conference youth.info

New study concerning web 2.0 usage by gender

I just found this article that might be of interest: NY Times: Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain. Basically, new studies show that in the group of 12 to 17 year old Americans, 35% of the girls blog but only 20% of the boys.

Online video and audio

On Friday afternoon it was time for the first round of workshop presentations. In the first workshop Sascha Düx and Cilia Willem presented the Roots & Routes project. This youth project started in the Netherlands and focuses on music, dancing and media. Young people from different countries and migrational backgrounds came together in workshops to make music, study dancing choreography and creating a documentation of all that on video and on the internet. Sascha showed the latest step of the Roots & Routes idea, the rootsnroutes.tv website, a social media site focused on the online presentation of videos done in the local workshops. The site is fully multilingual and aims at connecting the young participants in the partner countries and serving as a digital hub to collect all the music and videos made.

Cilia gave a short outlook on video production, showing an online video creation site called mogulus studio. The online application has certain features of tradidional local video software, allowing the user to cue and mix video clips directly in a browser. There are three sources for the video clips, either they are uploaded from the user's computer, taken from other online video sites like youtube or fed live from the user's webcam. Given that the internet connection is fast enough, mogulus allows real-time editing of online video shows that can be streamed and thus watched by others directly. A good overview of online video tools can be found in Cilia's social bookmarks at del.icio.us/ciliuka.

In the other workshop space, podcasting was the main topic. Alex Wunschel, who has his own weekly podcast on podpimp.de, showed how you can become a podcaster yourself with only minor investments such as a cheap microphone and a small tabletop mixer. His research showed that there are about 6000 podcasters in Germany who produce shows on a regular basis. The main advantage that podcast listeners quoted in a recent survey was the possibility of listening whereever and whenever they wanted. Additionally, 47% of podcast listeners said they were listening less to traditional radio programmes now. Another number from Alex's survey showed that about 18 million podcast episodes were downloaded in Germany per month (August 2007).

Successful working with communities

One of the panels of Saturday morning was called "Successful working with communities" and centered mainly on the use of Second Life in youth work. Second Life is a 3D online world where users have their own avatar and are free to roam on virtual islands and places. What sets Second Life apart from similar online worlds is the feature to produce content such as 3D objects and even sell them to other users. So the Second Life world is not mainly driven by an environment supplied by the company who runs the servers but by an user-driven economy.

Michael Lange of metaversa.de, a Berlin based nonprofit, introduced a second online world called Teen Second Life which is much smaller then the main Second Life environment (which only adults are legally allowed to use) and is intended for 13 to 17 year old kids. This teen environment is unfortunately not as popular among its target group because the required registration process and age verification is much more complicated than just pretending to be an adult in the main Second Life.

Lange, who has been running a teenage online community called Cyberland for over ten years (based on an older visual online chat system called The Palace), recently started an own island in Teen Second Life. Participants of his workshops have been meeting in person in Berlin and are taking over the development of the Second Life island. There is an ongoing exchange between the new upcoming team of the metaversa island and team members of other youth organizations who have already established a Second Life residency.

Graham Stanley of the British Council in Barcelona presented their island in Teen Second Life next. The British Council has been working for about a year now and will soon open it for the public. The main target group is young people learning English, so the British Council has set up digital versions of many British land marks such as Stonehenge, Carnaby street or the London Eye. Kids are invited to take upon learning quests represented in the context of the Excalibur legend, a Robin Hood story or a Haunted Mansion. Aside from the cultural references, the places also have a linguistic function, such as being ancient, contemporary and even futuristic to help learners of English with the correct use of tenses.

Niels Brüggen of JFF analyzes the usage of online communities. He is just evaluating the German youth portal netzcheckers.de. He explained that young people are especially fond of social networking sites because they allow them to create an identity for themselves. The information kids enter into their online "profiles" might not always be truthful, but it proves to be an useful tool to them to find out about their own identity. Communities such as Facebook are successful because they work as a simple augmentation of social activities, even if they are mere gossip.

