The background
JCS offers school libraries the opportunity to provide students and teachers with 24×7 online access to over 20 online resources which have been selected to support teaching and learning across the curriculum from Key Stage 1 to A level and the International Baccalaureate. Through direct negotiation with publishers on behalf of all UK schools JCS has negotiated excellent prices and terms of use. Discounts are available to individual schools but additional savings of up to 80% are available to schools participating in buying groups.
Schools Library Services and local authorities are taking an active role in coordinating buying groups in many areas in order to achieve the highest possible discount. In addition, an increasing number of schools in informal local or regional networks are working together to secure the best possible pricing.
The day
• Why are online libraries important? Joyce Martin, JCS Director, will talk about why librarians across the UK are developing online libraries, and how they are helping to support the educational objectives of their schools.
• How can online resources support teaching and learning? The day will include demonstrations of resources from several publishers, plus an opportunity to try out the resources in the school’s well-equipped Media Centre.
• What’s involved in developing a JCS buying consortium and what can be achieved? Paul Vočka-Kelly, JCS Subscriptions Manager, will discuss the benefits of collaboration.
Booking arrangements
• There is no charge for attendance, and lunch is included sponsored by the Guardian and Observer Digital Archive.
• Places are limited so please book early to avoid disappointment.
• To book a place, please email your full contact details and any special dietary requirements to Sally Pelling-Deeves at info@jisccollectionsforschools.org.uk.
Deadline 1 December.
Find out more about JISC Collections for Schools at www.jcs.nen.gov.uk

We’re now looking at how the project can be sustained after the EU funding runs out. It is already a cheap scheme to run, with huge benefits for Local authorities, since it can lead to cheaper bureaucracy (online services are much cheaper than face-to-face). Commercial businesses are more likely to move to areas where the population is digitally literate – both for an employable workforce and a customer base that is happy to buy online. Healthcare is another service that can make huge savings when people use the internet, as illustrated here: http://bit.ly/958Ovd

It’s also a great opportunity to use young unemployed – NEETs or near NEETs – as trainers for IT novices. The benefit for the volunteer is that they will gain experience of working with others which will help them when they apply for paid work. There are qualifications available to the volunteers and they will realise that they have skills that are highly valued by other people in the community, which should boost their self-esteem.
Find out more here: http://www.makingitpersonal.eu/

• Bradford
• Doncaster
• Huddersfield
• Leeds
• North East Lincolnshire (Grimsby)
• North West Sheffield (High Green)
• Rotherham
• Sheffield Central
• York

Social Media Surgeries are relatively informal events where people with some knowledge of how to use social media as a communication tool pass some of their knowledge on to people working in voluntary and community organisations, arts charities and very small businesses. The first Social Media Surgeries were started by Nick Booth of Podnosh.com in Birmingham, and Digital 20/20 has taken his model and applied it around the region.  A team of volunteers was already in place planning the first Yorkshire & Humber Social Media Surgery in Huddersfield in November 2009, when Digital 20/20 launched the first Leeds Surgery a few days later. Surgeries in York, Sheffield Central, North East Lincolnshire, North West Sheffield, Bradford and Rotherham all followed on, and the latest addition to the stable is Doncaster, launching on the 28^th July 2010.

The basic tenet of a Social Media Surgery is that volunteer advisors (who have become known as “Surgeons”) sit down over a cup of tea and a laptop with someone who wants to learn more about how to use social media to engage with their audiences, recruit more volunteers, or report on their events. It is important that “Surgeons” do not see this as an opportunity to demonstrate their technical knowledge, but that their first step is to listen to what the “Patient” is trying to achieve, work out how comfortable they are with social media, and work with them to find an appropriate tool to help them get to their goals. As the Surgeries have built their track record, word of mouth has brought new customers through the door, attendance has grown at all the Surgeries, and evidence has emerged that they are having a real impact on community capacity. Many new people and organisations have been assisted to become active on Twitter, to set up new blogs, or to manage their Facebook group effectively.  And the approach at Surgeries is that people learn something new, go away and practise it, and often return to a future event to get feedback on what they have done and assistance in moving to the next stage. Another key part of the Social Media Surgeries strategy is that those who attend are encouraged to pass on what they learn to those they work with in local communities.

All but one of the Yorkshire & Humber Social Media Surgeries to date has been held in central locations in major population centres. The North West Sheffield Surgery is an exception to this rule, the one event so far taking place at Paces Campus in High Green, and drawing people in from a range of very local organisations. In the long term, the plan is to attempt to get all the central Surgeries to spin off neighbourhood events, but this may only happen effectively when people who have come to the central Surgeries as “Patients” feel comfortable enough in their use of social media to act as “Surgeons” in their own local events. There is evidence from Birmingham, which has been doing this for longer, that this is indeed starting to happen there.

