Tag: tips & tricks

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involver blog Newsletters

Newsletter 6: New awards, new training and new resources for the New Year

Hello from involver – newsletter number 6.

Happy New Year and welcome to involver’s first newsletter of 2011. It’s that strange time of year when Christmas feels like it was a long time ago, but there’s still ages till it gets warm. To try and take your mind off it, here’s a rundown on what we’ve been up to and also some free stuff for you.

Resource: School Council Progress Board
Asher put together this great way for school councils to keep track of how their projects are going, and the progress that is being made. Very useful, and a lot more engaging than the old and dusty ‘school council noticeboard’ that hasn’t changed in months!
http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-progress-boards/

Awards: Speakers School Council Awards 2011 now open
The Speaker’s School Council Awards is rolling into action for a second year. This brilliant project rewards school and college councils that run innovative projects with a big impact. So get your school or college on the shiny new website and apply for the Award. It’s a great project that we’re absolutely chuffed to be working on with Parliament. Get involved at:
www.speakersschoolcouncil.org

Party: involver is 1
Towards the end of last year, involver was 1 year old. We had a little first birthday party to celebrate, and over many, many games of table football, we said thanks to the people we’ve worked with, or who have helped us out. Here’s a few pictures from the night:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=604091&id=312498090415&ref=mf

Awards: Future 100
We recently won our second award; for being one of the Future 100 Young Entrepreneurs in the UK. It’s great to be recognised in this way because setting up a new social enterprise sometimes feels quite thankless! Read more here:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/11/involver-wins-future-100-award/

Competition: £100 voucher
If you joined up to the involver newsletter after seeing our wonderfully bright pink leaflet, then welcome on board! Hope you enjoy the free resources and things we’ll be sending you from now on. Feel free to get in touch or ask a question on our site’s FAQ. The winner of the £100 vouchers was Jade Burnett-MacDonald.

News: Curriculum review and Democratic Life
As we’re sure you know, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, announced the review into the curriculum yesterday. If you’re a teacher, you’re probably groaning about this and asking whether we really need another review with another set of major changes. Whatever your views are, you can find out more here http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum and click on the ‘Call for Evidence’ link to share your views and evidence of what works. As part of the Democratic Life campaign, we’re working hard to keep Citizenship in there!
www.democraticlife.org.uk

Article: Student Voice and CPD
Asher has written an interesting article on student voice and CPD for Iris Connect, a professional development network. Read it here:
http://irisconnecteducatio.ning.com/page/student-voice-by-asher/
Oddly, Asher also got interviewed by Keith Vaz MP for Asian Voice: http://issuu.com/abpl/docs/av_20nov2010 (page 2 no less – we really need to get some more pictures of him though)

Training: School Councils and Students as Lesson Observers
We’ve had a really busy time training in 2011 so far, with great sessions in Huddersfield, Basingstoke and a few in London, we’ve also started work with 3 secondary schools and 1 primary on setting up students as lesson observers. Also very rewarding was watching a Year 6 pupil, who we’d trained the week before, expertly chairing a KS1 school council meeting (hopefully we’ll get permission to post the video soon).

If you want to get some student voice, student leadership or school council training before the end of the finacial year, we still have some dates available but get in touch soon on info@involver.org.uk or 020 3411 3294.
http://involver.org.uk/school-council-training-and-student-voice-support

Music: January’s involver playlist
Here’s this newsletter’s spotify playlist. I must apologise in advance for the Simply Red song that features, it’s just that the title is pretty relevant in the current climate :)
http://open.spotify.com/user/scyne/playlist/4G98SVCHNTGKV3LRnL2FZT

Thanks for listening!

Greg and Asher

http://twitter.com/doingdemocracy
http://facebook.com/involver.org.uk

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involver blog Resources

From school council noticeboards to progress boards

Can your school council noticeboard actually help drive change?

Pretty much every school I go to has one and they almost all consist of the same things:

  • Photos of the school council (often last year’s)
  • Minutes of the the last meeting (who stops at a noticeboard to read closely-typed minutes?)
  • A poster saying ‘have your say/make a difference/we’re your voice!’

Other than underlining for Ofsted that you have a school council, what does this actually achieve?

How about if you used that space instead for a Progress Board. This would allow everyone in the school to see:

  • What the school council is working on
  • Who they talk to to get involved
  • What the hold ups are (this can put gentle pressure on a slow-moving Headteacher or Caretaker to respond)
  • What’s off-limits and what’s been achieved

Anyway after years of describing this idea to people and sketching it up on flipcharts at training sessions I finally created a graphic last night which shows just what I mean.

School council progress board
If you set up a board like this you need to make sure it is updated at least once a week: make a member of the school council Progress Board Officer. Click the image to see the full-sized version.

Do you have any other ideas for what might go on here (or on a board next to it).

I’d also love to see how something like this could be part of a school council’s page on their VLE or website.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any ideas.

