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Effective online tools are a necessity for smooth and engaging virtual workshops and meetings. But how do you choose the right ones? Do you sometimes feel that the good old pen and paper or MS Office toolkit and email leaves you struggling to stay on top of managing and delivering your workshop?

Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools to make your life easier when you need to facilitate a meeting and lead workshops. In this post, we'll share our favorite online tools you can use to make your job as a facilitator easier.

In fact, there are plenty of free online workshop tools and meeting facilitation software you can use to become more productive when in the process of preparing or following up on a facilitated session.

We collected the most useful tools we have encountered while talking to SessionLab users: facilitators, corporate trainers, and service designers as well as our own personal experiences. Many of these tools also include a fully functional free version available without time limitation so you can incorporate them into your workflow easily!

We grouped the tools according to the tasks they are primarily used for so you can find precisely what you need. The primary use case we considered was to support a digital facilitation process while running workshops. Most of these tools are equally useful when you need to prepare for other online sessions or work with virtual teams.

Let's jump in!

Online whiteboards: Miro, Mural, Stormboard, FigJam

Meeting planning: SessionLab, Google Sheets

Virtual facilitation platforms: Stormz, Butter, Thing.Online, Toasty.ai, Klaxoon

Virtual space tools: Spatial, Gather, Welo

Engagement tools: Mentimeter, Slido, Kahoot

Video conferencing: Zoom, Whereby, Skype, Google Meet, Big Marker

Survey tools: Google Forms, Typeform, SurveyMonkey

File storage and document sharing: DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box

Online communication tools: Slack, MS Teams, Discord, Chanty

Online Learning Platforms: Padlet, LearnWorlds, Nearpod, Teachable

Task management: Trello, Todoist, Asana, Notion

Note-taking apps: Evernote, OneNote, Google Drive & Docs

Online design tools: Canva, Figma, Invision

In 2022 SessionLab ran a survey of over 1100 facilitators from all over the world. A whole section was dedicated to tools, and you can now read the results in the State of Facilitation Report. What tools do facilitators use for design, delivery, and evaluation of sessions?

Based on these results, online tools coexist alongside pen, paper and sticky notes for session design, while whiteboards and videoconferencing software have become essential for session delivery. Go to the report to learn more! Is your favorite tool not on the list? Let us know in the comments or start a discussion in our Community!

Online whiteboards offer an endless flexible space where you can collaborate and share ideas. You can create an online canvas and use that as a simple whiteboard for jotting down ideas, or as an infinite board for building a project with a remote team. They allow the creation of mockups and schemes, you can quickly add stickers, write down ideas and leave feedback.

Complex problem-solving can be made easier by using a visual platform to brainstorm and collaborate. Online whiteboards are not only useful for preparing your workshop with a remote team, but also for online meeting facilitation. They can also help to replicate the feeling of working together in person. Here are our favorites!

Miro is one of the most popular online whiteboards on the market. It offers a flexible suite of features and templates that make it easy to start collaborating remotely.

We particularly love Miro's large collection of integrations and apps - there are so many ways to do something exciting for your virtual workshop with Miro. It also scales well with large numbers of participants and it's easy to invite people to the board in the middle of a session. Miro includes a free version that offers up to 3 boards for your team.

Miro and Mural were mentioned in the State of Facilitation in 2023 report as the top two most-used whiteboards, so you're in good company if you choose either of these for your next online session!

Mural is a versatile online whiteboard tool for remote team meetings. It is particularly strong as a tool for teams, allowing you to create different rooms for your board with differentiated access rights. It offers a wide range of workshop and meeting templates, including planning, design, issue analysis and idea generation board templates.

We've found Mural one of the best solutions for creating visually pleasing whiteboards and it's been used by many conference organizers as a result. Mural's free plan includes 3 murals with unlimited members.

Stormboard focuses on helping facilitators with idea generation, organization, and prioritization. You can add different types of notes, combine them together, comment in threads, and vote on ideas using colored dots.

Stormboard also has a strong reporting functionality that allows you to instantly turn your online sticky notes into structured meeting reports. Great when working with external clients. For a more guided approach to virtual meetings, Stormboard is a worthy option of online whiteboard. The free version offers 5 boards with a maximum 5 collaborators for each.

Figma is a great design tool for visual collaboration. FigJam is an online whiteboard that is especially useful for teams wanting to ideate around their Figma designs and collect all their online collaborations in one ecosystem.

FigJam is simple and intuitive to use and we love that we can access our designs easily. You can even add widgets such as a code editor and donut for team building! FigJam features a free version with 3 FigJam files and unlimited collaborators.

If you are planning to facilitate a group session that spans more than a couple of hours and you have different workshop activities, theory blocks, team building games and energizer activities, then you likely need to have some sort of agenda to plan the sequence of these activities.

A simple pen and paper might just do the trick for you, but what if you're working together with some other people on the agenda or simply need to share it with your client? If you want to avoid having dozens of different versions of Excel or Word files, then an online agenda builder might come in handy!