In the era of the new Government’s Big Society policy, the growth of Social Media Surgeries, in Yorkshire & the Humber and elsewhere, is doubly important. It both shows how volunteer effort can be mobilised to help with skills and capacity development in the voluntary and community sectors, and it demonstrates how the reach and profile of such organisations can be improved using social media at a time of scarce resources.

Chris is a self-effacing man, and just as personable in the flesh as he appears in his various online manifestations, and he laughs off the epithet which has been applied to him as “the most influential person on Twitter” as “just something to do with algorithms”.  Nevertheless, the fact that the algorithms have picked him out as such demonstrates that he must be doing something right with social media. Chris calls Twitter “the Serendipity Engine”, and it is purely due to Twitter that his second ever visit to the UK (the other was to Devon, he’s never been to London) saw him by the banks of the River Don, following a conversation on the micro-blogging platform with Doncaster-based entrepreneur and Chair of Doncaster College governors, Rob Wilmot. Rob persuaded Chris that Doncaster was the place to be to discuss the potential uses of social media in education, and so Chris decamped to this side of the pond to help us explore the issues.

The Social Media in Education Podcamp on Day One was followed on the second morning by a straight lecture from Chris. The Podcamp is Chris’s particular take on the unconference format, sometimes called “barcamp” or “open space”. These kinds of events are self-organised events, where participants are invited to suggest topics for workshops they want to lead, and invite other delegates to join them in parallel sessions.  As with many other such events, a grid was drawn on a noticeboard and a scrum ensued as attendees grabbed the post-it notes and fought for the best slot for their own presentation.

Chris Brogan got the event off to a rousing start with a keynote address, during which he pointed out the example of US Community Colleges which he called “places where hope grows”, and urged the education institutions represented to see themselves in the same light. Social media enables organisations and institutions to develop relationships with their users, and, crucially, with potential users. As he said in his second-day lecture, effective social media use means you can get to know the customer, and build a relationship with them, long before you ever have to sell anything to them. And people are much more likely to buy something from someone they know.  Statistics were quoted which suggest that 60% of the media consumed by today’s young people is made by their peers and not professionals.  Educational bodies can help people learn to create media, and should be aware that this will result in content much more appealing to the people they are trying to reach  than anything they might produce themselves.

From there it was off into some really intense discussions on many different aspects of Social Media in Education, from developing a Social Media Strategy to using iPhone apps in education.

Some common themes ran through the day including:

Frustration with in-house IT Departments: many internal IT managers just don’t get social media, and see it as an additional burden on their staff’s time. Blanket blocking policies are still pretty common in colleges and other public sector networks.

Joining the Conversation: Institutions need to understand the conversational nature of social media, and move away from “broadcast mode” into two-way dialogue with users, learners and potential learners. This can be a difficult shift to manage, and many marketing staff fail to develop the necessary mindset.

Controlling the message: Some institutions find the fact that social media can give a voice to many different people in the organisation to be threatening.  Managers are used to being able to control the messages that come out, but social media makes this a lot harder. Some respond by trying to clamp down, but this is rarely a successful strategy, and it is far more effective to join the conversation, develop a persuasive persona, and win people onto your side.

Staff lack of comfort with social media and digital tools: The digital divide is still very apparent in the education sector, with organisations like FE colleges and adult learning providers staffed with significant numbers of people who have little or no interest in social media, and who struggle to use digital equipment. This is an additional barrier to adoption, beyond management and blocking issues.

Child protection and teacher/student relationships: These inter-connected issues manifested themselves in a number of ways during the discussions. The Podcamp was mainly focussing on post-14 learning, so child protection was perhaps not quite the issue it might otherwise have been, but it is still an important factor. The fact that Facebook, at the time of the Podcamp at least, was holding out against introducing effective child protection measures, has not been a help in persuading teachers and their management that the introduction of social media to the classroom is a responsible step. Many teachers and tutors are also nervous about what social networking means for their relationships with students. Social networking between teachers and students risks opening up the private lives of teachers to the scrutiny of their charges, and means they could be seen to be invading students’ private spaces.

A workshop session on the issues of “Social Media, Digital Identity and Personality” failed to do more than scratch the surface of this complex issue, provided more questions than answers, and perhaps opened up a debate that might extend into a series of events in the future.

