Today is my last day as Emerging Technology Officer at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. Since last year the Youth Engagement Department has seen a number of changes. For example there are now three trained CEOP ThinkUKnow Ambassadors who have cascaded the ThinkUKnow training throughout the department, ensuring that we are helping to keep all the children and young people we work with, safe online. A number of the teams have also used video cameras throughout there programmes such as Prince’s Trust and EARLY (see earlier blogs) which have been a great success particularly when the young people are able to show their family the video at the end of the course as well as use it for promotion and recruitment.
These changes will continue and the Youth Engagement department will continually stay abreast of emerging technologies ensuring they are consistently providing an excellent service for children and young people and keeping Merseyside safer, stronger and healthier.
Be sure to keep watching this space as this is certainly not the end of the use of technology in the Fire and Rescue Service, in fact… it is just the beginning!!
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Published on
17 November 2010 in
Youth Engagement.
Tags: big society, games 2012, inspire, inspire mark, london, london games 2012, Mersey Fire, merseyside, Merseyside Fire, MFRS, OurOpenSpace, rescue, service, the big society, Youth Engagement.
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) are part of the London 2012 Inspire programme. This enables MFRS to link their events and projects to the London 2012 Games in an official scope.
MFRS are part of this programme to promote public health and safety alongside London 2012 Games and contribute from a local perspective. Some of the events and projects that have been linked include Healthy Eating, FireFit and Women’s Rugby.
A Summer Fun Day was arranged in 2010 at the MFRS Training and Development Academy in Croxteth. This not only showcased activities and events but acted as a demonstration of ‘The Big Society’. Throughout the day MFRS showed how we can utilise existing resources from the community. for example the Fire Station gymnasiums being open to the public.
Various agencies from across the community contributed throughout the day including Merseyside Police, Ambulance Service, Local Council, Cobalt Housing, Merseytravel, LifeStyles and many more. This display of community cohesion showed the viability of what we could to for ‘The Big Society’.
To see an overview of the day and find out more about the Inspire Programme, click here
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Published on
25 October 2010 in
Emerging Technology, Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service, Projects and Youth Engagement.
Tags: emerging technology, flip, flip camera, flip ultra, Mersey Fire, merseyside, Merseyside Fire, MFRS, OurOpenSpace, Prince's Trust, readers organisation, rescue, service, Youth Engagement.
Over the past few weeks a Prince’s Trust Team, run through Bottle and Netherton Community Fire Station, have been using Flip Cameras to show what they have been doing. They have been capturing all aspects of their programme so far and have really got to grips with the small yet quality cameras.
The aim of the project is to produce one or more short films at the end of the 12 week programme to inform others about what Merseyside Side Fire and Rescue Service can offer. Next week one of the members of the team will spend his work experience placement with the Emerging Technology Officer at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, editing and producing a short film. The short film he will be helping to produce will show the Team’s Community Project, an important part of the programme in which the Team work together on a project for and in the Community, in this case refurbishing a room within a Community Centre. This does not only involve manual work such as painting and maintained but a lot of work before hand selecting a project and fundraising. All the different aspects of the project will be shown on the film.
Once the film is finished it will be shown at the Teams final presentation night to show family, friends and professionals their achievements, as well as this it will also provide a useful and insightful promotional tool for the programme run from various locations within the Fire Service.
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I am currently in the process of organising the film ‘A Day in the life… of a School Fire Liaison Officer’. I will be accompanying at least one of our SFLO’s whilst they are in and around schools to capture what their role entails. This film will promote what the Officer’s do and how they are helping the community they are involved with. It will also help other MFRS staff to visualise the resources that we provide that they may have been previously unaware of. Watch this space for more…!
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Published on
10 August 2010 in
Youth Engagement.
Tags: EARLY, emerging technology, Facebook, flip, flip camera, flip ultra, Mersey Fire, merseyside, Merseyside Fire, MFRS, OurOpenSpace, Prince's Trust, rescue, service, Youth Engagement.
Last night the Old Swan Team 13 from the E.A.R.L.Y. Programme had their presentation, marking the end of their twelve week programme. The past week I have been putting together a short film using the footage they have collected over the 12 weeks using the Flip Ultra HD Cameras.
The quality of the footage taken using the Flip Cameras was excellent – crisp display and audible sound quality. The size and easy-to-use nature of the cameras meant that footage was taken in places that a larger camera wouldn’t not have been able to. For example with the use of the waterproof casing we were able to capture the team coasteering in Anglesey waters and experiencing the role of a fire-fighter.
When it came to compiling the footage I had purchased Cyberlink Power Director after reading that it was easy to use but had good editing features. I thought that this would be perfect as it may allow the team themselves to join in the editing process having had no previous experience. However when it came to using the software I was hit with compatibility issues, crashing and lack of control, especially over the audio levels. After days of not getting anywhere I went back to what I know and downloaded a trial version of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Having used Premiere extensively before I had no problems cracking on with the footage.
