The Plings Stats tool

The main contact for Plings in each Local Authority taking part in the pilot will shortly be receiving a log-in to the Plings Stats tool.

The statistics tool is our way of helping Local Authorities to review what their local offer really looks like – by navigating the activity offer contained within the Plings database.

As you can see from the screen-shot below, the tool will allow authorities to pick any date-range and explore what activities were on offer then, of what sort, and by run by which providers.

The Plings Statistics Tool

Knowing more about the activities currently on offer can help local authorities to identify gaps in provision.

This is the first public release of the statistics tool, but we will continue to develop it over the coming year – exploring ways that the statistical information on what is on when, can be complemented with feedback and comments from young people about local activity provision.

If you’ve got ideas for developing the stats tool, then of course, do let us know.

Making activities positive: Sampling, Doing, Reflecting

The definition of positive activities is something we’ve explored on this blog before, and I was encouraged to reflect more on it today after seeing a presentation by Jaime of WotsOn4U in Cumbria (incidentally making great selective use of Twitter to promote activities) about the way they have been seeking out activities to promote through their website.

Jaime showed a range of different activities that young people might take part in, from formal organised youth clubs through to a trip to the town centre to go shopping. Spending Saturday shopping was also a suggestion made by a number of young people Blackburn when we asked them to put together imagined activity diaries in a recent research excercise.

Whilst heading to the shops is unlikely to feature in positive activity listings in Plings, and it probably wouldn’t qualify within the formal definition of positive activities - it does encourage us to reflect not just on what is a positive activity, but what makes an activity, or a week of activities planned by a young person, positive.
Recent work by Participle may offer us some clues. In their work with young people to explore creating a new form of youth development service they looked at three type of experience which could be seen to be part of youth development:

(c) Participle. See http://www.participle.net/blog/view/4/158 for original.

Participle describe doing and sampling activities:

Doing experiences are self-designed projects where young people meet a need or goal in the family, community or workplace. A doing experience could be working with an adult to build a shed, running a campaign to reduce plastic bag usage or setting up a bike fixing business.

…

Sampling experiences aim to expand young people’s sense of what’s possible by introducing them to new people, places and world views.

And reflective experiences offer young people an opportunity to look at what they have been involved in and draw learning from it. Sites like WotsOn4U are already implicity providing some routes to reflection – by inviting and encouraging young people to review media, films and experiences they have been involved in – but there is much more for information providers to draw from Participle’s model.

Right now most activity information is (rightly) about the sorts of experiences described above as ‘Sampling’ experiences. But often it’s not communicated as such. Do we encourage young people to try out an activitity? Or does the presentation of it suggest you need to sign-up and make an in-depth committment to it? And are we designing activity information to exposed young people to a wide range of possibilities, or only a narrow set of things that they were already looking for?

And how can activity information sources become more interactive, to provide more opportunities for reflection?

As we plan for the next phases of the Plings project these are things we hope to explore – but we’d love to get your ideas too…

Getting social & keeping safe – principles for SNS application development

Increasing the flow of information about positive activities through Social Network Sites is a must if we’re going to make sure as many young people as possible get to hear about the opportunities that are open to them. Social Network Site applications are a key tool for increasing the flow of information on sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace – but any engagement with social network sites needs to always put the safety of young people first.

Often fears about online safety can lead public bodies to steer clear of social networks, and to avoid engaging. Or it can lead to engagement with all the interactivity ripped out, so that engagement fails to be effective. We don’t think it has to be that way.

That’s why we’ve just published ‘Safe and effective Social Network Site applications for young people: Considerations in building social networking applications for under 19s (PDF / view online with Scribd)’ – a working paper covering key issues in building SNS applications targeted at young people.

The paper is designed to provide information, advice and recommendations for both staff from local authorities or charities involved in commissioning social network site applications and for the developers of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace or OpenSocial Applications.

It’s been written to make the case for specifically addressing the needs and safety of young people during applications development and to set out key issues to consider when designing safe and effective applications targeted at teenagers.

The paper also includes an extensive risk assessment annexe which provides a sample of possible risks and responses that will need to be considered during application development.

Whilst the paper is focussed specifically on the safety of young people – many of the principles it contains will also be relevant for any socially responsible Social Network Site application development.

A Social Network Application for Plings
We first started drawing up this paper back in November last year when plans for a Plings Social Network Site application emerged. Between then and now then we’ve been consulting with developers, local authorities and organisations including CEOP to get input to help develop the paper into the revised version linked to above.

Since earlier this year we’ve been working on developing our own Plings SNS application with NeonTribe. The application will be available from July to all the local authorities who have got data into Plings as part of the Information & Signposting Project pilots and we’ll be sharing more details on how the application will work very soon….