Day two was about a more-or-less straight lecture from Chris. It felt like a lecture, because it was held in a lecture theatre, but Chris’s style does not really lend itself to the term “lecture”. Beginning by telling the room that everyone there is, collectively, much more intelligent that he is, is not usually the way most lecturers would begin.  Chris has clearly got his social media “sound bites” well honed, one which struck a real chord was “promote others 12 times to every one time you promote yourself; and be at the shoulder of every deal”. This brought home how much social media is about generosity, and, while it may be tempting to think of the old adage “if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made”, it was a neat way of encapsulating Chris’ point that social media allows organisations to develop real and meaningful relationships with their customers and potential customers, the result of which is that people really want to buy something from them.

For the delegates in Doncaster, there were two aspects of Social Media in Education of interest, that of using Social Media in the marketing and recruitment activities of the organisation, and that of its use in the classroom. Much of the content of Chris’s presentation was more relevant to the former rather than the latter aspect, but there had been much talk about classroom issues in the previous day’s sessions.

Chris urges organisations to “Listen – publish – connect”, the material you put out there must be responsive to your audiences’ needs and desires, and you must use it as a focus for opening and maintaining a dialogue with them.  In the modern era, people expect organisations to be open about what they do, but effective use of social media requires organisations and individuals to practice “publicness”, find their voice, and learn to become comfortable with living large parts of their lives in public. A lot of people think that being open about what they do undermines their competitive advantage, whereas the reality is that it demonstrates you are getting things done, and these days, people suspect those who are secretive about what they do might have something to hide, or at least that they are less than proud of their work.

Another thing that social media allows you to do is to let other people speak about you. Fora such a Facebook Groups and other online profiles encourage users and potential users to share opinions on your organisation. If you are successful in befriending them and showing your generosity online, they are likely to talk about you in positive terms, and testimonials from others are always much more powerful than anything you might say about yourself.

Altogether, this was a fascinating day and a half, a first for Doncaster with such a world-renowned speaker arriving in the town, simply because of an online conversation with Rob Wilmot. In many ways, this was an apt demonstration of how the internet and social media are shrinking the world, and shaping new forms of relationship. There is much work to be done in this area, however, in ensuring both educational institutions and teachers & lecturers are comfortable with social media and able to integrate it into their work. Digital 20/20 and its partners look forward to taking this forward with Doncaster College and many of the organisations and individuals represented at the event.

Project Director, Martin Cantor chaired the event and representatives from The Sheffield College, Access Space and E@sy Connects delivered presentations about their roles in the project. Julia Duggleby from The Sheffield College gave a DOT (Digital Outreach Trainer) update, noting that 102 people are registered to the website and the majority of these are DOTs. The college and Access Space have employed 16 e-mentors, all of which have undergone DOT training and are equipped to support DOTs through the accreditation process.

Julie Hooper, Course Leader at The Sheffield College, spoke about the Online College’s learning offer and encouraged the other delivery partners to share these opportunities with their students. She was followed by Wendy Mayes who co-authored the Fast Forward learning materials. Wendy also encouraged the delivery partners to take advantage of the learning offer and the staff training that is available from the Sheffield College to assist in using the materials.

James Wallbank from Access Space and Gary Simpson from E@sy Connects delivered presentations to illustrate the DOT scheme within a community setting and how the project can broaden its’ reach beyond the colleges. The group then split into internal partners and external delegates to hold ‘round table’ discussions around the development of the project.

The delivery partners represented reported on how they are utilising the ESF grant to deliver new digital inclusion initiatives, and the contribution they are making to the DOT scheme. Highlights included:

• Rawmarsh CLC delivering intensive digital media courses to NEETs;
• Barnsley Learning Centres utilising UK Online digital outreach workers as DOTs;
• Curriculum development at Northern College in digital skills, focusing on social media, personal interests and creativity for engagement, with the DOT scheme offered as a progression route;
• RCAT employing a full-time outreach worker to develop digital skill training at community sites;
• Doncaster IT Academy working with public libraries to identify individuals interested in digital skills, and also with St Leger Homes.

Everybody was delighted to hear that the DOT scheme was now fully operational and we are looking forward to many more registrations, especially when colleges reopen in September.

In both groups, there was lots of discussion around libraries and everybody agreed that these are ideal places to promote the DOT scheme. There were representatives from Rotherham Libraries at the event who were encouraged by the positive discussions.

