Youth Development Insight

By Kari Robideau In what felt like an instant, our traditional ways of meeting youth needs halted. The essence of our work is building relationships. Now that we are all physically distant from young people we serve, how can we continue to do it? Let’s answer this question with intentional programming and purposeful opportunities. While developing youth programs in distance learning formats is not our usual strategy, following best practices and achieving youth outcomes is what we will continue to do. Technology can help us stay connected, but let's be smart about how we use it. Many things have changed in the last few weeks, but one thing has not. We are youth development professionals grounded in positive youth development practices. We provide high-quality learning environments with experiential learning opportunities in out-of-school time. Ask young people and families what they need during this time. Survey your youth leaders by email or text. Be mindful of the h...

By Margo Bowerman I admit it. I am a science nerd. And while I thought history didn’t interest me, I’m geeking out on the history of innovation and technology development. Thank you Steven Johnson ! I’m wondering how to apply what I’ve learned about technological innovations to the Minnesota 4-H youth development program. We have an initiative to expand the reach of the program, while increasing its relevance to society and maintaining high program quality. Our Program Director Dorothy McCargo Freeman has challenged us to be innovative and creative . Here’s what I’ve come up with. Be curious, be observant and ask questions Freeman refers to the book and video, Our Iceberg is Melting . In this book, a penguin colony faces the potential demise of the iceberg they call home. The story is a metaphor for how to significantly change an organization. In this story, the first penguin to notice there is something wrong was curious beyond typical penguin activities and investigated thin...

By Kari Robideau Do you listen to podcasts?  The number of people who do is exploding. Last year Edison Research found that one in four Americans aged 12-54 had listened to a podcast within the last month.  And podcast listening grew 23% between 2015 and 2016. So the audience for podcasts is bigger than you think! To help provide context..the percentage of Americans who listen to podcasts is the same as those who use Twitter. Podcasting has been around for more than a decade. So why the increase in the last couple years? People are using mobile devices much more than they did three years ago. We’re also in a TV on-demand era, in which we watch and listen to WHAT we want WHEN we want it. When do they listen? People listen to podcasts anytime they might listen to the radio or music on a CD. This includes listening at home, the gym or while commuting to work. What are they listening to? The most popular podcasts are educational, current events-related or fictiona...

By Ann Nordby Next week I'll co-present at the National Urban Extension Conference about 4-H online adventures. It's a model we're developing for delivering hands-on experiential learning online. The seemingly opposite ideas of "hands-on" and "online" are actually very compatible. If you've ever searched on Youtube for how to prune hydrangeas or change a tire, you understand the value of video for teaching. If you've ever shared your own video on Facebook, you probably did it because it explained something better than you could do in words. You may also have experienced how online games can do more than entertain –  they can teach and enlighten . Our team still has many questions. For example, we’re still discovering how best to integrate evaluation, what are the best dosage and duration of a learning module and how to take it to scale. None of our questions has to do with whether to move our program online. There are compelling reaso...

By Kate Walker What online tools do you use for collecting data, collaborating, and creating presentations? Two years ago I shared a top ten list of tech resources . Some of you shared yours too. Since then I've been introduced to more (mostly) free tools that are both useful and user-friendly. I use them for research, but can imagine lots of programmatic uses, as well. Online Survey. Use Google Forms -- part of the suite of apps in Google Drive -- to easily create an online survey embedded in your email message. A Google form is linked to a spreadsheet and sent out via email, and recipients' responses are automatically collected in that spreadsheet. Face-to-face survey. Use Quicktap Survey on your tablet (iPad or Android) to create and collect information quickly and easily. Just pass around your tablet to collect data, then export to Excel to analyze results. The free version allows for one survey at a time, but you can have 50 questions and up to 150 responses. ...

By Carrie Ann Olson Sometimes it seems as though everywhere you look, people are using their phones. But what are they using them for? The Pew Internet Research Project reports that teen texting volume is up in 2012 while the frequency of voice calling is down. About three-quarters (77%) of teens have a cell phone; one in four say they own smartphones. American teens on average are sending or receiving 3,339 texts a month, or more than six for every hour they're awake, according to a Nielsen Company report: Calling Yesterday, Texting Today, Using Apps Tomorrow . Although texting is at an all-time high, the largest area of growth was in teen data usage, from 14 MB to 62 MB per month. Almost half of teens surveyed reported using an app 10 times per day -- more frequently than general grooming and eating. So how are you connecting with this mobile youth society? Do you text? Do you push meeting reminders? Do you have mobile apps that support the topic you are teaching while e...

By Nicole Pokorney In 2009, the youth population was recorded at nearly 3 billion strong, almost half of the world's population! Generation Y is technologically savvy, generous, diverse, and global. However, in his book, Generation iY , Tim Elmore takes a reality check on youth. Through interviews, literature and many other methods, his research describes youth as overwhelmed, overly connected, overprotected and overserved. Tim writes, "These kids really do desire to change the world; they just don't have what it takes to accomplish their lofty dreams". His bottom line? Adults are not prepared to lead youth into the future! Never before has there been a greater need for competent and skilled youth workers to prepare our youth for citizenship and careers. Youth workers must be flexible and transformative to access global challenges, such as meeting the needs of the growing youth population, addressing economic realities and developing vocational opportunities. In ...

By Trudy Dunham Social media have profoundly changed how we experience our connections with each other. But the connections are more than just social -- they help us to create and contribute to our world. They enable us to participate as citizens in today's participatory culture. In a webinar this week put on by our center and PEAR , Karen Brennan drew on her research with Scratch , a computer programming language developed at MIT for use in education, to talk about the socialization-creation continuum. At the midpoint of this continuum is that space where we are most engaged and productive, doing more together than we could have achieved alone. Several years ago Henry Jenkins and his team at the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT described that midpoint as a participatory culture, as one with "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations, and some type of informal mentorship w...

By Kate Walker Do you feel overwhelmed by all the technology options? Do you find it hard to choose from, or even keep up with, the flurry of possibilities? I'm not an early adopter. I still have a land line telephone, buy CDs from a shop, and don't have cable TV. But professionally, I want to stay up to date on tools for doing my work as a researcher and evaluator. I imagine they could help program staff be more productive and progressive too. Here are my top 10 tools, based on personal experience, recommended by people I respect or that just look interesting, organized from finding and organizing information at the start of a project, to collecting data and presenting it to others. Google Scholar . This academic search engine is my go-to place to search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources; peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other...