So, it’s 2009 already.  How was 2008 for you?

For me it was pretty good.  Not in a lots of huge and significant things happened kind of way but lots of little good things came along.

Work Stuff

• We have a Children and Youth Committee with more young people than adults on it.
• Scottish Youth Ministry Network is up and running and has lots of people joining up
• New Synod website and Twitter
• Good training events around the country with more to come
• Lots of worship leading which people have been very supportive about
• taught a new class at ICC (must mark those essays!)
• Emerging Church stuff finally getting some serious airtime in Scotland

But looking forward to 2009…

• A trip to Cuba
• and possibly Israel/Palestine (if they stop fighting for long enough)
• develop some stuff around online youth work
• a Young Adult event
• new Children’s Forums

Online

Twitter – I work alone at my desk a lot.  Twitter connects me to a group of people who feed me with ideas, inspiration and general nonsense.  It makes the day pass quicker and gives me a sense of connection.

StewartCutler.com – A self-hosted blog has been on the cards for some time but this was the year I got round to it.  More than 6,000 people have visited here from all over the world and I’m deeply grateful to every one of you for your interest and most of all for your participation.

Podcasts – I’ve started podcasting a couple of things.  The first is the occasional sermon.  The second is Something Beautiful, where I’ve recently been added as a co-host to a great podcast which gives people space to tell the story of their life and journey of faith.

For 2009…
Who knows.  I didn’t plan any of this stuff!

Life

I’ve lived in the same house for a whole year (more significant than you could possibly know), passed my Masters essays so far, started swimming, stopped swimming again, bought a camera and have taken lots of photos, climbed a couple of hills, met some brilliant people and converted to Macs.

For 2009…

• Finish the Masters
• Start swimming again
• Run a half marathon (did one in 2000 but haven’t run much since then)
• Spend more time outside
• become a legend at Guitar Hero

So, that’s me.  A quick look back and a quicker look forward.  I hope 2009 will be  a great year. I have a feeling that lots of little things will come together to make 2009 a very significant year.  I’m looking forward to it.  I hope you are too.

Right.  I’ve decided what my Masters research will focus on.

I’m going to explore youth workers in church settings’ attitudes to social media.  I had a couple of chats over the last few days with Chris and Tim and they have helped me to focus.

So, my initial plan is:

To investigate youth workers in Scottish church based settings’ use of and attitude to social media tools.

I hope to find out

1. Who uses social media tools – demographics of use
2. What do they use and how
3. Are there policies or guidelines around use
4. what benefits do workers perceive?

How does that sound?  Your thoughts comments and insights are very welcome, as always.

I think I’ve decided to do my research for my masters on the use of social media in church-based youth work in Scotland.  I could of course change my mind again but on reflection this seems to be something that would be both interesting and worth doing.

I’d still like to have a go at ‘does youth work work?’ but think that might make a better large scale project for me and my lovely colleagues at the URC.

So, If you’re reading this and are involved in church-based youth work in Scotland let me know so I can come and interview you and your young people some time in the new year.

Anyone with any ideas and/or suggestions, please feel free to contribute said ideas anytime you like.

And I’ll try not to bore you all.  Honest.

I’m almost done with my Masters in Research.  I have two modules to complete then a dissertation.  The dissertation takes the form of a small research project.  I want to get started soon and have it completed so I can graduate next November at the latest.  If I’m super organised I could graduate in July.

Being super organised would include actually choosing a topic to research.  That’s when things get complicated.

I have three potential topics:

1: Youth work and social media – models of good practice using web2.0 tools to work with young people

2: Does youth work work? – Does employing a youth worker make a difference? Probably a case study

3: Towards an evaluation framework – how could churches/projects evaluate what they do? Working towards an evaluation framework.

This is where you come in.  Any thoughts, comments, ideas, avenues to pursue and general advice and suggestions would be very welcome.

There are lots of people I know who read this blog who never or rarely comment.  It would be great to hear from some of you about this as I’d really value as much input as possible.

Stewart

Tonight was the last day of term for my Masters in Research classes.  I have a literature review to write and that’s me done for this year.  It seems to have gone very quickly and I’ve done ok (Bs for almost everything).  I’ve got two more modules to do then my research project and dissertation and that’s me done.

I’ve enjoyed this year.  Met some nice people, learned some interesting stuff.  Now all I need to do is refine my research topic and get on with it.

RefWorks is genius. It helps you collate all those searches in databases for journal articles and papers and puts them into a bibliography that you can download!!! Why have I just found out about this!!!

Dr Tanya Byron has published her report into safer internet use and gaming. You can read the report HERE. This is the executive summary bullets:

The internet and video games are very popular with children and young people and offer a range of opportunities for fun, learning and development.

But there are concerns over potentially inappropriate material, which range from content (e.g. violence) through to contact and conduct of children in the digital world.

Debates and research in this area can be highly polarised and charged with emotion.

Having considered the evidence I believe we need to move from a discussion about the media ‘causing’ harm to one which focuses on children and young people, what they bring to technology and how we can use our understanding of how they develop to empower them to manage risks and make the digital world safer.

There is a generational digital divide which means that parents do not necessarily feel equipped to help their children in this space – which can lead to fear and a sense of helplessness. This can be compounded by a risk-averse culture where we are inclined to keep our children ‘indoors’ despite their developmental needs to socialise and take risks.

While children are confident with the technology, they are still developing critical evaluation skills and need our help to make wise decisions.

In relation to the internet we need a shared culture of responsibility with families, industry, government and others in the public and third sectors all playing their part to reduce the availability of potentially harmful material, restrict access to it by children and to increase children’s resilience.

I propose that we seek to achieve gains in these three areas by having a national strategy for child internet safety which involves better self-regulation and better provision of information and education for children and families.

In relation to video games, we need to improve on the systems already in place to help parents restrict children’s access to games which are not suitable for their age.

I propose that we seek to do that by reforming the classification system and pooling the efforts of the games industry, retailers, advertisers, console manufacturers and online gaming providers to raise awareness of what is in games and enable better enforcement.

Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe – this isn’t just about a top-down approach. Children will be children – pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.

She was interviewed on the BBC news this morning. You can watch it here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSXRnc2ukuw]

Class was good.  We looked at blogging, bookmarking, rss and tags.  All very useful stuff but I think some of my classmates might need more convincing!

I’m about to have a class on using new media to communicate research findings.  Looking forward to it…

Oh, and I saw Dr Hilary Jones off of GMTV in Buchanan Street!