SessionLab is an online workshop planner tool for anyone who designs and facilitates workshops and meetings. It provides a drag and drop interface that is designed for the flexible and iterative process of building up a workshop or meeting agenda - making your process design work a real flow experience.

When it comes to running your workshop, stay on time with Time Tracker and adjust your agenda on the fly. You can collaborate in real-time, create a personal library of reusable assets and create quality printouts to share with your clients.

If you're looking for new inspiration, you can find more than 1000 workshop activities in a public library of facilitation methods and a set of expert-designed complete workshop templates too. And yes, we're blowing our own horn, but mainly because we're facilitators too and we love using it!

Using a template in SessionLab.

Google Sheets is a worthwhile online alternative to Microsoft Excel. So if you are a hardcore spreadsheets fan loving to tinker with rows and columns to turn them into workshop timetables then Google Sheets offers you most of the features you need for creating and sharing session agendas.

Real-time commenting and revision tracking is highly useful for collaborative work and integration with Google Drive cloud storage allows you to easily find content in your sessions in your Drive.

Virtual facilitation platforms

While Zoom still dominates as a video conferencing tool, what about when you're facilitating workshops that require more bespoke features? Or how about if you'd prefer to host your agenda, engagement tools and video software in one place?

These virtual facilitation platforms are designed to be a single spot for all your facilitation needs. They can be great if you're not already wedded to a video platform or prefer having all your tools in one spot.

Stormz is an app for professional facilitators. It enables you to design and facilitate digital and live workshops in one platform.

You can use Stormz to ask your participants to give their input on questions you generate in the app, generate ideas and make collective decisions directly from their laptop, tablet or mobile phone. It's a great way to create engagement and visualize responses during a session.

Stormz also offers a unique on-site solution to manage large group workshops involving hundreds of participants by using their portable Stormz Box device which provides secure and reliable local network infrastructure for collaborative workshops at any venue.

Butter is a new video conferencing tool dedicated to online meeting facilitation that is packed full of features. With in-built polls, icebreakers, a queue to enable equal participation, and time tracking, Butter is an effective alternative to Zoom for facilitators.

Butter has a free plan for up to 100 participants running 60-minute group sessions. It's certainly worth looking at if you're looking for a more robust facilitation toolbox in your video conferencing software.

Thing.online is a virtual facilitation platform that aims to recreate the feel of a live workshop online. With features like spatial discussions, breakout tables and integrations, Thing.Online aims to provide a single space for facilitating complex online events.

We like that Thing.online makes moving between presentations and individual discussions easy while keeping all your materials available and easy for participants to access. Running a virtual conference with a mix of keynote speakers and workshops? Thing.online might be the tool for you.

Combining interactivity and video conferencing, Toasty.ai seeks to make meetings more engaging and interactive. In the left sidebar, you'll find features like icebreakers, polls and whiteboard integrations you can add to your virtual meeting in a cinch. The integrated polling made for a simple participant experience, and Toasty features a heap of host tools to make running meetings easy too.

Toasty.ai's pricing is based on the number of agendas and participants in your sessions. Get started for free with 3 agendas and 20 participants and move up to premium plans as your scope expands.

Designed for those wanting to run more engaging online meetings and workshops, Klaxoon aims to be the one tool you need for online delivery. With a suite of features including a virtual collaboration space, polls, engagement apps, and more, Klaxoon can empower and uplift your online meetings.

The free version of Klaxoon includes a one-shot template with up to 15 participants, though you can also try the full version of Klaxoon with a 30-day trial.

Virtual space tools

Virtual space tools are great for creating an online alternative to a physical event or office space. With these tools, you can create virtual events and conferences that recreate that sense of navigating a festival ground or moving from keynote speeches to breakout rooms. You might even create a virtual office where people can gather, work and have chance interactions.

Virtual spaces such as those below can help create a sense of wonder and excitement in participants, though note that they do often require more set-up and overhead that a simple virtual meeting. For the right use case, they can be more than worth this time investment and can add something special to your team's online interactions.

Spatial Chat is a wonderful combination of video conferencing and virtual space designed to help remote teams work together. We used Spatial to host many of our Christmas events. Being able to move around the space and sit next to the virtual fire or arrange into teams for a quiz certainly elevated our experience!

Spatial Chat is free to start with teams of 5, though if you want to record meetings and have more than 3 rooms, you'll want to look at some of their premium plans. It's a great way to make digital facilitation more organic and engaging.

For teams looking for a virtual space that encourages playfulness, Gather might be the best shout. By including avatars that you move through a virtual space, Gather feels like an old-school videogame! It brings a sense of fun and embodiment to remote working, while also featuring heaps of tools to boost productivity.

We loved the customization features of Gather, and for teams that are looking for something different in a virtual space, it's worth playing with! Fully virtual teams looking for ways to connect and have fun outside of Zoom energizers will find lot's to love here.

Conference and virtual events looking for a festival atmosphere should check out Welo. With a bird-eye-view style that emulates maps or isometric games, Welo is great for creating large-scale events and conferences online. Welo has a whole suite of features for virtual events and team building, but we especially love how easy it is to explore.

