Am currently involved in an archeological dig following rumours that somewhere beneath the detrius left over from Yellow Braces and all the mail that arrived while I was away, there is a desk. Digging through the various sub-strata of papers, these are the things that can be dealt with by converting to html before binning :-)
The August edition of Youthwork is out and it is majoring on sex, big time ....... some really good articles in there! (sadly no funny job adverts this time which is bad news for this blog).
The MATRIX conference has published more details, It's March 5-7th at High Leigh conference centre. It will focus on four areas, the theologian, the leader, the missionary and the prophet. Booking forms will be in Sept/Oct Youthwork magazine.
The Grove youth series in growing and selling well. The latest title, "Can we have a chat" a look at working safely with young people one to one by Jon Langford is out, well worth a look.
Interesting article in the Guardian investigating how much personal info/photo's young people put onto Bebo, myspace etc and the danger that represents.
I'm not sure how this fell into my In Tray but if Gospel music is your bag then you may want to check the Star Awards evening thingy out! The event will be held at Symphony Hall in Birmingham at 7pm on 2 September 2006 and will be hosted by UK Gospel Music Ambassador Noel Robinson and Birmingham’s Nikki Tapper from BBC WM.
And if you are a bit too busy at the moment then this piccy will either make you laugh or cry .....
The rise and rise of sites like Bebo is definitely a concern, especially as many parents don't even realise what their young people are actually posting to the sites. For example we are very careful about posting pictures of young people online, to the point that when some of our Youth Group participated in the Bishop of Oxford discussions the parents involved we had signed permission for Ian to use their picture on the Oxford Diocese site. Currently the shots of the youth group on the Church web site are deliberately pictures of the Youth Group about five years ago. Even before the current policy came in we never associated names and faces.
However, if I take a stroll through Bebo and the other sites, I can quite quickly find a significant number of our current youth group, complete with names, addresses, and some decidedly risque pictures. Indeed, one of the group has actually set up a page for the Youth Group itself on one of the sites.
It's worth noting that the age limit and sign up restrictions don't work either - some of our 11 and 12 year olds have pages too...
Whats bebo?
Thanks Tim - I thought I was the only "unknowing" person....yes what is bebo?