Brüggen suggested two ways of using web 2.0 technology for youth work. Either one should go to the existing communities where young people are now to find out what they are doing and where their interests lie. This might not always be the best solution as most online communities are run by companies who mainly generate income by selling their users' profile information to serve them advertising tailored to their interests. Brüggen therefore suggested that one could start a similar community itself instead of using an existing one.

Participation, but safe!

The span of opinions was set early on in Thursday's panel discussion: On the one side are two commercials for German media literacy training site klicksafe.de, represented here by Mike Cosse. Advertising company Ogilvy made these two films depicting the dangers of the internet to young people. On the other side of the spectrum was Tim Cole, who disagreed wholeheartedly with the idea of the internet as a lonely place that is only to be consumed as a controlled part time activity. He repeated his idea of the internet as a place that people can exist in quite happily and this does not question their real lives.

The general change of paradigm seems to be that traditional Youth Information generally a top-down process while at the same time children make up their own rules that are somewhat bottom-up if not right out peer-to-peer.  While the Youth Information professionals on the panel suggest a new approach such as being mere moderators of the discussions that young people have, Tim Cole goes even further and suggests that adults are lucky if the kids decide to talk to them at all. The question to him is if the adults, despite being professionals, are able to keep up with the young people.

Wilhelm Teuber of the German Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth pointed out that the young generation is no homogeneous target group and that especially the level of education of the individual must be considered. A member of the audience raised the question if the things today's children are doing online are fundamentally different from what former generations did. People love to communicate and have always done so, only today the internet is another place to do that. Children have always tried to peek into the adult world and find out themselves things they were not supposed to see, like nude magazines.

Another audience member explained that online worlds like World of Warcraft lets children experience direct feedback for their actions. By completing a task in the game, they are not only rewarded by the system but also gain praise from their online peers, something that they might lack in reality when their real life accomplishments are not taken notice of properly.

Teuber hopes that online fads like happy slapping (e.g. hitting people, filming the attack with a mobile phone camera and uploading it on the web) do not work as a means of gaining online reputation (the "currency of the future" according to Tim Cole). Kids should be wise enough to scold their peers for acting that way, so that their disapproval might influence them more then the disapproval of an adult.

Remix conference videos

Head over to online video community Eyespot, where Christoph and Franz from netbridge have uploaded some videos of the conference, ready to be remixed online. The complete gallyery of videos is available at eyespot.com/gallery/Youthinfo.

Tim Cole, Internet Pundit

Tim Cole, self-proclaimed Internet Pundit and a journalist for over 20 years, gave a very frank impulse talk about his views about the role of young people and the internet today. He clearly stated that he has no idea about the profession of Youth Information as such, but is a father whose daughter has shared her father's internet affinity during her upbringing.

Cole's devil's advocate position is that grown-ups have no idea about the internet while the young people use it naturally. This again raised the question of the necessity of professional Youth Information in a world where young people are used to find informations themselves. While Tim Cole advocates the ideas and tools usually summed up as "web 2.0", he doesn't like the term as such. He prefers to call it "Mitmach-Internet" in German, meaning participation and collaboration. The internet always has been a participatory medium, even before the advent of the world wide web -- but the increase in available bandwidth and availability of tools everybody can use has taken that development to the point where it is now.

Cole's first theory was that more and more young people spend more and more time in the parallel world and lead a happy and productive life. The internet is like a physical place to them and this is not only true for virtual worlds like Second Life or World of Warcraft. This lead to Cole's second theory: "In a world of participation, people (kids especially) make up their own rules, often as the go along." This might often be incomprehensible to adults who just witness the ways of interactions young people have on the web.

Cole compared today's internet skills to very basic activities that have always been around: Blogging as such is essentially writing, like in a classic diary, and especially for young people, the writing itself is the key part, not making money by it. "Kids want to generate their own content, and the internet is giving them new tools for self-expression."

