Blogging - for capturing those hard and soft outcomes and so much more..
Noise Solution uses social media to massively enhance the outcomes for learners - you can too..
Achieving Before I set up Noise Solution I worked with vulnerable young people in a variety of local government organisations - advocating, signposting and problem solving with them. Over 10 years I discovered that one of the best interventions I could instigate, especially with those with low self esteem, was to find something they were good at and make them believe it themselves. This would lead to them having the confidence to try new things - take new paths.
This fact has driven, subconsciously at first then consciously, quite a lot of the development of the delivery model we employ at Noise Solution. For example we find quick ways for people to make quality music that's meaningful to them. To do this we employ all the techniques I've picked up in my career of finding shortcuts as a professional musician, whether that is a method we use for teaching piano that uses shapes rather than notation and scales (this is a whole other post waiting to happen) or using Kinect controllers to control synths (see previous blog) or just using computers to create great sounding loop based tracks. The important thing is that we remove for people the traditional barriers to creating music and that they become good at something that sounds great, quickly.
Reflecting So far so good but often even if you make those great creative leaps forward the person you're working with…remember them.. may well not believe they are making progress. How can you demonstrate to them that they are? Well how about if you had kept a diary that had photos and video, audio examples of them developing their skills and ideas, quotes from people saying how fantastic the work was. And how would it be if it also looked great and that they had ownership of it, felt proud of it. This is what we do with blogs. We're using them to reflect back at the learners what they have achieved and it is proving to be hugely beneficial especially when combined with these next steps.
Soft and hard outcomes Every set of interventions that we engage with at Noise Solution is blogged, this means we have a case study written by or with the learner for every person we work with, we're 'capturing' the soft outcomes, the ones that as community musicians are often difficult to show to outsiders, funders or commissioners. We're making viewable the learner's progression, their success and showcasing it. Better than that though we are then using those blog showcases to obtain hard outcomes as well. We provide all the evidence for Qualifications (specifically Arts Awards) to moderators in the format of those same blogs. We tick off all the criteria that they require to obtain the qualification within their blog. Turning those captured soft outcomes, which are useful for persuading funders you're doing great things, into hard outcomes like qualifications…..now those commisioners are really interested.
Wringing the last drop Those are two great examples of what blogging can do for your clients and your organisation but I've saved the best for last. As a professional working with vulnerable young people it soon become apparent that the sphere of influence you have as a social worker, youth offending worker, youth worker etc can be quite limited when compared to the influence of the client's family or peers have. What we started doing was using the blog as a positive focus for all parties. Updated blogs are group emailed to those people important in the learner's life. So the professional worker sees their client who may normally be involved in destructive behaviour succeeding and they have something positive to discuss, the parent sees their child who's not had any educational success succeeding and they have something positive to discuss with grandparents, teachers, friends, anyone that the learner sees as important. Suddenly people are feeding back to the learner that they are good at something and they've got a certificate to prove it (a certificate that carries credits on the governments QCF).
Full circle And we come back to the point I started with - tell someone they are good at something and make them believe it (who better to convince them than their family or peers?) and you can start to impact on behavioural change or change someone's agency in the choices that they make.
Challenges along the road All positive? well there's no universal panacea and this approach is not perfect. Some parents and kids are not going to have access to computers at home. I've still had success with clients in this situation, with no previous qualifications, using the blogs as portfolios to gain entrance to college courses. The other issue as ever is time. Collating the information, photos videos uploading etc etc is time consuming. For every two hours contact time with a learner Noise Solution charges another hour to liaise with professionals, prep sessions write reports on the session, and importantly update the blog. These things take time. Don't short change yourself and think it's a quick add on. You need to build it in realistically to your costs otherwise it just becomes a pain rather than a feature of the quality of the work you are providing.
This is some example video from a recent blog. It's's a blog from a young man (who is over 18 and who has explicitly said that he's happy for us to show the blog) so you can see the sort of thing we are doing. View the whole blog here
There is obviously lots more to be said around the responsible use of internet with clients but that's for another post.
So - it's great for reflecting back learning, cool for collating evidence and massively helpful in facilitating others to provide positive feedback that reinforces positive behaviour - Blogging…it's great
What do you think?
Simon Glenister
Director, Noise Solution