Our experiences in Welo have been memorable, such as attending NeverDoneBefore festival for facilitators. We love what's possible in this platform and the potential wow factor a virtual conference organizer can achieve here! Welo is free to try and integrates with Zoom, too!

Engagement tools

Engagement tools are a suite of tools that allow you to quickly poll participants, run quizzes, visualize responses and even run simple games inside your meetings and events. This kind of workshop engagement tool can be key to creating memorable experiences. For virtual team building sessions and remote teams, this can be the missing ingredient to truly engage and delight participants.

For facilitators, such tools can also be useful to get feedback or facilitate group discussions in a way that makes sense for an online session. Quickly getting a read on how a group of 100 participants is feeling can be so helpful for determining the next stage of your workshop!

Mentimeter allows you to create questions (such as multiple choice questions) in their web application and participants can answer them from their mobile devices. The great thing is that you can instantly visualize everyone's opinion and display the results in real-time to the group. It helps your participants to feel engaged, which is especially important for a large group workshop.

Mentimeter works really well on mobile devices with a streamlined user experience and the free version allows you to create two polls and five quiz questions per presentation.

Slido also offers participant polling functionality and a mobile app for your participants. The free version allows you to have 3 polls per event. Similarly to Mentimeter, it also supports Q&A, so your meeting participants can post their questions at any time via the mobile application.

Slido has a heap of integrations including Google Slides and Microsoft Teams. We also loved the analytics suite: polling large groups and visualizing outputs in a word cloud was also a neat engagement feature that can help elevate your sessions.

Kahoot is an online platform for creating and sharing learning games with large audiences. It has a suite of features that make it great for classrooms, board meetings and workshops alike.

You can even create self-paced assignments for asynchronous engagement: great for hyping up a group before or between sessions. By using prizes and rewards, Kahoot's engagement tool is a great way to gamify your virtual sessions.

In a world of remote work and digital facilitation, video conferencing tools have become near mandatory. Many of us spend our working days inside virtual meetings and video chats, so choosing the right video tool is important!

Whether you're looking for a simple drop-in solution or something more robust for your next webinar, these video conferencing tools are some of the best. Each aims to make it easier to connect and work together online. You can expect to see screen-sharing options, participant management tools and useful integrations with other software too!

Zoom provides exceptionally reliable quality, minimizing audio or video latency issues that you usually encounter with most video conferencing applications. It has a wide variety of features available both for individual and business needs including the scheduling of calls, a dial-in phone number and recording audio and video calls even on the free service plan. The only downside is the 40-minute call limit.

One of the benefits of using Zoom for digital facilitation is audience familiarity. Most people working remotely are now familiar with the tool and you rarely need to explain how to use it. It's become the industry standard for good reason - it just works! With integrations, you can also use many of your favorite tools inside your meeting, making it a robust and simple option for your virtual sessions.

Whereby comes in to help when all other tools fail: you just open a video conferencing room, send the link to your guests and they can join without having to install any application or create an account. (Only a browser extension is needed to be added).

Whereby is a lightweight video chat tool with fewer features than Zoom but offers unprecedented ease of use. The free plan offers group video conferencing and screen sharing up to 4 people with one fixed meeting room. There's no need to create different meeting links each time, the same link will work for your team to meet anytime. We enjoyed using Whereby for quick meetings and to chat about something that email or Slack couldn't cover.

Skype was among the first players in peer-to-peer video conferencing and as it has been widely adopted now it's often a straightforward option for calling contacts who have Skype accounts.

As the market has expanded, Skype has grown to include screen sharing, group video conferencing, and file sharing too. Though it lacks some of the more collaborative elements of other tools, it's pretty good for a free option! For peer-to-peer communication with businesses and clients who prefer phone calls, Skype still has a place in your video and audio toolbox.

If you're hosting online workshops and conferences with large numbers of people and need to handle ticketing and recordings, Big Marker might be the tool for you. It's especially useful for those running webinars and who want to create a content hub of past sessions.

Breakout groups for workshops might not be as intuitive as Zoom, but it's easy to run conference-style sessions with speakers, Q&As and presentations. Creating a repository of recordings on your channel is a great feature that can be a massive boon if you're running an ongoing series or training course.

Google's popular messaging app offers an easy-to-use video conferencing tool that works really well even if you need to talk with people both in and outside your organization. Having a native integration with Google Calendar and Gmail means this tool gets a lot of use here at SessionLab!

Additionally, Google Meet offers many standard features such as breakout rooms, attendance tracking, and live streaming. While it may not be as robust as some of the other tools on this list, it is easy to use and requires little setup.

If you ask for feedback from participants and you want to go beyond using 'happy sheets', paper forms filled out right after the workshop on the spot, then you may decide to create an online survey after the session.

Alternatively, you might want to conduct a needs assessment survey while preparing your session. You can choose from a wide range of online survey tools that can do the job for you, ranging in complexity and use case. Here are some of our favorite tools for data collection and surveys.

Google Forms allow you to create unlimited surveys with 6 types of questions and skip logic that can guide your participants through your survey depending on their answers.