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Newsletters

Newsletter 5: Citizenship under threat

Hello from involver: newsletter number 5!

As I’m sure is the case for many of you, the start of the new school year has meant we’ve been so busy we’ve missed September. That’s why your September edition of this newsletter is arriving in mid-October, I know this will have thrown so many of you who base your working life around the publication date of this email :)

The attachment – our very magenta flyer

News: Citizenship education – is it for the chop?

There are rumours that the Coalition Government’s plans for a slimmer curriculum will involve getting rid of Citizenship. We believe this would undermine widespread engagement with the ‘Big Society’ and remove a key, active element of young people’s democratic education. We’ve joined Democratic Life to put the case for strong Citizenship teaching in every school. You should too.
http://www.democraticlife.org.uk

Resource: School council rep’s toolkit

This free guide is for new and prospective reps, whether they’re class reps, year reps or members of a local youth council. Its got tips and ideas on what makes a good rep, how to run meetings and manage projects. You can even download the original files to customise with your own school or LA logos and advice:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-reps-tookit/

Blog: Does a youth council have to look like a council?

Why do we assume that a formal meeting is the only/best way to run things? Most of us find meetings boring, yet we put young people through the same process. I’ve been working with a group of 15 year-olds to design something a bit different:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/09/does-a-youth-council-have-to-look-like-a-council/

Competition: Make a cool film and win equipment and a workshop with a top UK film director

Cut Films is a competition to get young people making films with, and for, each other about not-smoking. They have just launched this year’s competition with a deadline of 31 January 2011. For more information please see:
http://www.cutfilms.org

Training: New session on collecting information

I wrote and ran this session for Preston Manor High School in Brent about the benefits and problems with different ways of collecting views from your peers. They seemed to really enjoy it. Why don’t you give it a go and tell us if it works for you:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-training-collecting-information/

Resource: Help trial our Student Voice-o-meter

Building on our Simple Student Voice Audit Tool, we’ve built a more sophisticated way to see how loud the student voice is in schools. It’s student-led and is simple and quick enough it can be run in form time. We need a few schools to try it out for us though before we unleash it on the world. Let us know if you’re interested in getting this sneak peek:
info@involver.org.uk

Video: Pupil voice videos from across the web

We keep seeing great videos related to pupil voice, democratic education and school councils around the web, but couldn’t find a place where they’re all together, so we’ve created one. They’re great for CPD and to inspire your school council (or staff). Let us know if you’ve seen things we should add:
http://www.involver.org.uk/resources/videos/

Blog: Learner Voice: why bother?

Greg’s been asked to write a ‘thinkpiece’ for LSN’s magazine. He focussed on why learner voice (as it’s known in the 14-19 sector) is so important. Do you have anything to add?
http://involver.org.uk/2010/09/involver-thinkpiece-for-lsn-learnings-magazine-learner-voice-why-bother/

Resource: Find school council resources more easily

We’ve redesigned our resources pages so it’s now quicker and easier to find school council and student voice resources to download. Have a look and let us know what you think:
http://www.involver.org.uk/resources/
Hope to hear from you all soon,

Greg and Asher @ involver

P.S. If you think other people might find what we do useful and you’ve got a network, conference or event where you could give away copies of the attached flyers we’d really appreciate it. Just let us know how many you need and we’ll put them in the post. Thanks!

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involver blog Resources

School council training: collecting information

Picture of whole school assemblyTo be effective school councils have to be expert communicators. Often a lot of emphasis is put on public speaking, and out-going communication, but communication is a two way process and arguably how a school council collects information is even more important.

To help a secondary school in Brent think about how they canvass the views of their whole school I wrote this short, simple session.  They seemed to enjoy it and it helped them come up with some really useful ideas. Why don’t you give it a try and see if it works for you?

Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]

Aims:

  • For participants to experience a few different ways of collecting information.
  • For participants to explore what those methods might be good for and what drawbacks they might have.

Age range: 11-18

Group size: 12-30

Time: 20-30 mins

Resources:

  • Notepad
  • Whiteboard/flipchart
  • Tables
  • Chairs
  • Pens
  • Marker pens
  • Paper stuck to wall
  • Room big enough for people to move around in.
  • Collecting ideas instructions sheets
  • Face-to-face survey sheets (x5)
  • Written survey sheets (x5)

Method:

  1. Before the session starts (I did this during the previous session), select 5 people who will be your ‘researchers’.
  2. Explain to each of them what they will be doing (give each of them an instruction sheet).
  3. Send each of your researchers to the area they’ll be working in.
  4. Split the rest of the class up and send them to
    • 1/3 to meeting
    • 1/3 to written survey
    • 1/3 to opinion wall
    • N.B. None to informal chat or face-to-face survey
  5. Tell them they’ve got 10 minutes to discuss/fill out surveys, etc.
  6. After 10 minutes bring them all back into one group.
  7. Ask each of the researchers to feed back their findings in turn.
  8. Also ask them how they found using that method.
  9. After each one ask the group to think about what situations it might be good to use that research method for.
  10. Write these up.

