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!

Over the past month or so I’ve been talking a lot with colleagues from We Share Stuff, from BCU, and with bloggers I know in Birmingham and beyond about digital mentoring.  The idea of digital mentoring assumes that we are all better off if we can all make good use of all the digital goodness around us.  This has it root in a number of commonly held beliefs: we’re more employable if we have better digital literacy, we’re more socially mobile if we can move through the digital world with ease, and we’re better able to be active members of a democratic process that is increasingly mediated online.

Off the back of this, I came up with a list of three things I wish my students could do from Day 1 when they arrive at Birmingham School of Media: these are not core IT skills that most students already have (email and word processing), but basic social media ideas that make them active and included digitally.

Three steps to digital inclusion

1. Make use of RSS:  the only realistic way to track the things that matter is to you is to use RSS: quite simply it brings the things that matter to you directly to your computer screen, so you don’t need to search them out. There’s no need for me to explain RSS in any great depth, when my BCU colleague Andre Dubber has already done it so well on his New Music Strateies blog.
2. Be able to blog: blogging won’t be relevant to all of the people all of the time, and it may be an activity that comes in fits and starts until an author finds their voice.  But understanding that you have the ability and the right to self-publish what matters to you using free services is a vital step to being digitally included.  We Share Stuff prefers WordPress.com for simple and freely available blogging, and we can even help organisations by taking them through the early stages of setting a blog up.
3. Begin building a network: this third step is more strongly aligned to a model of digital inclusion for my students, though I think it has relevance to all.  A presence, even a basic one, on Linked In is the best way to put yourself in the telephone directory of the digitally included, and underpin the conversations and relationships built through reading and writing online.  I think of Linked In as three services: my CV online, and an address book that will follow me around where ever I go and always stay up to date, and a way of keeping my connections up to date with the progress of my work.  For other people, Facebok, MySpace, Twitter, or a combination of all these and more might be more appropriate.

Before these three items can come into play there is an initial benchmark for computer literacy: understanding file structures, mouse control, the metaphors of modern operating systems (point, click, file, folder), and the ability to send an email.  My list of three doesn’t necessarily assume this benchmark has already been achieved: demonstrating these three aspects of digital inclusion provides a context and a set of real learning outcomes that can be used as the basis of a new way of teaching computing to those who have never even turned on a PC or Mac.

Stuart and I spent today in Coventry at Grapevine, a charity whose vision is “that people with learning disabilities are included in everyday life and enjoy lives enriched by having valued roles and being ‘connected’ to communities.” ‘Connected’ and ‘communities’ are words that fit well in the ethos of empowering people with social media skills, so we were happy to go along and see what we could do to help.

The guys and girls at Grapevine today were part of a media skills course, led by Denise Stokes, they are learning about how news works – what makes it and how it’s told. The course already has a blog — but at the moment it’s written by the tutors, by the end of the course the hope is that the trainees will have taken over.

We split the group into two, and tried to find out what each person wanted from the internet — the replies ranging from “the news” to “Elvis”.

There are already a couple of keen photographers in the training group, so Flickr seemed a good way to get everybody involved. First we looked for some pictures of The King, and Geraldine was really happy to find a group of photos of Elvis impersonators — nine Elvi obviously being better than one. We forget so easily how the simple skills of being able to find things on the ‘net that we enjoy can open up tons of opportunities — a ‘divide’ that can be so easily crossed if done in an engaging way.

The next stage was to get someone up and running and sharing, so Alan (already very into photography) took a photo and had his own Flickr account within minutes.

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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.

I met with Sue Barton at OCN in Stoke last Friday to discuss the project and how OCN fits into the whole set up. Again, the project got the thumbs up from Sue and we found ourselves agreeing on many things specifically around the whole Adult Education / IT / Learning areas. Initially, I was keen to explore the potential of new courses / units based on our Web2.0 platform but found myself having a “a-ha!” moment when Sue suggested utilising the existing portfolio. Having looked at the unit requirements and outcomes I am more than confident that we can use their framework to deliver recognised and relevant qualifications. I am still keen to explore the development of a new course(s) but at this stage of the project, I think the OCN route seems feasible.

First thoughts are that the project aims to deliver the NOCN Entry Level Award for Progression (Entry 3). This qualification has a certain flexibility in it’s delivery options and can easily map the projects aims / issues such as engagement, worklessness and confidence. “These quals develop the skills and knowledge that will enable people to progress to further / higher education or employment” (OCN). Without going into too much detail, each participant would undertake a series of sessions totalling approx 30 hours. In these sessions, they would cover areas such as personal learning programmes, job seach skills, interview techniques, internet & email usage (There are many existing units to choose from and as a project, we need to decide which will be most suitable) but with our project twist of everything delivered using social media / web2.0 applications, including all the evidencing and reporting plus anything else we can think to chuck in to the mix.

So while we have that task to work through, we also need the project to become a registered OCN centre. So apart from the usual form filling stuff, this is actually taking us somewhat down the route of a real structure for the project..marvelous! These things obviously don’t happen for free, but we built in the centre recognition costs into our project startup bid through UNLTD, which we’re still awaiting news on.

Another extremely relevant debate sparked by Nick Booth (Podnosh) this time addressing the issues of the digital divide. This is a subject which is at the very heart of what I believe the NBSE project will look to address. I agree with most of what is being said in that the focus should be on the communities not the technology but I do have some fears that the wrong people will be rushing to throw their weight behind any potential progress.

Thought it might be useful to do a quick blog on Adult Learners Week which runs from the 17th – 23rd May this year. I’ve been involved in adult education for nearly a decade now and i’m keen for the NBSE project to play a big part in harnessing social media for the benefit of these learners, amongst others.

Wouldn’t it be good if our project could be part of the celebrations next year?

One initial thought is whether we are reinventing the wheel here. Is this kind of thing already happening?

E-Skills UK is currently working on a 5 year strategic plan and the latest revision has some interesting stuff, only after a quick five minute scan, already there are loads of thoughts popping into my mind on how our proposed venture can tackle some of the issues raised. I’ve also found myself going “but what about this?” and “why don’t they talk about that?”. Anyway, i’ll post some more on the plan when I’ve had chance to have a good read.

There are many different avenues our project can take but from my own point of view, the E-Skills things seems pretty relevant and to answer my original question. ” What took us so long to get started?”

As the purpose of the North Birmingham Social Enterprise will be to introduce social media to the community, we will be using social media in order to raise awareness of what we are doing in making the enterprise happen.  To kick this off, this morning I setup a Facebook group that will allow us to post up meeting dates and discuss items in a more conversational way than what can be achieved on the blog.  Although this blog is not to be in any way formal, the Facebook group will be even more so.  I have left the group open so that anyone who is interested in contributing may come along and do so.  In order to make the group accessible to the whole UK I have set the location to Global (a specific location or Global is required).   Why Global? I have seen problems with using groups before with people wanting to join a group which is only set to a certain geographic region.  I don’t wish to alienate anyone who may be able to give us some guidance on funding or the social enterprise model.

Fortunately Stuart and I, being members of the Birmingham Bloggers group, we have a ready made platform of individuals who are involved in social media and may have knowledge of the social enterprise model.  Therefore I sent a group email round to the Birmingham Bloggers to let them know about what we have planned, provided them with a link to the group and asked if they would like to be involved.

Today I have setup a skype chat which is publically available and will hopefully attract anyone that has interest in the subject so we can pick their brains.  Feel free to pop along and join in the conversation.

Social enterprise and social media skype chat