The service has seamless integration with Google's other apps including Gmail, Google Sheets and Drive, allowing you to take advantage of file storage and simple results sharing too. Google Forms also has a great advantage: unlike most of the competition that has usage limits in their free versions, Google Forms is absolutely free.

Typeform has made filling out forms engaging and interactive. The forms look fresh and modern, promising that users are more likely to enjoy the survey experience and complete it. It also offers some great insights on response rates and question drop-offs to help you improve your surveys and polls.

Typeform offers three surveys with a maximum of 10 questions and 100 responses in the free version while the paid version adds extra features, such as advanced question types and conditional logic.

Having been around since 1999, SurveyMonkey is one of the longest-running online survey services in the world. SurveyMonkey does the basics and does them well, providing a reliable alternative that has heaps of integrations with other tools. In the free survey version, however, you will be limited to 10 questions, 40 respondents per survey and no possibility to export your data.

For most projects you take part in, sooner or later you will have an endless amount of documents: meeting memos, PowerPoint decks, a batch of documents you receive from your client and dozens of spreadsheets with session agendas, registration forms... and the list can be continued.

Online file storage and sharing solutions allow you to store all your files in the cloud and access them whether you are on your desktop, phone or tablet. What's more, you can easily share the documents with your colleagues and work on them simultaneously: a must for any data collection process and effective project management too.

Dropbox is a pioneer in this market with their reliable and easy-to-use syncing and file-sharing system. The free option offers 2GB of storage, although the full-text search that helps you find any piece of information within your document is only available in the paid version. The service is very easy to set up and rightfully praised for its clean design.

Google Drive, offering 15GB free storage, this has the added benefit of a built-in office suite where you can edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations even if you created the document in another program. Working together real-time on shared Google documents is a great feature and, similar to Dropbox, you can easily invite collaborators to any document or folder.

As with some of the other tools on this list, it's worth noting that many people are fluent in Google Drive and have a linked Gmail account. Even if you prefer Notion or One Drive, having a Google Drive for working with clients in that ecosystem is helpful.

OneDrive offers 5GB of free storage, a seamless integration to Windows, therefore it works especially well if you have a Windows PC, tablet and phone, and need to get to your files from any device with minimum effort. if you use Microsoft Teams or Office 365, chances are this is already part of your tech stack. As with Google Drive, it pays for digital facilitators working with different clients to have some familiarity with this tool.

As with many online tools, some of your clients might be sensitive about having data about their business stored in the cloud. For this reason, it's useful to consider Box, which has more sophisticated collaboration and privacy control options for business and enterprise users.

Collaborating across devices and ecosystems with peace of mind and advanced security features makes Box a worthwhile alternative to some of the basic file storage options above.

Online communication tools

Successful workshops and meetings are built on effective communication and this is even more true in online settings. While many meetings can be done over free video chat software, finding online communication tools that work asynchronously or allow groups to work together over longer periods have their place in your toolbox too.

When working with clients, co-facilitators or internal teams, you'll often be working collaboratively and asynchronously. Email often isn't conducive to these kinds of back-and-forth conversations and so the online communication tools below have a chance to shine!

If you work as a team online, chances are you have tried Slack. Slack is designed to make working with others easy and is full of features that help groups and teams connect, chat, and share in a virtual space. The free version of Slack has everything you need to communicate better online with your co-facilitators, clients, and workshop participants: a workspace, channels, 1:1 calls, 5GB of file storage, and up to ten integrations.

As an asynchronous tool, it's wonderful for using with hybrid events or longer sessions that span multiple days. Ensuring groups can stay connected and ask questions in the right place can help ensure everyone is on the same page, even across time zones.

Coming as part of Microsoft's Office 365 suite of tools, Microsoft Teams is group chat software designed to help teams collaborate across text chat, video and audio calls, and more.

By tightly integrating with familiar tools like Excel and Word, Microsoft Teams can help a team integrate their workflow and communication channels with ease! The free version offers storage of 2 GB/user and 10 GB of shared storage, 1:1 and group meetings and much more!

Immensely popular with gamers, streamers, and developers, Discord features a heap of features and is free and easy to use, making it a great alternative to other online communication tools. Discord's free version features screen sharing, voice chat, and no member or message limits.

For longer training courses and learning communities, Discord can prove to be a great tool that can be an ongoing source of communication and information usable for everyone in the group.

A business messenger tool, Chanty is a great alternative to Slack and other messaging apps. With competitive pricing, a fully-featured free version, and built-in task management, Chanty can be your online communication tool of choice. Chanty's free version allows ten team members to collaborate and communicate online, and it features unlimited chat history, voice messages and audio calls, and more.

Online Learning platforms

Delivering online courses, workshops, and training sessions can be made easier by using a dedicated learning platform. These tools are designed for hosting classes, sharing materials, setting tasks, and for presenting more complex sessions or courses over a longer period of time.

We'd especially recommend such a system if you're setting up an ongoing development or training program internally or for a client. Centralizing learning resources and keeping records can be what makes or breaks such a program!

