working on a project title....Be Prepared

My job (hence my context)
I work for The Scout Association at Headquarters. My job is National Development Officer

(Safeguarding). Basically a large part of what I do is develop resources and training for volunteers to help them understand their roles and responsibilities within Scouting in regards to Safeguarding (Child protection, anti-bullying, safer recruitment). So I spend a lot of my time out and about meeting and working with volunteers and training trainers who will go on to deliver safeguarding training to volunteers across the country. It truly is an amazing organisation which can't really be paid justice to in a few words. Having worked for the organisation for nearly 7 years I am proud to be a Scout and share the values of the organisation.

My project
My project will be based on work that I already do around empowering adult volunteers in Scouting to use social media in a safe and fun way. For me safeguarding is about enabling people to do things, rather than stopping them - empowering rather than scaring.

You wouldn't climb a mountain...... without being prepared, and so you shouldn't use social media without doing the same!
Currently I offer guidance on a weekly basis about how to use social media safely, and so for my project I want to explore this, and link in research as well as create a multimedia artifact that can be used in work. 


Open education in an open landscape
Looking through the lens of 'inclusion', my project is focused on why adults don't want to use social media or why they feel social media doesn't include them. There are of course some physical barriers like internet access and personal knowledge and skills. However I think that the psychological barriers are the main thing that is making volunteers feel powerless or afraid to use social media. The media today is constantly telling us what a dangerous place the internet is, and e-safety messages for young people are about the risks and the harm that may befall them. For adults working with young people this makes the internet a scary place, especially as for some it's not their natural environment. So we need to help them understand that it doesn't have to be scary, and they can prepare for it in the same way as they would prepare for other 'scary' scouting activities (like climbing).

If we want them to use social media then we need to empower them by addressing their fears and giving them the skills. This will involve looking at the risks and helping them to see both the good and the bad of openness, and helping them to manage their own identities.

Psychological barriers = confidence (power), safety, identity. 
Self-efficacy= make them believe they can do it by adopting a scouting approach (values, preparation, risk assessment and openness)

Key messages:

• Social media doesn't have to be scary
• Use the skills and processes already have to undertake the activity
• Values-driven approach
• Take ownership of identity
• Stay safe by mitigating risk, behaving appropriately

Outcome - Volunteers do amazing things with young people everyday, and we help them overcome their fear of the online world and help them to be part of the open landscape, exhibiting their values and being appropriate roles models and effective 'digital' citizens.

Am I a digital scholar?

For a pragmatic reflector, I am spending a lot of time this week thinking. Not so much action. The first question I have been pondering is whether or not I am a scholar. I have struggled with this question throughout my master's journey, as a lot of online education, focuses on formal education.I guess I am an informal educator. I work with adults, and sometime young people, outside of academic institutions. I need to get over this, as although a great many of the approaches and the research are about 'academics', they are not the only 'scholars' inhabiting the network In fact some might say they were the minority.

A Digital scholar according to the great wiki is someone who uses "digital evidence, methods of inquiry, research, publication and preservation to achieve scholarly and research goals"

Martin Weller http://www.slideshare.net/mweller/ten-lessons-in-digital-scholarship

So. I spend a lot of time online. Connecting with others. Researching. Reading. 'Discovering' new things.There isn't a lot of formal learning for my area of practice (or at least I haven't found it yet, but I am a bit of a hybrid) and therefore if I don't seek out new knowledge for myself, then there would be few other places to go. I then use that knowledge in my day to day work and in developing the resources for my organisation. So there you go. On almost a day to day basis I am learning online, integrating this into my current knowledge and experience in order to apply practically to my work and the training that I deliver. However the 'digital' part at the moment is mainly acquisition, and participation through networking with others. I haven't yet 'created'. I guess you could call this blog a creation, but really it's just a means to direct my reflections is an organised way.

Actually. I may have been tough on myself there. I am in factor a digital learner. My Masters has been completed through online methods, with very little face to face contact (I met my tutor four times on the last module - that was nice). So as a student I have been learning, researching, applying and creating in a digital environment. It seems therefore a good place to be, as I am undertaking my final masters module then, that I am pondering how I move from a digital learner to a digital trainer/teacher/scholar?

Web 2.0 - Education 2.0 : Weller

Weller, M. (2009) ‘Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change’, On the Horizon, vol.17, no.3, pp.181–9; also available online at http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/ .m/ welleronthehorizon.pdf

Key points

•  Online learning  environment is route by which university understands/maintains it’s relevance to society
•  Need to change metaphor/pedagogies for learning (although using same metaphors help to cross the chasm).
•  Issues in current education – limited curricula; personalisation (inflexibility); meeting changing demands; informal learning
• Affordances (like that of lecture hall) at odds with what most educators would view as key components of learning – dialogue,reflection,critical analysis
• Also at odds with experience outside education / using social networks
•  Conole 2008 – learning theory has shifted to social and situated learning from a behaviourist, outcome based, individual learnin
• ‘Decentralisation’ – participation/network/social relies on a decentralised model
• ‘Social Learn’ to discover how learners behave in this sphere; thus develop appropriate tech and supp structures and pedagogies. 
•  As tools become easier to use, methods for integration simpler, centralised system less applicable (costs of integrating technology online has been reduced, so feasible for individual)
• Shirky “when we change the way we communicate, we change society”

“higher education will face a challenge when learners have been accustomed to very facilitative, usable, personalisable and adaptive tools for both learning and socialising, why will they accept standardised, unintuitive, clumsy and out of date tools in formal education they are paying for”

Comment

I enjoy reading Weller. The use of anecdotes and the rhetoric used is very engaging. Back in Block one Sfard talked about the idea of changing metaphors, and pretty much every article you read around using technology in education, talks about the need for new pedagogies. We once again pick up this idea of life technologies being different to learning technologies. But that little niggle remains in my brain - do students want to use the technologies that they use in life for learning? Do learners know that they are meant to making their own choices about learner? At 35, I know that I can and I do. I wonder whether we assume that this is what students want, especially when looking at some of the research in weeks 13 and 14, where they was some clear feedback that students except Universities to tell them when and how to use technology in their learning.

The idea of decentralisation is interesting. I think that it is more of a 're' centralisation to another point. There are still central hubs or organisations (facebook, google, ebay, twitter) that draw people together. Does the fact that they are not part of the 'establishment' mean they are decentralised? I guess this is my issue with the idea of power to the people. There is still a meritocracy evident - those who can, have the technology, know what to do, shout the loudest.....(as Cuban pointed out last week).