FALKIRK AND STIRLING COUNCIL YOUTH & COMMUNITY TEAM

This week I travelled up to Scotland to deliver the Train-the-Trainer: Introduction to Social Media course to the Falkirk and Stirling Youth & Community team. 9 practitioners attended the 2 day intensive course and they all worked so hard to learn a whole range of new practical digital skills and key principles of safe online engagement and youth work practice.
The training course included:

-Introduction to Facebook Profile, Groups and Pages.

-Learn how modify Facebook privacy and security settings for online youth work practice and engagement.

-Professional and Personal boundaries.

-E-safety model of engagement: Prevention, Provision, Protection and Participation.

-Practical e-safety activities to deliver with young people face-to-face and online.

-Youtube, create a short film and upload to Youtube and share through social networks.

It is a comprehensive and intensive 2 day course, however each trainer is provided with a an in-depth training manual, power point presentation, youtube tutorial lessons (to review if required), online support through a facebook group a resource emails for each future training delegates. One of the afternoon activities on day 1 of the course required the group to spilt into teams of 2 or 3 workers and review a case study and then film their response and guidance on how they would advise in response.

I was really humbled by the open attitude of each person on the course to learn a new skill and reflect on their current use of social media. Interestingly one main reflection from the group was the issue to not just create a Facebook page to advertise and promote events to young people but to use Facebook groups to deliver quality online youth work support and guidance to hard to reach young people. Feedback from some of the trainers:

“Already using Facebook but the course has shown me ow we can change and develop what we are currently doing and how we can improve our digital skills to create more dynamic content.”

“It was good to see how another trainer delivered the course using content off-line and on-line, it was never racking but rewarding.”

“I use Facebook alot, but I learnt loads of new Facebook tools and safety features that I never knew existed.”

“Great training course, practical sessions and Katie has broad knowledge and I felt she answered all the questions.”

GLASGOW LIFE TEAM

Previous to delivering the 2 day training course to the Falkirk and Stirling team I spent the day in Glasgow with the Glasgow Life team to update them on the new security and privacy settings on Facebook. There is a team of 6 youth practitioners who will be cascading the training course across Scotland. Really interesting debates about how to maintain online ‘professional and personal’ boundaries when creating, facilitating and managing online Facebook Groups. Currently you have to be ‘friends’ with an individual to be able to invite them to join a Facebook group. Practitioners are keen to not use their own personal Facebook profile, but for some youth organisations they are not keen to create a “Professional Facebook Profile” as they are concerned about monitoring and responding to content shared by young people. Young people can request to join a open or closed Facebook group, but is can be a challenge for young people to be motivated to remember and have the digital competencies to know how to locate and submit a request.

Facebook would argue that by creating a ‘friends list’ you could categorize the young people who connect through a personal Facebook account into a specific list and each time you post you select the required privacy settings. However, we discussed that it only requires one mistake to not modify the privacy settings and those young people could then access and view your personal content and online friendship network. Also the young people would likely to view ‘friendship’ suggestions from Facebook on the right hand side of their profile page of your personal friends.

We recommend a ‘Professional Facebook Profile’ as you can:
Connect with young people and not have to worry about them viewing your personal account and online friendship network. Upload notes/docs to the profile to share the community guidelines, code of conduct and contact details. I shared how some youth provisions hide newsfeed posts from each young person as this removed the need to have to respond to any online issues that took place outside of the Facebook group, they are simply just ‘friends’ but do not communicate through the profile but the group. To do this you move the mouse icon over the right hand side of a friends post on the news feed and then clicking on the downward arrow select the option required, to learn more check out FACEBOOK guidelines: How do I control what I view on my newsfeed?. I personally think this is confusing for young people as that is not how they use Facebook profiles to communicate with their peers. That approach maybe beneficial to the youth provision and the staff team but not the young people they are trying to engage.

Professional Facebook profiles are excellent to update young people on upcoming events and for communicate via chat or private messaging (this is not an option on a Facebook Page). While a Facebook groups are superb to categorize a specific project, campaign, event or online support group. The trainers shared that the challenge is that there is not one specific methodology for online engagement with young people it varies due to the confidence and digital competencies of the youth practitioner the consent and support from the senior management team i.e. only allowed to create a Facebook page. Also the use of social media by specific
target group of young people as it varies due to age, digital competencies and literacy, concentration spans, online peer group behavior, access to the internet and emotional resilience.

A huge thank you to all the trainers and the best of luck in delivering Online Youth Outreach: Introduction to Social Media Training course across Scotland.

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