Padlet is an online learning platform that can work for everyone from virtual teachers to facilitators, managers, and course leaders too! Padlet is flexible enough to be used to publish course materials online, collaborate with others, or to deliver online sessions. Especially for those involved in online teaching, it's well worth exploring!

Padlet's free version includes 3 boards, which is plenty to start collaborating or for delivering an online course or workshop!

For large-scale training programs and development processes, LearnWorlds is a great learning platform. You can build comprehensive in-house programs or courses you can deliver to clients again and again. LearnWorlds has a free trial, but it is one of the more expensive learning management solutions on this list.

If you're an agency or in-house training provider looking for a platform for hosting your courses, this could be what you're looking for. If you're running shorter workshops or courses and want something that requires less set-up, one of the other tools on this list might be more suitable.

Nearpod is an online teaching platform primarily designed for teachers and facilitators involved in e-learning and virtual course delivery. Nearpod features a library of learning methods and formative assessments to help make online learning interactive and a suite of features to enable virtual teaching.

Nearpod has a free version that allows 100MB of storage, 40 students per session, and 20+ formative assessments too. Absolutely check it out if you're a teacher or a facilitator regularly working with students.

Teachable is a platform for creating and selling online courses. While it's often used by content creators wanting to monetize their knowledge, facilitators and trainers can make use of the easy-to-use platform to create courses to support digital faciliation too!

Teachable is very simple to use out of the gate. While it lacks some of the customization features of the other tools here, Teachable is great for putting together a course at speed. If you're switching to an asynchronous model and need a learning management system in a snap, it's a great choice.

Do you have an endless to-do-list while managing multiple facilitation assignments? Arranging client meetings, working on designs and aligning with co-facilitators: the list can feel endless when you need to juggle multiple sessions and manage projects.

There are a vast amount of task management software tools available on the market. Some are part of complex project management suites, while others are dedicated only to keeping your tasks in order. You can find our favorite ones below.

Trello offers a flexible and visual way to organize anything with anyone. Trello is organized in boards inspired by Kanban methodology. You can add lists to the board and cards to the lists. Each card can have individual checklists, uploaded documents or pictures, and discussion in the form of comments.

Trello is an effective project management tool for any complex task, though it's especially useful when collaborating with a team. It's often favoured by lean teams using Scrum and other agile practices.

Todoist is more specialized towards personal organization in their free plan: you can compile tasks and subtasks into simple lists which is practical to use for a specific workshop.

One of the handy features is that it tracks progress over time and gives you insight into your personal productivity trends. The app monitors how many tasks you're completing and gives karma points as rewards for accomplishing them.

Todoist allows you to switch between Kanban and simple to-do lists, and it can be used to itemize recurring tasks too. When trying to balance bigger projects with business-as-usual tasks, Todoist is a great shout for the solo facilitator.

If you have a bigger project you may want to use more specialized project management software to help your team collaborate without getting flooded by emails. Asana is an intuitive task-management system that works best for teams seeking real-time interaction and its basic version is free for up to 15 users.

As with the other tools in this section, Asana has an easy-to-use mobile version that allows syncing over devices. Where they differ is in the specialization: Asana, for example, is great for working on complex tasks with many stakeholders and contributors. Check it out if this is what you and your client are after!

Notion is a sophisticated workspace app with a sleek design. It offers a highly flexible interface for doing everything from managing work, creating to-do lists, and organizing your tasks into tables, kanban boards, and calendar views. Many organizations use Notion as their internal documentation and collaboration center too! This flexibility is great if you like to tinker and tweak settings to create a perfect workspace to fit your needs.

For virtual teams, Notion becomes much more powerful and can be used to collaborate and organize work, much in the same way as Google or Microsoft's suite of tools. We use Notion at SessionLab and we love it!

Noting down various bits of information during a session design process is crucial: when talking with clients, jotting down some personal follow-up steps, saving useful links, and so on. Having your trusted notebook with you is essential to register all the information you need in one place, but organizing, finding, and sharing your notes is easier when using digital tools.

Doing this online has never been easier. There are plenty of apps that allow you to write down thoughts, sync them across devices and share them with your colleagues. Below you can find the most popular options with somewhat different strengths.

Evernote lets you easily capture, organize, and find content from the Web. You can highlight text on the web, take screenshots, write your own notes, etc. The notes can be tagged, shared, and formatted (to some extent) and you can even assign tasks to them. We like that Evernote also has some robust presentation features, and supports visual note-taking - it's a blast using it on a tablet!

Microsoft OneNote has a similar set of features to Evernote but the approach in organizing your notes is different. OneNote supports a more defined structure, as you can have several levels of notebooks, pages, and subpages. It also provides richer formatting options, which are especially useful when doing creative work as it allows you to start typing anywhere on the page.

We mentioned Google Drive combined with Google Docs earlier as a full-stack alternative for cloud storage and document management. Using Google Docs for collaborative note-taking in combination with a well-structured Drive and be a great way to simplify note-taking. It also has the benefit of offline doc support, easy collaboration and synchronization to multiple devices.

Google Docs isn't expressly designed for note-taking, but when running virtual sessions, we've found it to be a reliable and simple way to take notes.

