. It was part of an article on co-working (and Brmingham Social Media Café), and we were mentioned because the informal meetings of people interested in social media was one of the driving forces in starting to do what we do.

As the article isn’t online, here’s a quick scan of “our” bit:

UK Online Centres with a little support from David Wilcox and Dave Briggs, have started up the digital engagement blog and, more interestingly, a digital engagement network. The idea (I think) is to try and harness all the current digital stuff happening across the UK in an effort to help shape policy and build what they’re calling a ‘digital manifesto’. There’s some positive stuff going on right now on the network and hopefully it will shape up to be a hub for all manner of digital engagement / mentoring / inclusion. More will be announced during this years National Digital Inclusion Conference.

‘We Share Stuff’ is more than chuffed to announce that it has become a recognised OCN centre. In a nutshell, this means we can now offer & develop qualifications relevant to our aims and objectives as an organisation. The OCN repertoire is quite vast and has many learning paths. This flexibility will allow us to work with other organisations and training providers in delivering skills and knowledge with qualifications, relevant to their needs. The next step for us is to continue to work with OCN in developing our curriculum plan. We shall continue to update via the blog as and when there’s more news.

The Digital Mentor bid, led by UK online centres is starting to move along quite nicely now. On Thursday, they are hosting a workshop / meeting for all the organisations that put themselves forward for a lead role on the work packages. We originally intended to put ourselves forward too, knowing full well that there are some pretty big and vastly more experienced orgs than ourselves who will probably get the work. However, I thought this would be ideal experience for us and I believe we have plenty to offer in terms of defining how the digital mentor role should be shaping up. After much pondering and discussion we’ve decided not to attend the meeting, pretty much down to travel costs! While it would be great to attend the meeting, be involved with the structure of the roles, network with contemporaries etc., a trip down to London would not really suit our financial standings at this particular time. While there is some really exciting stuff going on that we’re chomping at the bit to get involved in, we have to remember that the ‘We Share Stuff’ project has only been operating, in reality, less than six months. The ‘to do’ list is looking quite meaty and for the project to succeed, we need to focus on our priorities.