Mobile Tools-Like a child in a candy shop- I want them all

I enrolled in a course called mobiMOOC and as part of week one activities we were asked to “Pick one of the following mLearning tools: qr-codes, pictures taken via mobile device, movies via mobile device, ... and show us how you would use it for learning ... with a mobile device”

Like a child in a candy shop- I want them all. I can’t see the point of just picking one of the tools. 

I was thinking how these could be used in health promotion.

My thinking as health promotion professional is concerned with increasing social capital, social connectiveness and to draw inactive people into a more active life.

My target would be people in a socially disadvantaged areas. I'm thinking of trying to lure the physically inactive by easy increments into be physically active.  To reach this group, I will not be using any words that suggest the dreaded E words- exercise or exertion. I will using the F word - FUN.

I suspected I would make a simple Youtube type video to invite people to form small teams to participate in a localised scavenger hunt. Family teams from work places and teams where people went to get to know people would also be encouraged.

I would start out use these movies with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to invite people to a scavenger hunt. I would also advertise the event and the Facebook events page with handbills, posters in local shops and poststops. The event would be locality based.

In terms of the scavenger hunt, I think you could use QR codes (Quick Recognition Codes) for clues, SMS or SNS posts and mobile pictures as evidence of being at a place at a time, I would also use QR codes for motivation messages about being involved in community organisations and suggesting ways of being more active. Such an event would fit well with the Swap It Don’t Stop It health promotion campaign my government and employer is supporting at the moment.

Other QR codes could include information on other locality subjects such as  geography, or history or natural features or about sun safety.

Mobiles phones could also perhaps be used to crowdsource hunt sites or clues. This would be part of the community engagement around the event.

Some may struggle to see this as learning project. It about learning that getting out and about in the neigborhood is FUN. It about getting to know good places to walk or connect with people in a locality.

The FUN  key element would be the gamification and prizes from local businesses.

This intervention  also draws upon the behaviour modification ideas of BJ Fogg  drawing on his purple pathway.

The course has also asked us think about  this question: What is the main concern for my mLearning project is devising is provoking and sustaining active participation for a core group of sufficient size and variety to support learning in the learning lurkers After all this is the main group, population wise.

My planning for mobile learning is not so much concerned about the ‘have’s” and the “have nots”. I fee confident from the data I’ve seen and the way our mobile market works, that in Australia that the take up of smart phones will become very widespread in a  few years time. I have been influenced by Craig Lefebvre thinking. Craig Lefebvre thinking that talks a division between the have now and the have not yet. Now is time to reinvent our work models, not the obsess about social exclusion.

Do we need a Public Health 2.0 Special Interest Group or eCop

I am wanting to engage with interested Public Health/Health Promotion colleagues around Australian and New Zealand and even around the globe about an idea of establishing a Special Interest Group (SIG) around professional practice and new communications technologies and ideas such as:

·        social media, (including tools such as Blogs, Social network media like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, Webinars, Podcasts, Wikis, Skype, Social bookmarking, RSS and a long list of other tools/methods and settings),

·        mobile phones/smart phones and apps, and

·        changing public expectations for participation, co-creation and engagement linked to Web 2.0.

I think a Special Interest Group should aim to include Public Health/health promotion people from Australia and New Zealand but will obviously have very porous boundaries both geographically and professionally. I open to be persuaded we need a global group.

Rationale

I have come to realise that health promotion/public health practitioner face many challenges in mastering these newly emerged and emerging Web 2.0 technologies.

The incorporation of these new tools and ideas into our practice will shortly no longer be optional. The uptake of Web 2.0 by the general public continues at an extremely rapid pace and our professional practice lags behind. These new tools also give the people we formally called our 'target groups" new capacities and have been accompanied by new Web 2.0 expectations for opportunities for greater participation and engagement.

Increasingly our audience is no longer happy to go to a static health promotion web page and read our material. They now demand to comment on it, criticise it, improve it and share their ideas throughout their networks. 

As R. Craig Lefebvre, has said, our targets now carry guns.  See http://www.slideshare.net/rcraiglefebve/social-media-strategic-shift-or-tactical-tool-5360928 See Slide 10

These new technologies offer great potential for Health Promotion and Public Health. We are getting new ways of engaging with the public. Increasingly powerful and affordable smart phones give people new capacities. These new media tools potentially offer new ways of reaching and engaging with communities. They are also fantastic collaboration and partnering tools. We are only starting to glimpse the future implications of these changes for Public Health/Health Promotion

However for us as practitioners, the adopting these new tools means involves learning new skills, mastering new jargon and methods, overcoming many practical and organisational barriers, considering and managing novel risks, dealing with policies and procedures that are yet to be updated to take account of new technologies and public expectations.