A key bit of advice for any facilitator taking notes: whatever software you choose, you actually need to remember to use it! These tools really become useful when all your notes are in the same place and you can use powerful search and sharing features to share insights with your clients.

For taking quick notes during a meeting, you can actually use SessionLab's simple notes feature. This is useful for keeping track of what changed during a live workshop, or leaving instructions for a co-facilitator.

Online design tools

When running sprints or design workshops, being able to collaboratively work on visual assets for product and marketing initiatives can often mean the difference between a productive or unproductive session.

Whether you're brainstorming, prototyping or aligning on final designs, these collaborative design tools can be hugely beneficial to your sessions. It can be especially useful to work with something asynchronously before a meeting, leaving comments and suggestions that a designer might iterate on before a sign-off session.

For facilitators wanting to create visual assets for their online workshops or participants working together on new materials during a workshop, Canva is a great tool that makes creating beautiful designs easy. Canva really shines when it comes to ease of use and the fact it enables less design-savvy individuals and teams to create something attractive quickly and easily.

Canva's free version includes real-time collaboration, 5GB of cloud storage, and hundreds of thousands of free images and graphics to help you create great designs!

Figma is a great design tool that works to help designers and collaborators create and test prototypes together. Like Invision, Figma lives in the cloud, and so designs and prototypes are updated and ready for everyone who needs them instantly. With some unique and interesting features like the Arc tool and Vector Networks, Figma is well worth checking out for any folks involved in virtual design workshops.

Figma has a free plan that offers unlimited viewers, 2 editors and 3 projects and is great if you need to work together on visual assets as a part of a small team.

Invision is a design tool that is well suited to remote teams wishing to work on product or feature prototypes collaboratively online. It features a whole suite of features to support every part of the design process - freehand mode is great for commenting and ideating on a design, while Studio is awesome for creating and showing off prototypes with animations and interactions.

Invision's free plan is suitable for individuals and small teams and supports up to 3 active users working on up to 3 documents and unlimited freehands.

What's next?

Tools are only part of the solution and while they can make your work easier, the quality of your sessions will come from a thoughtfully designed workshop. Check out our post on how to design a workshop for help designing an effective session.

Need help with digital facilitation? Check out our guide for facilitating a meeting to get tips on engaging your participants!

All these online tools are worth checking out, and hopefully, they will save you time and make your facilitation-related work go even more smoothly.
Which is your favorite online tool from the list?
Let us know in the comments, and also if you missed something on the list!

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47 useful online tools for workshops and meetings! | SessionLab

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Effective online tools are a necessity for smooth and engaging virtual workshops and meetings. But how do you choose the right ones? Do you sometimes feel that the good old pen and paper or MS Office toolkit and email leaves you struggling to stay on top of managing and delivering your workshop?

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The training kits (T-kits) are methodological publications for trainers and facilitators working with young people, written by teams of field experts. They are easy-to-use thematic educational material designed for training and facilitating learning with groups of young people.

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T-kits - Youth Partnership - pjp-eu.coe.int

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The training kits are thematic publications written by experienced youth trainers. They are easy-to-use in training and study sessions

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The Council of Europe Youth Work Portfolio is a tool to help those doing youth work, primarily youth workers and youth leaders, but also managers and administrators, to assess and further develop their youth work competence and that of the people under their supervision.
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Contact Contact

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Skip to Content Avenue de l'Europe F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex Tel. +33 (0)3 88 41 20 00 www.coe.int In order to be able to have access to the online Portfolio, you need first to complete your registration on the website. You are also asked to provide more details about your involvement in youth work.

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Session #5: Jane Melvin | Digital youth work sessions

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In this session, we talk with Jane Melvin about her research on the impact of digitalisation on youth work, how to convince hesitant youth workers, how to train digital topics to youth workers and professional ethics in digital environments. Tune in!

View episodes

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Session #5: Jane Melvin | Digital youth work sessions

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In this podcast, we host 1-on-1 discussions on digital media and technology, and how they relate to youth work practice. The guests are digital youth work practitioners and experts from the European youth work field. Digital youth work sessions is hosted by Verke, the Finnish centre of expertise for Digital youth work.

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A practical manual with tools to design and facilitate online training of youth workers including real life experiences and examples

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Coyote magazine on digital and smart youth work (start here)

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Coyote magazine on digital and smart youth work (start here)

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Council of Europe published the Internet literacy handbook (2017) which provides links to more in-depth information and resources for those who wish to delve further into the topics related to working with children and young people online.

Verke, the national Centre of Expertise for Digital Youth Work in Finland offers a wide range of publications and materials to develop and implement digital youth work. Some of the publications can be ordered in hard copy with free shipping in European Union countries. Worth starting with:

The Digital Youth Work Project (2017-2019) aimed to build capacity to deliver digital youth work at local, national, regional and European levels. They have:

YouthLink Scotland, the national agency for youth work, offers resources for safe, secure and empowered youth work online and resources to develop digital youth work.

