Jon Jolly

Wow! I really can’t believe that I haven’t posted on here in 4 weeks! That’s the worst gap in the four years I’ve been blogging. If there are any readers left out there, I’m very sorry.

Life has been really busy recently which has taken me away from the internet. Obviously Kirsty’s pregnancy has been a big deal. She suffered really badly from morning sickness for a few weeks and was throwing up constantly over that period. However, seeing the 12 week scan photos made it all worthwhile:

In my Youth Work role, I’ve been getting to grips with being the first Chairperson of YARN - the network of the Rank Charities. It is a great privilege to be involved in steering the formation of the network, and I’ve had to spend a bit of time getting my head around how it works while riding the train into London! We had a huge celebration/launch event at the Hilton Waldorf where I announced the network and also DJ’d into the early hours.

Back in my local role, I’ve had two young people doing Work Experience with me this week and I’m gearing up for the 2 playschemes, summer arts activities and Soul Survivor trips that we’re running! Some rest would be good right now.

Another contributing factor in my online absence is that my MacBook has been taken in for keyboard related repairs. It stopped responding halfway through typing a sentence and for 2 weeks I was carrying round the laptop, plus an external keyboard and mouse, which kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop.

Lastly in my Jolly news round-up, I managed to avoid all the queues and hassle to get my 3G iPhone delivered last week. While it is an amazing bit of kit, I’m still suffering from intermittent MobileMe Sync issues which helpfully deletes numbers from random contacts!

Anyway, I may get some more posts out there this week, so stay tuned.

There’s a great conversation happening over at UK Youth Online about practical steps for youth workers to take while interacting with young people online.

Most people are taking the view that to ensure accountability and transparency, workers should have a different profile or login for work and personal.

I’m interested in this debate as I currently don’t do this and instead have one personal profile that I use for everything. This is because many of the young people I work with know me through the church and I know their families well. Also the church does not yet have any guidelines or expectations around online media. Personally, I am well aware of the tensions when posting information online, so I try to remain consistent in my actions and only post material I would be happy for my mum, pastor and young people to see! I don’t have a “hidden” private life so am happy to share with all.

However, I do recognise the potential danger in not separating work and home. My personal views could easily be attributed to my church or work agency or vice versa, and certain larger organisations will have rules or expectations regarding your conduct online. Posting more personal items could put you in conflict with your employer. There is also the problem of young people being able to contact you at all times, even when you’re on holiday and making sure that all these exchanges are logged. So there are certainly advantages to separating out work and personal profiles.

What’s your view?

I’ve been asked a few times recently why my online persona is called bobweasel. My Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, del.icio.us, google and most other social sites are under registered under the weasel name.

I created my alter-ego as a joke after a friend started using the name ‘alvincacti’ online. We ribbed him mercilessly and made up our own stupid names just to highlight how silly it was… except they stuck! At the time I was teaching myself HTML and Flash animation, so I designed an avatar to use on my website. Since then, it’s become my standard avatar on nearly everything!

Talking of avatars, I’ve been using the excellent Gravatar to provide my image on a variety of websites and blogs. Check it out!

Following on from my last post about the use of new technology in youth work, you might be interested in using Google’s updated Trends feature.

Google Trends can be used to see how popular certain search terms are across geographic regions, cities, and languages.

Working just like it’s standard search engine, Trends gives you visual data to see what’s hot and what’s not. For example, if you want to see how popular Facebook has become over MySpace in the UK during the past 12 months, just type in “Facebook, MySpace” and hit enter!

This could be a pretty useful and powerful tool for finding out what people are interested in. I love the way you can now filter by certain regions as well as country to see how popular Rugby has been in Wales over the last 4 years.

What uses can you think of for this Trend search?

There’s lot of talk at the moment about the future of youth work. Marko’s been blogging extracts from his new book ‘Youth Ministry 3.0…‘ looking at how we’re missing the mark in [US] youth ministry, and what needs to change in order to more truly live into our calling as youth workers.

Over this side of the Atlantic, Tim Davies has been running a survey on Youth Work and Social Networking for the NYA and has set-up an online network for looking at the use of social media in informal education.

If you’re interested in exploring what social media means for youth services, participation projects, IAG, or any other organisations providing support, advice and activities to young people - do come and join us over on the UK Youth Online Ning network.

I would encourage any youth worker with an online presence to go and join the conversation with Tim. There’s a lot to be explored!