You can find out more about the project by visiting the website: www.makingitpersonal.eu

Dee Desgranges from Sheffield Council and National adviser on Participation spoke about a number of ways to engage disaffected learners. This was followed by a discussion about the best way to take the NEETs agenda forward. There was general agreement that a Special Interest Group focused on NEETs and e-inclusion issues would be beneficial and there was also interest in the idea of developing a regional Virtual College.

Meanwhile, here is some ammunition that might be useful for those of you seeking funding for e-inclusion projects:

Many of those who stand to benefit the most from the democratising power of the web are yet to engage with technology at all. Of the 10 million Britons who are offline, 4 million are also ‘socially excluded’ – mostly the elderly, the long-term unemployed or families with children.

The Government is committed to tackling digital exclusion and putting an end to the digital divide. On 7 December 2009, the Government published the Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government report. The report recognised the potential to reduce the cost of public services and improve the customer experience by moving the majority of provision online. It also acknowledged 100% online government had to mean 100% online citizens, and Gordon Brown announced £30m for UK online centres to get one million people online for the end of 2012.

The publication of the report follows the Champion for Digital Inclusion, Martha Lane Fox’s, Race Online 2012 initiative which aims to get 4 million of the most disadvantaged people online over the next 3 years.

Digital participation is key to tackling digital exclusion. This was echoed in the Government’s Digital Britain report, published June 2009. The report brings together the economic and social digital agendas, building the case for informal digital skills and inclusion. To ensure that everyone can share in the benefits of Digital Britain, the Government are taking the following steps:

• Three year National Plan to improve Digital Participation
• Programme of Digital Switchover in public services
• A new Digital Inclusion Champion: Martha Lane Fox
• Revised Digital remit for Channel 4 and key role for BBC
• Guaranteed funding for three years for targeted marketing and outreach

This is the background info for another (not Digital 20/20) event on digital inclusion,
“Tackling Social Exclusion Through Technology: Delivering Digital Inclusion” in London on June 23rd: http://www.insidegovernment.co.uk/other/digital-inclusion/#agenda

This forum will offer delegates the opportunity to take the debate beyond the existing legislative framework and have a timely opportunity to discuss how we can work together to drive up digital participation and put an end to the digital divide.

There were some fascinating insights from Will Perrin, founder of Talk About Local, into how the hyperlocal website he runs, http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com, tries to tell the truth about local crime, presenting the facts and avoiding the sensationalism of the mainstream media. He talked about how the site exposes organised crime in the area in the way that mainstream outlets fail to do, and how he invites the police to use the site as a channel to communicate with local people on crime issues. Nick Booth made a serious point in entertaining style as he recounted the problem his neighbourhood has with parking on Test Match days at Edgbaston cricket ground. His main point was that, rather than using the multitude of communication channels open to them to negotiate safe parking arrangements at such times, the authorities prefer to blanket-ticket residents’ cars before they wake up in the morning. This creates tension between the residents and the authorities which could be avoided by proper communications.

A fascinating presentation followed by Chinese student, Jennifer Yang, on the use of Social Media by the Beijing Police. Many in the audience were intrigued by how police in Beijing used social networking, including podcasts on the latest crime issues, tips and safety advice and unsolved crimes; texts and emails during emergency situations and police officer blogs to set up dialogue between officers and the public. It was also interesting to see the array of social media sites used, none of which most people present had heard of. Although it was tempting to be impressed by the seemingly advanced nature of social media dialogue involving police in Beijing, this was tempered by the knowledge that none of this could take place on the sites known in the rest of the world which are blocked to the Chinese public. During this discussion, one of the police officers present revealed that he can only keep up with hyperlocal blogs in his area because he has gone out and bought a 3G dongle to bypass the police headquarters ‘ IT network. It’s not only China which has internet blocking issues.

A live link-up with MA student, Leland Strott, from her home in Baltimore, was followed by a fascinating panel discussion, entitled “Photographer or Terrorist”, involving two senior West Midlands police officers and photographers and bloggers, Christian Payne, and Karen Strunks. The debate focused on the way that a number of police officers have been interpreting anti-terrorist legislation to harass, and sometimes arrest, innocent photographers. A number of suggestions were made as to how the police might use Web 2.0 to communicate better with photographers, and how, if officers were better equipped on the beat, they might have instant access to advice on points of law.

All told, Authority 2.0 was a fascinating exploration of the potential of web 2.0 to improve relationships between police and the public, and to help the police do their jobs more effectively. This is obviously the first stage in a dialogue which needs to spread beyond the West Midlands.

All the presentations from the day can be seen at  http://eventwith.me/authority2/