SkillIT digital pathways (2018-2019) for youth work aims to increase the quality and relevance of youth work through digitalisation. They developed and offer:

Future Labs project offers the eHandbook (2019) which is focused on innovation in youth work. It is intended for practitioners who are looking for innovative tools to use in their activities with young people, including digital youth work.

Youth Access created a beginner's guide to adding online support to your young people's mental health and wellbeing service (2017). This guide has arisen out of the DigiTalk project, a one year Health Education England funded programme, which aimed to increase the capacity of 15 local Youth Information, Advice and Counselling Services (YIACS) to provide an online counselling service.

ICT4YOUTHWORK (2017-2018) collected good practice case studies of online youth work practices.

Aye Mind project (2015-2016) created a digital Toolkit for staff or anyone on a mission to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people - by making better use of the internet, social media and mobile technologies.

Leading groups online (2020) is a down-and-dirty guide to leading online courses, meetings, training, and events published by Daniel Hunter and Jeanne Rewa.

Videos, webinars and podcasts on smart and digital youth work:

Verke compiled a list of some of the tools that can be a good starting point for online youth work.

A long-term training course 'Effective Digital Habits for Youth Work' (2019) collected tools, activities and content to develop digital youth work. Download a list of tools from the seminar and training course for youth leaders and youth workers.

Keep it going! Online tools review for Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps National Agencies can be useful for organisations and partnerships locally and internationally.

Michele Di Paola created a series of blog posts to share online youth work tools and tips. Start from part 1 and continue reading on his blog.

Dan Moxon, People Dialogue and Change and PEYR, Marinela Szymańska SEEYN, and Adina Marina Şerban, CSCD & PEYR curate the Padlet board with tools, tips and practices for online youth work and participation.

The ICT4YOUTHWORK developed guidelines on the web-based tools and practice examples of their use in the daily life of an organization and in digital youth work.

Digi youth portal by SEEYN offers a fine selection of different digital tools and inspiring practices to be used in youth work, online learning and non-formal education.

A number of organisations contributed to experimenting and adopting digital Open Badges to support learning and recognition in youth work and non-formal education. Find some examples of how badges can be used: Trusted Badge Systems, European Badge Alliance, Unique Learning Badges. Currently the Open Badges technology is scaling up to Cities of Learning. Any organisation or informal group can offer their activities on Cities of Learning platform and issue badges.

The following references provide links to online learning and training opportunities for youth leaders, youth workers and youth work organisations to stay up to date on developments in digital youth work.

The main stakeholders at European level are constantly updating their web sites to take account of the increased need for digital youth work. You may want to check the European Youth Portal by the European Union, the Youth Department of the Council of Europe, the EU-CoE youth partnership, European Youth Forum.

Digital Youth Work project created useful tools for digital youth work developments:

Online courses offer opportunities to learn and develop competences necessary for youth work in the age of the internet.

The HOP platform fosters online learning and offers a growing number of online courses and podcasts targeting different aspects of European youth work.

Some of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) available in the youth field:

The Partnership between the Council of Europe and the European Commission in the field of youth is also working on MOOCs and has offered several editions of online course on Youth Essentials of Youth Policy and is in the process of developing online courses on youth work.

The Star of Europe: digital resources for Erasmus+ Youth Exchanges is a very innovative platform with digital resources to involve young people throughout all the stages of a youth exchange project.

Cities of Learning platform has an increasing number of local and online learning activities for young people and lifelong learners. Learning organisations can publish single activities or a learning pathway and issue digital badges to recognise skills and achievements. Municipality youth departments can run the platform to transform a city into an ecosystem of learning and recognition.

Appraiser platform for trainers' professional development offers free solutions for professional development, which includes self-assessment, feedback from participants, colleagues, and a competence development plan.

The Network of Professional Open Youth Work in Europe (POYWE) published the 5th issue of their online magazine "Logbook" focused on the theme of Digital Youth Work ; and the 6th on Exploring Digital Competences

Join Facebook groups like Digital Youth Work, NFL goes online and Online Tools for Learning to follow and exchange news and good practices for digital youth work.

Several European partnerships developed guidelines on how youth work and training organisations can create and deliver online learning and training activities:

Online Training of Youth Workers (2018) is a practical manual with tools to design and facilitate online training of youth workers including real life experiences and examples.

DOYIT eLearning Guide offers step-by-step guidance towards delivering a quality eCourse to youth information workers.

Digi youth portaloffers practical tutorials and theory behind online learning in youth work.

Both, the Council of Europe and the European Commission offer funding for international projects aiming to develop digital youth work.

The European Youth Foundation supports projects including digital and smart youth work objectives and activities.

The Erasmus+ in the youth field funded a number of projects that led to important outputs contributing to the development of digital youth work in Europe. Some of the examples of such projects: Digital Youth Work Project, Skill IT for Youth, ICT4YOUTHWORK and more... Each National Agency and Resource Centres offer an increasing range of support for developing digital youth work.

National governments and local municipalities begin prioritising digital youth work as an important development. Check funding opportunities available at national, regional or local level in your country.

SkillIT policy brief Enhancing Youth Services' Digital Youth Work Practice (2019) summarise the key findings of the SkillIT for Youth Project and to put forward proposals for improvement in this area at European level. The project developed the Competence Framework for Digital Youth Work Practice (2019).

