I’m not big on resolutions.  I’m not sure they serve much purpose, especially when they are things we don’t really intend to do or stick to for long.  So, instead I’m going to set some personal goals for the year.  I have a forward plan for my work so these goals are just for me.

In 2010 I will:

complete my Masters in Research

I don’t have a lot of choice in this one but I hope to have my dissertation complete by the end of April. I’ve changed the whole concept of my research and instead of something on social media I’m going to be doing a project evaluation with a church in Linwood.

run / cycle / walk more

In 2000 my brother-in-law and I ran a half marathon.  Since then he has completed the Maggies Monster Bike & Hike, I’ve sat on my couch!  I’ve never felt better in my life than when I was running regularly so I’m going to start getting out more.  Avril got some running gear from Santa so I’ll have company.  I also bought some lights for my bike so I have no excuse for not getting out on it over the dark winter months (apart from the snow and ice!) and we are going to climb more hills this year as once I get my Masters out of the road we should have some more leisure time!

learn to play the guitar

My oldest son is learning guitar at school.  I have one and I can’t play it.  I want to learn. Hopefully this will be something we and I can do together.

read

I like to read but don’t do it often.  I go through little splurges of reading a lot then maybe nothing for a few months.  The TV is going off more and books will be read.  After The Guns of Navarone, obviously.

write

They say that everyone has a book in them.  I want to see if mine is ready to come out yet.  I’m not committing to a huge project but I want to write more in this blog and write a related e-book about one of the topics I’m passionate about.

take more photos

Perhaps that should be ‘take better photos’ but I read somewhere that your photos get better after your first 10,000 so perhaps quantity is important.  I started a 365 project last year, trying to take a photo a day, but it ended up in scrambling about to find some random thing to take a photo of.  Instead, I’m going to try to take my camera with me more, take it out of my bag and take more photos.  You can see the results on my Flickr page.

I know that doesn’t sound a very exciting or even particularly ambitious list but I will be very pleased if by the end 2010 I can run 10 miles without stopping, have climbed a dozen hills, can play 10 songs on the guitar, have read 20 books, have an Masters degree and some decent photos of all that.

So, what are your goals for 2010?

So, I’m pretty much back to the start.

I’m still looking at a youth work and social media topic but I have a few weeks to come up with a definitive question.

It was nice to be back and I’m looking forward the process… Bet I’m not saying that in a few months!

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.

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’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.

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

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!!!

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]