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.

Great news last week when We Share Stuff got the go-ahead to run some form of social media workshop / info point (whatever we come up with before the dates!) at this year’s National Digital Inclusion Conference on 27th-28th April.
While the conference is aimed at the leading stakeholders and practitioners, we felt the conference fee would stop many more interested parties getting involved. Thanks to Helen Milner, of UK Online Centres, we have secured a space at the conference to promote the benefits of social media and to hopefully create some useful debate regarding the digital inclusion agenda.

We are now in the throws of organising something. Initial ideas include some form of social media surgery along the lines of those set up by Nick Booth and a live twitter debate, hopefully with some prominent twitterers. We also have a few more ideas up our collective sleeves which we’ll flesh out over the next month or so. Watch this space!

Following on the NIACE digital inclusion conference, we have set up a few ‘guides’ on current Internet usage. It’s really just to see if by providing a simple ‘how-to’ get involved with the social web, we can begin to build adult education related networks, if at all!

The ‘We Share…‘ series will be an ongoing thing and hopefully beneficial in understanding some of the barriers that practitioners / tutors etc face when learning how to the make the most of the social web in an educational context.

Here is ‘The social web’ as defined on Wikipedia.

The Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the World Wide Web. Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. There are different ways in which people want to socialize on the Web today. The first kind of socializing is typified by “people focus” websites such as Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this a profile is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.

The second kind of socializing is typified by a sort of “hobby focus” websites. For example, if one is interested in photography and wants to share this with like-minded people, then there are photography websites such as Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Photobucket.

There are also two ways in which people socialize with each other in the Social Web. The most general and most common type is always at a distance and only on the World Wide Web. In such socializing there is never face to face personal contact. Much of the socializing on Flickr is sharing of photos and making comments on the photos of others. However, where Flickr members come from a common local geographical area, then they are inclined to get together physically for a common photoshoot. This exemplifies the second type of socializing through the World Wide Web: that which leads to real physical contact. Typical examples of the latter arose historically from social networking both within and outside schools and colleges. Facebook’s origins are in the facebook of college students from Harvard University.

The Social Web may also be used to refer to two different, yet related concepts. The first is as a description of web 2.0 technologies that are focused on social interaction and community before anything else. The second is a proposal for a future network similar to the World Wide Web.

In terms of digital inclusion and adult learning, this can be the thing that currently ties everything together. Get involved with the social web, find the relevant networks and start sharing resources, news, applications – anything you like really.

There is a lot of stuff out there and it can be tricky knowing where to start. We like to get people using this stuff straight away so as we’re here, maybe we can get things going using a simple online application called ‘Twitter‘. This application is best described by the blurb on their website…

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

You only need an email address and password to start using Twitter and it’s really easy. Once you have registered, go to our twitter page and click ‘Follow’. We then get a message telling us that you are following us, we’ll follow you too. From then, we can send each other messages or ‘tweets’ about anything at all. In this context, it could be about learning resources and how to find them, other social web stuff, answers and questions..etc. From ‘following’ us, you can also follow any other relevant Twitter user and so we start to build our network of people who know stuff! probably more importantly, we start the conversation. It’s best understood by example so go get yourself a twitter account and we’ll show you where things can go!

http://www.twitter.com/

We mentioned, a short time ago, about our plans to hold a regular surgery for voluntary and community groups, assisting and supporting them with all the gubbins that the Internet has to offer. Well, we now have a launch date, so put Sunday 23rd November in your diaries as the ‘We Share Stuff’ team will be at The Red Couch cafe, Erdington each Sunday morning from 11:00am to around 1:00pm. The surgery will be free to attend and the cafe itself serves a wide selection of drinks and snacks. So if you’re curious about the Internet, want to know how to get a voice online, or merely want to drop by for a chat, please do. The atmosphere is real friendly and we promise not to bombard anyone with jargon. It’s all about showing you how easy the Internet is becoming. If you want to let us know in advance of any particular things you may be interested in, or just to let us know you’re coming along, please add a comment to this blog post or give us a quick call. We look forward to seeing you there!

