Social Media & Social Networking

Social Media & Social Networking: Exploration day for Afasic http://www.afasic.org.uk/

Afasic seeks to raise awareness and to create better services and provision for children and young people with speech and language impairments. It works in partnership with local and national government, professional and statutory bodies and other voluntary organisations.

Tim Davies and I co-delivered a day long workshop for 13 members of the Afasic staff team & 1 Afasic trustee to:

Explore how social media, and specifically how social networking tools could be used by Afasic in working with young people, parents and supporters.

Develop an understanding of a range of social media and social networking tools through hands-on experience and activities.

Identify key issues around ethics and safety for working with young people on social network sites, and explore possible responses.

Identify specific pilot projects where social media and social networking could be used.

Develop a draft plan for engaging practically and strategically with social media and social networking tools.

Workshop approach:
Presentations on understanding social media and social networking – offering conceptual frameworks and practical examples to work with.

Group discussions to share existing learning – and to identify existing skills, experience and activities to build on.

Hands on use of specific tools and websites – such as Bebo, Facebook, Twitter and Wordpress, to support staff in developing an intuitive understanding of the possibilities.

Priority setting – to identify key uses of social media and social networking which fit with Asfasic's goals.

Planning pilots – identifying small scale activities that staff can take forward to further explore social media and social networking, alongside wider strategic thinking.


Some participants were initially very skeptical about how to incorporate social media within their everyday practice. We ran a practical group work shop to show how easy it really is, and within 45 minutes each group had created a short film clip, uploaded it to youtube and added annotations. By the end of the workshop the participants had a clearer view on how social media can be utilised within their practice and understood how much information already exists to help plan and develop appropriate polices to create safe online spaces.

One of the key strengths of Social Media is the potential breadth of the target audience EG Engagement of young people with speech and language impairments. During the presentation I explained how visual aids like makaton http://www.makaton.org/about/ss_what.htm, images from Through the maze symbols http://www.through-the-maze.org.uk/pages/Symbols, film clips with subtitles or a person signing can be uploaded to a social media platform to enable communication.

During the practical filming tasks one of the groups discussed with me how they felt ‘too old’ and that young people would not be interested in viewing online what they have to share about Afasic also that they felt uncomfortable being in front of the camera. So we explored how they could support young people to create content and to think creatively how to use other visual aids to create content while protecting peoples identities or providing ‘props’ to give individuals confidence to participate e.g. using masks, finger puppets, cartoon charters while doing voice overs.

One participant shared with me “I’m not on any social media site as I feel too old but after today I feel inspired to explore and learn more and can really see the potential of communicating with young people online, their already online anyway and we as an organsiation need to support young people to make safe informed choices while online”

Participants recognised that it’s not necessary to orgainse a ‘separate’ session with young people/parents/careers to create content as this could be integrated into existing sessions. Also there is not the nessesicity to ‘create’ all the content but to explore and identify current online content relevant to the orgainsation which can then be embedded into their social media profile.

I would like to express my gratitude to each participant for a fun day and for fully participating in the course, where I feel Tim and I have shared learning opportunities to utilise social media & social networking within their everyday practice.