Add-on: Put participants into pairs, get each pair to decide on a question and a research method they will use in the next week.

Obviously you can add in other research methods, making sure you stick to the principle that they’re using the method to find out whether or not it’s a good method.

Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]

Download the session outline and resources as Word documents (all of these are included as one download above):

  • [download id=”223″]
  • [download id=”224″]
  • [download id=”225″]
  • [download id=”226″]
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Resources

School council reps’ tookit

I wrote this little pocket guide for the school councils of some secondary schools I’m working with. It should be useful to anyone who’s interested in becoming a rep (representative) or is one already and wants some tips on how to make a good job of it.

Most schools have reps as part of the way they run student voice, often class reps, year or house council reps and then even school council reps who might meet with people from other schools.

But being a rep’s not easy, so here are some tips and guides on how to do it well.

Inside you’ll find answers to all of these questions:

  • What is a rep (representative)?
  • What’s good student voice?
  • What does a rep do?
  • How do I collect views?
  • How do I create change?
  • How do meetings work?
  • What should I ask in meetings?
  • How do I run a meeting?
  • What are minutes?
  • Can meetings be fun?
  • How do I present an idea?
  • How do we get things done?

It’s designed as an A5 booklet so if you print it our double-sided onto A4 all the pages should match up

Download the PDF here:

[download id=”220″]

As with all of our work, we release it under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, so if you want to remix it – add your own logos, etc. – you can do that with the Publisher files here:

[download id=”221″]

Categories
involver blog

3 lessons learned as a startup social enterprise

On a train again, heading back to London after a few days in the Edinburgh Festival, I thought I’d write a few reflections on starting up our social enterprise.

Not to suggest that we’ve had world-beating success or anything, but to look back on our experience of developing an organisation around a set of ideas, that’s given us both a job!

So here we go….

Get started, but change things up

involver's logos in various guises and with a variety of taglines
'On the origin of logos'

The great benefit you have as a new organisation is that you can change big things very quickly.

You need to get up and running and making money in the area that you want to work, but don’t feel bad about making big changes when you’re starting up: change things up!

There’s no six month review on a new three year strategy, there’s no board of trustees to pass things through, there’s just good ideas and not-so-good ideas.

It’s your job to find the good ideas and use them to direct what you do, and how you describe it.

That’s not to suggest that you shouldn’t plan ahead, but being able to change things to make sure you get them right.

Ross, a former-colleague who’s now in the Digital Diplomacy Group at FCO described us as being ‘agile’ – I think this is a good way to describe it. And being agile in changing times like these is definitely a good thing!

We’re constantly tweaking our business plan, and it’s always out of date pretty quickly. It’s quite funny looking back at the earliest versions and how far our thinking has developed – hopefully in the right direction!

And as things develop …

You’ll have to learn stuff, but don’t try to learn everything

You’ll have to learn stuff.

This might seem obvious, but some of this stuff that you’ll have to learn is probably stuff you might not be that interested in learning. Sad but true.

Having worked in big organisations like the civil service, where you know your job description down to the letter (so that you can palm off as much work as possible!), it’s clear that this is the opposite.

In a small organisation like ours (two people), being versatile is important. And not always in a fun way: playing chief executive is fun, but we both need to be admin assistants too!

Knowing the limits of your versatility is the tough bit: the trick is to be able to differentiate between knowing when it’s worth taking the time to learn something, and when you’re best off paying an expert to do it.

Why spend two weeks learning to use an accountancy package when you can pay an accountant to do them in a day? Resources may be scarce, but it’s important to remember what you’re good at, and why you’re there in the first place.

I guess if you can do something:

  • To a good standard
  • Quickly
  • Without paying
  • Which will benefit you again in the future

Then do it! If it’s a one off that will take ages, then don’t!

Sometimes you’ve got friends you can call on to help you with this stuff, but …

Be wary of overplaying connections

Just because you’re excited about your new organisation, and you’ve got a really good contacts, it doesn’t mean you should push them all really hard to help you.

At best, you could force them to reluctantly give you a hand on something they don’t want to do, at worst, you could lose them as a contact all together.

Better to gently remind people of what you’re up to, and open up any opportunities to them. Reminding people is usually pretty easy too, because of the sheer number of ways that you can contact people – twitter, facebook, linkedin, phone, email, letter etc…

Of course, give your cards out widely, chat about what you’re doing with everyone, and there might be a time when you’re begging your Auntie’s son for some legal advice, but in general, I think it’s best to be patient with your efforts.

This could be anyone – a web designer, a lawyer, or an SEO expert – and I think the rule holds for them all.

Interestingly, I see this A LOT in London, maybe because there are just more blaggers here. A friend and I were talking about the same thing within the music industry- people mistake having a contact, with actually doing the work themselves – dangerous!