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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.

We Share Stuff is looking for people from all manner of industries to help us with a young people’s project in Sandwell, West Midlands. As part of the project, the young people identify industries they might be interested to work in and are set a task to come up with some questions and interview somebody from that particular industry. The interview will only a be a quick fire Q&A style thing and could take the form of video, audio or any other method that the interviewer decides.

So, if you’re based in the West Midlands (or further afield if interviewed online) we’re asking you if you wouldn’t mind joining our interviewee pool. All you need to do is be available for a quick visit / or online chat etc, from the project team at relatively short notice. Just state your name and job / industry that you’re involved with either on this post, email, twitter etc.

Thanks!

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.

Michael Grimes, aka Citizensheep did a great job in setting up the live blogging stuff from the conference. As we’ve been slow in posting some form of response or update, here’s the blogging as it happened.

Day 2

Yes, it’s the latest, most fashionable Internet thing going right now. Some people couldn’t live without it, others cannot see the point. If you’re yet to understand this ‘Web phenomenon, our very own Jon Bounds has done a rather good beginners guide over on his personal blog. He goes deeper into starting out with Twitter than our quick-fire ‘How To’ guides on this site.

‘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.

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.

An event took place in London on the 17th November, organised by NIACE and focusing on opening access to adults. While the event looked at media, in the broadest sense, all of the morning speakers were very keen to stress the importance of the digital role. There were many facts and figures, research undertaken, stressing the point that it’s about the people, not the technology. In all, plenty of things that we already know. The speakers made their points, the audience nodded in agreement and everyone went home.

I’m sorry to be critical as I’m really supportive of NIACE’s aims, but this whole conference approach really needs shaking up. I spoke to a number of participants at the conference each of whom commented that they hoped to learn something from the event, take back something they can use. The only participation came during the afternoon sessions (knowledge cafes!) but this was really limited. The event speakers did a round table discussion about their own projects. NIACE announced a new project that they have provisionally entitled ‘TV Club’ where adult learners, or groups gather to discuss a specific TV programme and discuss the production methods behind it. Rachel Thompson, Senior Development Officer for NIACE spoke about the possibility of including ‘websites’ in the project too…

The conference didn’t offer wi-fi access but then again, I was the only one slightly puzzled by this apparent ignorance of current technology uses, so it wasn’t really that surprising. Throughout the event, I was online using Twitter to update colleagues on key parts of proceedings and to find out further information on the speakers and their projects. A bonus of being in the Twitter world was that I was able to keep in with another ‘key’ conference that was also on that day. I was hoping to use it as an example of current social media, but the conference just wasn’t that ‘engaging’ and that was a big shame.

Overall I was quite concerned about the lack of knowledge on current digital trends and how they can be harnessed. Maybe this will be addressed at the Digital Inclusion conference, also hosted by NIACE next week. I’m hoping it will definitely be addressed at the Digital Mentor workshop happening today. Which would have been the cooler option to attend this week. But i’m glad I attended this conference. It’s one thing to get excited about advances in the tools and roles, but another thing entirely in recognising the gaps, pitfalls and barriers.