MANAGING ICT Keeping IT credible


Kieron Kirkland from ICT innovators Futurelab reports


on a new resource created to help young people access credible and trusted online sources to help with their career options and to improve aspirations


develop young people’s aspirations and open up their options in life. Widening aspirations does not just fall to pshe, or information, careers, and guidance, but can be part of every of subject area and teacher-student relationship. but linking young people to the information and


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opportunities that can help them fulfil their potential is no easy feat. it is perhaps even more difficult now that young people’s services are facing cuts and the key organisations we can direct our students to are reduced.


hile subject-specific knowledge is important, going to school has the potential to enrich a young person’s life way beyond the curriculum. We often see a wider role of school to


supporting young people to take positive steps


to achieve their aspirations needs to be practical, and students will naturally look to teachers for information and opportunities. but trying to stay abreast of everything that is happening in the school day can be difficult enough, much less finding out where someone can turn if they want to leave home, or get involved in volunteering. if young people cannot get the information they


want from friends, parents or teachers, they will look for information online.however, just turning to Google


for answers is not always the best course of action for a number of reasons. search engines are not designed for young people


to browse information and opportunities. if young people want a specific piece of information then great, but often they are exploring and developing ideas about what they want. they need to be able to access wider-reaching sources that can give them information to make informed decisions. On top of that, effectively searching digital information takes skills which a lot of young people are still developing. second, as with everyone, young people want


information from sources they can trust, which is why they turn to friends, parents and teachers. While we all know that peer-sourced information can be more powerful than anything coming from an adult in authority, we often question how reliable it is. We have all come across urban myths floating around a school masquerading as a “fact”.the internet can be a fantastic way to get information, but as teachers advising young people, we would like it to come from safe and reliable sources. last, the first page (or second, third or fourth) of


a search result does not necessarily give you the best source of information. there are lots of organisations out there doing incredible work, with resources that should be in the hands of young people. however, many, especially smaller, organisations


do not have the funding, time or expertise to make their online presence feature high up in the rankings. this means young people are not always finding these great sources of information. We were facing all of these problems with our


Greater expectations research project. it aimed to explore how digital technology could support young people to improve their aspirations and engage with their rights and entitlements. the project has produced infocow, a free resource that resulted from a core belief that if you know what you are entitled to it can help you to go out and get it. the reality is that there are thousands of great web


pages and links out there which support young people’s needs.the problem is how young people access it.that is why infocow holds very little created information. instead, we spent a year collating existing online sources, resulting in a collection of more than 1,000 quality links. the question with any such collection is how to


keep it up-to-date. We have all clicked on what looks like a great resource only to find an annoying error message. fortunately these days, there are tools which strip out all out-of-date links and we have taken other steps to keep the resource up-to-date. if you are designing anything for young people,


it has to involve them in the design process. the development of the resource and, as importantly, the taxonomy of the information it uses, was co-created with a range of young people. trying to categorise areas that were important in young people’s lives and combine them with the entitlements they have in legislation is no easier matter. the results led to nine broad theme areas each with around 10 subthemes.the nine areas are: •Work and learning. • having a voice. • creativity and arts. • Respect and equality.


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• health and wellbeing. • community and environment. • friendships, relationships and support. • staying safe. • free time and recreation. the idea behind this is that it creates a systematic


method to source information relevant to young people’s aims and needs, which links with existing legislative priorities. A big steer that came from young people was


that any resource had to be social. this meant using ubiquitous social software like facebook, but also related to the deeper issue mentioned above, that young people, like all of us, prefer information to come from trusted sources. this need for trusted information manifested itself


in two main ways for the young people we were working with. first, personal recommendations, which may include something being directly recommended by a friend on a social network like facebook, whether because a friend has found the link themselves, or are “passing it on”. second, something being a trusted resource can relate


to how popular it is within a wider user community, this could mean the most views on Youtube, number of “digs” on Digg, or “likes” on facebook. Any tool for young people has to engage with this


type of social mediation of resources and, to an extent, “let go” of what we feel is important and let the users decide. for infocow, this means the links can be voted up,


commented on (comments are moderated), resources can be shared with friends on facebook or other social networks, and new resources can be added to infocow (again moderated). All this helps to make infocow a dynamic resource bank, new sites go into the data base (provided they get past the group of young people who moderate the site), and resources which are not useful drop off the list (no matter how good we think they are). infocow is far from perfect. it has had to be flexible


and adaptable the whole way along. We just hope you find use for it and it supports your own practice. While its primary audience is 13 to 19, we know that many practitioners are using it as it gives them a central point of reference for their own knowledge. in a wider sense, the social questions behind this


type of resource highlight the different way many of us (not just young people) share and get information these days, friends emailing or offering links on facebook, and this asks a bigger question for education: how can we bring together all the conversations, dialogue, links, work and efforts created online and direct them towards positive educational goals? linking and socially mediating information is the


first stage. projects like education eye have attempted to do this for teachers. the next step is how we can mobilise this ongoing activity to be a core part of an education experience.


SecEd


• Kieron Kirkland is a researcher at Futurelab, a not-for-profit organisation that specialises in ICT innovation in education.


Further information


• infocow: www.infocow.org.uk • education eye: www.educationeye.org.uk • futurelab: www.futurelab.org.uk


SecEd • October 21 2010


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