Finally the film was finished and it was received extremely well at last night’s presentation. Family and friends of the young people were able to see exactly what the EARLY Programme consisted of, they saw the young people refurbishing an Elderly Peoples Home garden, they saw them abseiling down a 150 foot cliff, they saw them working together as a team and taking on responsibilities that before they would never had done. I also watched the team themselves as they saw the film and noticed their reactions when they realised what they had achieved over the past 12 weeks.
The film can now be used to show future teams what the programme entails and used to show others the success that Merseyside Fire and Rescue help young people achieve.
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Published on
20 July 2010 in
Youth Engagement.
Tags: ceop, E-Safety, EARLY, emerging technology, Facebook, gamble, jim gamble, Mersey Fire, merseyside, Merseyside Fire, MFRS, OurOpenSpace, Prince's Trust, rescue, service, thinkuknow, Youth Engagement.
Having finally but successfully tapped into Facebook, CEOP are now fully utilising their presences on the popular social networking site.
For the first time, CEOP will be running an online surgery in Facebook for parents who may have concerns about their children being online over the summer holidays. The ClickCEOP advisor will be online between 7-8pm on Wednesday 21 July on www.facebook.com/ceop to answer queries and questions from parents.
This link can also be accessed from the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service Prince’s Trust and EARLY facebook page.
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Published on
20 July 2010 in
Emerging Technology, Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service, Projects, Social Media and Youth Engagement.
Tags: emerging technology, Mersey Fire, merseyside, Merseyside Fire, MFRS, OurOpenSpace, rescue, service, Youth Engagement.
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service run several projects that engage and educate young people and provide an early intervention into anti-social behaviour. For example ‘LiveSafe’ is a programme aimed at educating primary school children in fire safety awareness and water safety. Not only do the LiveSafe team go into Primary schools during term time but they also run ‘treat days’ in non-term time as a reward for young people.
During event such as these our staff take photographs to remember the day and to promote their hard work. Very often the school, parents / carers and children also want these photographs to remember the day and to show others. In the past, staff have had to make a CD with all the photographs to send out to each school, proving costly and very time consuming, especially when some events involve a large number of schools. In order to overcome this, teams have started to use the photo sharing website; Flickr. Flickr allows our staff to create a group for the event and upload all the photos from the day, this folder can then be password protected. The schools, parents and young people can then log on to Flickr and enter the password given by our staff to download any of the photographs that they want – cost free! As long as every young person’s parent / carer has signed the consent form stating that images taken could be used on the internet.
This solution to a costly problem provides schools, parents, carers and young people a chance to obtain photographs of the day and share them with whoever they want.
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Published on
14 July 2010 in
Emerging Technology, Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service, Projects, Social Media and Youth Engagement.
Tags: EARLY, emerging technology, flip, flip camera, flip ultra, Mersey Fire, merseyside, Merseyside Fire, MFRS, OurOpenSpace, Prince's Trust, rescue, service, Youth Engagement.
The Old Swan EARLY Team have now reached Week 10 of the 12 week Programme. The development each individual has made is astounding, and it is is excellent to see how they have each matured from the first day of the course.
This week the team are on individual work placements. Having spent the last ten weeks getting to know each other and forming a strong team, they are now out alone in a workplace.
The idea of doing this at the start of the course would have been inconceivable for many of the young people, however they have now all started their work experience and had excellent feedback so far.
The footage that I have collected is now mounting up ready to be cut and edited into a film to show at the presentation night in week twelve. I am being helped by a team member to sort through the footage we have, putting it into chronological order and deleting any unusable clips. The next step is to start editing and get ready for the big night!
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Next Friday our CEOP Ambassadors will cascade the ThinkUKnow training to our Youth Engagement staff enabling them to deliver the ThinkUKnow presentation to their students themselves. This is the big step forward in ensuring that children and young people stay safe online. It will not only give the staff a better understanding of online threats and knowledge of social networking, but will also allow them to inform, advise and help young people and their parents or guardians.
By integrating the ThinkUKnow training session into our Youth Engagement Programmes, a large amount of young people will receive the training that before would not. They will then be able to pass on this knowledge and support to their peers, family and friends.
By educating adults about social networking we hope to break the barriers between older and younger people that the use of sites such as Facebook and MySpace have created. For this reason we are not only delivering training to staff that work with young people but also to other staff, service wide, who may have or know children.
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Click here to link to Sky News story about Facebook using the ‘Panic Button’ that links to CEOP’s report abuse site.
The battle between Facebook and CEOP has been going on for months, let hope Facebook finally adopt the button and help to safeguard the millions of young people that have a Facebook account.
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