Nerijus, could you leave a note with the address of the blog anyway? Maybe another Lithuanion soul wanders by and would like to know…

And thanks for joining the blogosphere, youth workers of Lithuania!

I feel a movement emerging, slowly but steadily…

Good.

Very good indeed.

once again, up to date!

just in couple of minutes I send a link to the blog, which we started last week during the early meeting of youth workers in Lithuania. sorry not able to share the blog as it is in Lithuanian, but the idea of ours was get into the blogging for experience, learning and sharing.

I am looking forward to see how it will develop and for sure I will send a link of this article to my colleagues.

just for your curiosity and language learning – in Lithuanian language for masculine words we often add ending “-as” (e.g. bar – baras, internet – internetas). and if you add to the word “blog” ending “-as” you would get – “blogas”, which in our language primary means “bad”.

playing with words makes people listen you!

» why don’t we?

Our work in Europe so far has been limited to Ireland & Albania so my knowledge there is limited, but interestingly the online awards system we’re developing has had applicants from India, Nepal, Singapore as well as Canada, USA & the UK (from only a handful of applications so far) & with the costs tumbling down to get online (& buy a laptop) if young people can do it theres no obvious reason that adults working with young people can’t get online & contribute too.

On the otherhand I think a lot of the technologies are becoming rapidly simpler too – getting online is easier – understanding computers is much simpler – blogging itself is easier, so I’m sure we will see some youth work contribution emerging soon……….(?!)

In other words: the exclusion is already institutionalised, but some youth workers and trainers continue to use the digital gap as their reason not to embrace new technologies. And while I agree that something needs to be done about the tailoring of European youth work for online-savvy urban youth, I don’t think the situation holds up as an argument against blogging.

And yes, I agree that the irony is limited, otherwise I wouldn’t have blogged about it :) Though there is a point that our efforts must extend beyond those who read but don’t yet blog – hence the idea of blogging guide.

I think a reason for the in the UK may be that there was originally a concern about whether some young people would have access to the internet, but recently this has become a very weak argument – good internet access can be found in all sorts of places & devices now and its no longer the domain of those young people lucky enough to have broadband access at home (although so many do now anyway!).

I think the technology and access to it have evolved so rapidly – and of course many young people have kept pace with it – the question is why haven’t the people working with them managed to keep up too?

Having said that I don’t think its that ironic to blog about this. Just because people are reading them doesn’t mean they’re writing them – if we can get some of those reading to also start writing thats a very good starting point.

You just wait, I have something in that direction up my own sleeve, too…

«… there is a certain amount of recognisable irony blogging about the lack of youth work bloggers—we’re preaching to the converted and those who we need to convince don’t read/know about blogs.»

Despite the irony, Tim Davies wrote down 7 reasons why youth workers should be blogging.

Now we already have 17 reasons. So what exactly are all the youth professionals out there waiting for?!

http://www.mediasnackers.com/report/2008/January/13/553/

You will also find back links to other posts I have written plus some links to other ‘voices’ talking about the same cause…

I’ve just update my post with a link to this one – drop us a line as we’re trying to coordinate our efforts and you’re more than welcome to join the party :-)

Peace

DK
MediaSnackers Founder