We Share Stuff is chuffed to announce that we will be running a free Internet surgery every Sunday morning at the Red Couch Cafe, Erdington. We have taken the blueprint established in the Custard Factory run by Birmingham blogger extraordinaire, Pete Ashton. We will be available to answer questions and support community groups, businesses and individuals on the wonderful world of the Internet. Blogging, websites, micro-sites, youtube, facebook et al.. they’re all up for discussion and how they can be used to increase activity, awareness and what not. The sessions will start off as a first come first served basis. The cafe serves a wide range of food and drink and is located on the High Street in Erdington.

Many thanks to Cafe manager, Taf, for letting us use the premesis. In fact, The Red Couch will probably be the first business to use the service after briefly experiencing what we have to offer, they’re keen to get a blog going and get involved…which is what it’s all about… The surgery plans to start early November, we will announce more details on here as and when we have them.

We turned up at Blog Action Day a tad late due to other engagements. By this time, things were in full swing. All the tables were full, the surgeons were talking their stuff and the patients were listening intently on the benefits of blogging. This is exactly how it happened.
Again, it proved a healthy demand for this knowledge exists within the community but we kind of knew that. What the group, and more so, Nick Booth for being the lead organiser, proved was a way of making it happen that proved useful to both attendees and hosts. It wasn’t just a case of filling spaces to satisfy funding requirements. One question came up about how the event was organised so quickly and effectively. I heard Nick mention that it happened because “we’re all networked”.
The event worked well, the people who attended came because they knew, or thought they might gain something from attending. This event didn’t really look at the real crux of the Digital Divide. Exchange the people in that room with people who didn’t want to be there, who couldn’t care less – then what do you do? how can you use the technology to encourage them to be more active? get involved with community stuff? improve their education?
Ideally, those who attended the surgery will take back what they ‘learnt’ to their projects and groups and promote the technology. Hopefully it will encourage further exploration. The event was a great starting point though, and proved what can be achieved with a little organisation and belief.

Birmingham bloggers get involved in Blog Action Day. We’ll keep a track of ongoings and post any relevant stuff as and when.

I’m finding that the more meetings I have with interested groups or individuals, helps me define the We Share Stuff aims, provision and what not. An example is the meeting we had with Service Birmingham over at the Aston Pride Project. I was explaining how our service users would connect to our programme, be it a single blog or a range of Internet applications and how to do this simply and possibly, most effectively (thus far) was to sign up for an online email account such as Googlemail. As so many online applications now require an email address to use them, this would provide a gateway to all the online stuff that would be needed. Mike Farmer from Service B’ham picked up on that we were using an email account for this specific purpose and not for what email was originally intended for – communication by sending emails to one another.

I didn’t realise at first that we were doing this, but it’s all part of resourcing applications to meet the objectives. Over the past five years I’ve found myself using Internet resources for many more things than they were intended for. Another recent example would be the Birmingham created I So Wish. This little online application lets users enter their name and make a wish. Really, really simple. I added it my list of online resources in helping me identify possible Literacy issues with low IT skilled service users.

Since starting this project we set up a delicious account and began tagging applications that might be of benefit.  Always a work in progress but this will get included in the main We Share Stuff site as a shared resource.

A couple of things to update on. Firstly, the whole digital mentoring thing, found some earlier actions and debate on this issue, check out Dave Briggs stuff on this. Secondly, the taster sessions are starting to fill out. Looks likely that we’ll be working with some NEETs linking in to the young offenders, also the Aston Pride project has a number of groups including another NEET project linked into the Salvation Army, also some Parent groups and possibly some Adults for who English is a second language (ESOL). Furthermore, a disability group are keen for a session too. I hope to bring all these projects together with more details as and when we have them. The technical side of things is gaining momentum. The main site is up but no content there just yet, also Kev has completed the logo for the project so we can start branding some stuff. The OCN accreditation is in progress and we have secured some vital 3rd Sector Peer Mentoring alongside some training sessions and conferences booked. Plenty there! and i’ll elaborate on these over the next week or so.