On the subject of popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, Cole pointed out how young people like to present themselves online, often giving away much more information publicly than is considered appropriate. Cole: "Kids want to stand out from the crowd. Forget privacy -- this is the age of the extroverts." This might lead to problems in some years' time, when kids grow up, apply for a job and everything they put online, including the embarrassing things such as videos carelessly uploaded to YouTube, is still available to the job recruiter. This is a problem that even Cole did not have an easy solution for as he found out himself how hard it is to have something erased that has been released on the web. He cited NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd: "Never do anything you dont want to see on the top favourites on YouTube." Cole's wisdom on that subject: "On the internet, nothing goes away. We must learn to live with total transparency -- even if it hurts."

In Germany, there is an online community called spickmich.de where pupils can rate their teachers. So far, four lawsuits have been filed by teachers who found their privacy invaded by this. On all four occasions, courts have turned down the issues, claiming that the right of expression for the pupils is greater than the teachers' demands for privacy. Cole: "Kids want to express their opinions. There is no way to stop them."

Even if technology companies such as Yahoo! abides censorship in China, helping the government to put a critical journalist in jail who felt safe to voice his criticism online anonymously, there are always tools to circumvent restrictions. As everyone can use them, filtering internet access does not solve any problems of blocking young people from seeing information that might not be appropriate for them. Cole's conclusion: "The world behind the computer screen contains everything our real world does -- only more so. It offers a unique opportunity to reach out and touch the lives of kids everywhere -- but only, if we learn to play by the new rules."

What do you think? Please discuss in the comments.

20 years of Youth Information

Alexandra Cangelosi (ERYICA) and Bernard Charbonnel (Eurodesk) gave a short 20 minute talk about 20 years of Youth Information in Europe. The basic idea behind Youth Information is that young people have the right to accurate and balanced information that meets their needs and questions and is designed especially for them. The overview started with beginning cooperation between european networks in the early 80s, most importantly the founding of ERYICA in 1986 and the Eurodesk launch in 1990.

Cangelosi and Charbonnel proposed an important question: Is there still a demand for Youth Information in the age of the world wide web? Most likely the role of Youth Information has to be redefined. The ERYICA organization seems to be on the right way: in 1986 it had 12 members in 8 countries, today 28 members in 22 countries.

Photos

We are busy taking and uploading pictures of the conference. You can find them on the conference site. If you have your own pictures of the conference on the web somewhere, please tell us about them in a comment!

Opening Session on Thursday

Hallo and Willkommen, this is Berlin speaking. Welcome to our almost real time coverage of "Youth Information 2.0", the European Conference on challenges and opportunities of web based youth information and youth portals. That sure is a long title and it already foreshadows the next four days' various takes onto this complex matter.

The conference started with a row of introductory talks, first by Marie-Luise Dreber, Director of Germany's IJAB, the international Youth Service of Germany, who has been heading the conference organization. Dreber praised the cooperation of all the eurpean agencies commited to the conference. Three years after the last conference on this topic there are already several new developments to keep up with, she said.

Gerd Hoofe, Secretary of State at Germany's Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth focused on the role computers and networks have in the everyday world of education today. He cited a recent German study that found that over 80 percent of juveniles aged 12 to 19 use the internet on a regular basis. There still is a certain slope regarding the educational level of the young people, meaning that those better educated have a greater chance of using the new means of communication. Hoofe compared the new participatory models of web 2.0 tools to the idea of direct democracy and drew an analogy of active online collaboration and active citizenship. This is one of the main reasons the German government feels commited to educate young people in the use of these new tools. Participation is a key element for a working democratic society. Hoofe also mentioned the role of accessibility in his speech, pointing out that internet services should not deprive disabled users of their participation, as the web is a place where they basically are able to communicate without the barriers their disability causes in everyday life.

Next up on stage was Pierre Mairesse, who is Director of Youth at the European Commission. Mairesse talked about the different national youth portals on the web. Of the 27 member countries, 18 have a dedicated online portal for Youth Information. A very important aspect, according to Mairesse, is the multilinguality of these portals, as it helps connection across borders and between the member states.