Finally, if you’re confused about the different stages of online development, Steven Flower nicely summarises the ‘Point O’ progression:

Web 1.0 was about receiving content
Web 2.0 was/is about making / contributing content
Web 3.0 is about filtering information

Where are you on this scale and how do you use it in your work with young people?

At Ignite (our group for 11-14 year olds), we run both a Thursday night social and small groups at the weekend. The Thursday is an open session where we run crazy activities and have around 50 young people turn up. The small groups are for those who want to take an extra step and learn more about the Christian faith and following Jesus. We’re running three at the moment.

Each week I always try and get feedback from the small group leaders about how their groups went. We’re currently working through a teaching series on the first few chapters of Acts and it’s good to know what’s going on. This week, I got an email from one of the girls group leaders reporting that it had been a good session, but they had a lot of energy! From the email:

We went though teaching notes for an hour but then they just wanted to run and play games… so we played “Who can find Jesus in the garden” with Emily and myself wearing dressing gowns and tea towels on our heads! We had a lot of fun!!!

Now I’m not sure about the theology of this new game, but it had me laughing out loud for ages! Anyone else want to play “Who can find Jesus”?

Update: apparently when Jesus was located in the garden, the girls had to sing the Delirious song “I’ve Found Jesus” to alert the others!!!

photo credit: Demi-Brooke | photojournal
Posts have been pretty sporadic here recently which kind of reflects my state of mind at the moment. What with Kirsty’s morning sickness, exams this week, trying to find a new car, and a whole shed load of summer activities coming up, I feel a little unfocused.

I plan to have a more relaxing weekend and get some sleep, then get back to normal!

OK, most of our family and friends know now so it’s time to formally tell the World Wide Web. After almost eight years of marriage, Kirsty and I are expecting our first child! The Jolly Junior is due mid January 2009 and mummy and daddy are very excited!

So there you go. Don’t say I never tell you anything…

The latest issue of Youth Work Now came out today and my second ‘From The Frontline’ opinion piece is printed on page 9. I wrote it as a reaction to the government sponsored MyPlace initiative:

The government’s MyPlace initiative will provide £190m of capital funding to help create new youth facilities across England. For those of us who have experience of trying to run a table-tennis tournament in a drafty wooden hut during the winter months, this is clearly good news!

However I can’t help wondering if this investment in buildings is simply a case of throwing money at the sector while ignoring our most vital resource: the workers.

A key characteristic of informal education is that it can take place anywhere and is not limited to a particular space. While buildings are important, youth workers operate in a wide range of settings. We all know of creative educators who use whatever environment they are in to support and benefit young people - be that a local park or the open countryside. Yet there’s no doubt that youth clubs and other facilities are important assets and have played a pivotal role in the development of many young people. In fact, the history of our vocation is based on pioneers such as the YMCA providing safe places for young people to attend.

However, just because we can build and develop youth facilities, it does not necessarily follow that they will provide good quality youth work.

In my area we have a small skate park that was built as a response to the lack of facilities for skaters. It was a helpful contribution that was well received by the young people until they started using it. Although it was outdoors and available at any time, there was never any supervision provided.

This made it unsuitable for those wanting to learn and unsafe for the accomplished skaters as other groups would congregate there to drink. The wooden ramps soon became damaged and worn through misuse and eventually the equipment had to be replaced, costing far more than the original investment.

There are other brilliant facilities that are similarly going to waste because they are badly managed. Investing in youth facilities only makes sense if we have the correct people to manage them and the thriving success stories in youth work are those clubs that are led by enthusiastic and committed workers.

Therefore, while I welcome the MyPlace investment, I believe that there should be a more holistic approach to developing good practice that includes supporting reflective and passionate workers who will be successful with or without a building.

I noticed a brief article on the Youth Work Now website about the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS) looking to develop an accreditation system for voluntary youth workers.

Under the system volunteer youth workers would take part in training to develop skills, with successful candidates getting a certificate or card to show they are a recognised volunteer youth worker.

Although the details are pretty sketchy at this point, I believe this could be a fantastic opportunity. I’ve been looking at ways to develop and train our Children and Youth Leaders (ChYL) at the church. Each week we have over 20 volunteers who help deliver a variety of activities and a basic foundation in youth work theory could benefit them greatly.

One of the existing options that I’ve examined is running the YMCA Introductory Studies locally. It’s a VRQ Level 2 (considered equivalent to a GCSE) and is competence based so students must provide evidence for their learning during their normal volunteering. Ideally, I would hope to start it in Littlehampton some time later in the year.

However, if the NCVYS do develop an accreditation system, I would seriously consider adopting it with our team as a way of validating their skills and experience.