New project: PLEAS

The new project I will be working with YouthLaw on is called PLEAS.

It will be an online training resource for the approx 2,000 youth workers as part of the National Youth Workers Network (http://www.youthworkers.net.nz/). It will also contain modules for workers at the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), school guidance counsellors, and community law centres.

It intends to train youth workers on how to advocate for children and young people.

I went to a meeting yesterday with Jeanie and Harvena from YouthLaw, and Alan and Wayne from Business Mechanix. We discussed the possible software that could be used for the project. As Microsoft partners, of course Business Mechanix suggested using SharePoint. They had also considered using Moodl.

I thought it might be a good idea to check out Blackboard and Dot Net Nuke as well.

I agree that SharePoint will be a well suited piece of software to achieve the project's goals, but the licensing could become a problem. The licensing works on named users, not concurrent users. That means that YouthLaw would have to select, for example, 20 youth workers to have access to the resources for a period of time. This would make it hard roll out the resources nationwide in a short period of time.

Wayne suggested we look into using the external user connector license, which is a one-off license for any users that are external to the organisation (YouthLaw). I expect this would be fairly easy to argue as the national youth workers are external to YouthLaw.

Business Mechanix advised that SharePoint contains a lot of ready to use applications, for example quizzes and surveys. They can also create custom webparts and have them interact with other webparts.

For piloting, there will be approximately 50 youth workers go through and do usability assessments of the software, the modules and the final resource.

We also talked about using Adobe Captivate 3 for creating digital content, either as a replacement or supplementary to SharePoint.

We discussed live Webinars, but decided against including them now as they don't deliver what the funding has been allocated for. "We need to keep it as simple as possible in order to deliver what we said we would deliver."

We discussed who the stakeholders are. The National Youthworkers Network could come into play later. The printer might be another stakeholder. The sponsor / funder will be another. Other community law centres could be involved. Are children and young people stakeholders as well?

Focusing on the scope of the project, Business Mechanix need to deliver a website that:
- Can host training modules and materials
- Can be used for piloting and fine-tuning
- Can be rolled out across the country (provision)

In terms of content, we discussed the prerequisite modules (modules that all workers need to complete before accessing other modules):
- YouthLaw background
- Guiding ... (something)
- Principles of Advocacy

For each organisation that accesses the website, we discussed having a "Training Administrator" role (e.g. the CLC Training Administrator, the School Counselors' Training Administrator etc). There would be a "Train the administrator" module and a possible need for custom workflows for different organisations and roles.

From YouthLaw's perspective, Harvena will be writing the content (the modules) and Colin has made himself available for video work. Jeanie will be managing the project. I still need to work out what my part of the project should aim to achieve.

The next meeting will be on February 19th 2008 including Harvena, Jeanie, community law centres and Business Mechanix. This meeting will set the budget and work on contingency planning. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make this meeting as I will have started working for Saatchi & Saatchi by then.