Not least, adopting these new Web 2.0 tools will involve considering new methods and reconsidering established ideas, models and theories. These new tools have implications for our professional roles, competencies and our professional identities.

It is possible that the new Web 2.0 tools are not just a collection of tools. There collective impacts on out practice have a potential to reshape of our institutions and practice. Hence the terms, Public Health 2.0 and Health Promotion 2.0.

At present I feel that the early adopters of these new ideas are scattered across Australia and that many practitioners feel excited by the potential but daunted by the challenges. People are feeling isolated and are looking for a electronic community of practice (eCoP) to share information, share skills, ideas and solutions. Some people are sensing that this we need to talk how Web 2.0 will change profession.

What would a SIG or CoP do?

A Special Interest Group SIG or electronic Community of Practice (eCoP) could:

http://www.ewenger.com/theory/

• Set up an email based e-network for sharing news, ideas, tools, relevant literature, asking for help and feedback on project ideas and other documents such as organisational policies.
• Organise online events such as Webinars and Twitter chats (perhaps in conjunction with #hcsmanz (link http://bitethedust.com.au/bitingthedust/2010/12/04/healthcare-and-social-media-discussion-on-twitter/ )
• Share a group blog to share ideas.
• Share contact details and interests so people could make contact with each other for small group professional conversations using e-media and perhaps Skype.
• Organise face to face events and meet-up perhaps in conjunction with significant Public Health and Health Promotion conferences.
• Develop position and discussion papers on key issues.

It may be useful to align such a SIG with key professional bodies such as the Public Health Association Australia, Australian Health Promotion Association, and Environmental Health Australia.

http://www.healthpromotion.org.au/

http://www.phaa.net.au/

http://www.aieh.org.au/about/index.php

I am interested in your ideas. Please leave your comment and vote.

Please share this with your colleagues.

Questions that we need to think about.

Is this a good idea? Please vote on the poll to the right by date end of February.

Is the scope and purpose right or wrong?

How does health promotion in the context of community health or general practice fit in?

What would you change about as a rationale and purpose?

What do you think of the sort of activities that the SIG could undertake?

What do you think it should be called and what about a suggestion for a Twitter hashtag?

How does this relate to the wider worldwide set of #hcsm twitter tags?

Is the time right for a distinct Public Health group? A lot is happening already around Health 2.0 such in the #hcsmanz Titter group.

How doe we spread this to practitioners and the universities?

The implication of people of like minds and purpose tending to cluster in a Web 2.0 age

There are implications of the observation that people of like mind and purpose tend to come together and form networks.

For me the big implications for project/campaign work in health promotion is in what this means for strategy.

I have found that if you can make a few strong links with keen people, these initial contacts will guide you or take your message onto others of similar mind an d purpose who will be likely be interested in what your saying or trying to achieve.

This has always been the case but this dynamic has been amplified by Web 2.0 and social network media.

Margaret Mead's famous quote, "Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

The power of a few has been upped by Web 2.0 and social network media.

Before social media, if we had the money, we used mass media to get the word out to the multitudes in the hope that we would link up with the few who were ready to interested. This was relatively effective compared to other choices. Hence so much advertising and mass media.

New social network media tools and the networks they have created and supercharged are now relatively more effective than mass media.

I realised this reading Craig Thomler's blog. He recently gave a presentation on Social Media in Government. Watching the video of his talk really lifted my thinking to this conclusion. The shock of this realisation also got me going through some old notes about ideas I encountered a few years back from R. Craig Lefebvre.

The increasing influence and effectiveness of social media will reinvent the way that health promotion works. The tried and true methods of based on the linear Source -- Message -- Channel -- Receiver (SMCR) process is becoming outdated.

Craig Lefebvre work seems to point to newer paradigms. His paper The New Technology: The Consumer as Participant Rather Than Target Audience is a good read. Wriiten back 2007, it was a harbinger towards Health Promotion 2.0.

His blog post Social Models for Marketing: Social Networks from Oct 2009 is also a recommended read.

Craig Lefebvre has a flock of writing on social media that are interest to anyone who wants to use social media in social advocacy or health promotion on his blog under the tag social media. I'm working through and reworking my way through them and their hyperlinks.