The expert group on ' Risks, opportunities and implications of digitalisation for youth, youth work and youth policy' set up under the European Union Work Plan for Youth 2016-2018 released the publication " Developing digital youth work - An agile mindset is crucial " with policy recommendations, training needs and good practice examples

Council of the European Union published Council conclusions on smart youth work (2017) that defines 'smart youth work' as the innovative development of youth work encompassing digital youth work practice, and including a research, quality and policy component.

The report European framework for the digital competence of educators (2017) looks at a common European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu). DigCompEdu is a scientifically sound background framework which helps to guide policy and can be directly adapted to implementing regional and national tools and training programmes. In addition, it provides a common language and approach that will help the dialogue and exchange of best practices across borders.

During Estonia's presidency of the Council of the European Union, Estonian Ministry of Education and Research developed the Concept of smart youth work (2017).

The Estonian youth field continues working hard on smart and digital youth work concepts and practice, see for instance Anne Kivimäe and Maria Žuravljova's Discussing the Digital Age and Youth Work (2019)

Council of the European Union: Council conclusions on smart youth work

There is a growing body of researchers and studies focused on young people, digitalisation and digital youth work.

Social Inclusion, Digitalisation and Young People is a follow up work of the Symposium, in 2018, by the EU-Council of Europe youth partnership to explore this theme, with the support of the Expert Group, reflecting on how we can make use of inclusion opportunities arising from the new digital reality and draw conclusions for youth policy, practice and research.

The Study on the impact of the internet and social media on youth participation and youth work examines the impact of the internet, social media and new technology on youth participation and looks at the role of youth work in supporting young people to develop digital skills and new media literacy.

SillIT report of comparative study on digital skills and youth work provides comparative data-driven knowledge on digital youth work, youth workers, youth organizations and young people's needs regarding ICT, and the labour market's needs and expectations with regards to young people's digital skills.

The report Young people in digital era and youth work explores the impact of current trends concerning usage of digital technologies by young people on youth work practice. This report starts by discussing data on young people's patterns of internet usage. The lack of any reflection of these changes in youth work manuals is discussed before going on to analyse group dynamics theories and research on the possible impact on participation of young people in youth groups.

The Screenagers International Research Project published the Report on using ICT, digital and social media in youth work (2016)

Perspectives on youth - Vol. 4 - Young people in a digitalised world is a publication with the aim to bring new perspectives and varied visions to the key questions of understanding how young people interact with all the opportunities the digital space has to offer, and how they can use this space for causes relevant not only for themselves, but also for the democratisation of the societies in which they live.

The State of the World's Children 2017 (Children in a Digital World) is focused on how digital technology affects almost every aspect of life for millions of young people around the world. This is an interesting but essentially academic debate. Because for better and for worse, digital technology is a fact of our lives. Irreversibly.

Exploring the Role of ICT-enabled Social Innovation for the Active Inclusion of Young People reviews the state of the art in the domain of active inclusion services for young people, with a specific focus on how ICTs can support active inclusion of disadvantaged youth to strengthen their skills and capacities and support them to participate fully in employment and social life.

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Smart and digital youth work resources: where to find more

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Council of Europe published the Internet literacy handbook (2017) which provides links to more in-depth information and resources for those who wish to delve further into the topics related to working with children and young people online.

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In order to use Lumosity, your browser needs to accept cookies from www.lumosity.com

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Not just vidya games but you know other games too

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Everything you ever wanted to know about online learning and digital tools in youth work and NFE.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about online learning and digital tools in youth work.

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From the partnership between the European Union and the Council of Europe in the field of youth.

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Like Google docs, but for if you care about privacy

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Etherpad is a software libre web application that allows for real-time group collaboration of text documents. Riseup does not store IP addresses, we require https, and pads are automatically destroyed after 60 days of inactivity.

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Nice guide to faciltating online meetings 

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Nice guide to faciltating online meetings 

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Only schedule a meeting if you are clear on why you need one and what its goals are. If you have an online meeting of 30 people for an hour, that's 30 people hours! That's a lot of time if you're wasting it.
To reduce wasted time during online meetings, make sure to:

Test the online system (Skype/conference call/Google hangout) ahead of time. Try to know it as much as possible so that you are comfortable using it and can explain it to others;

Teach people to learn to use "mute" button-especially for large groups-so they get used to being on mute when they're not talking;

If you do a lot of online meetings, encourage people to use headphones since Skype and many conference calls create an annoying echo without them;

Instead of asking "who has something to say about this" you can use mechanisms like a go-round (see below) or small groups. When they do a go-round, have people get into the habit of calling on the person after them ("And now onto Hakim...") rather than waiting for the facilitator to un-mute themselves, step in, and say, "Hakim, are you ready?" If they don't remember who comes after them, they can finish by saying "check" so it is clear they are done speaking.
People learn by acting, not by hearing someone else talk, so get people engaged as much as possible.
For example, rather than spending 30 minutes talking about a time management technique, one climate change organisation decided to just have people try it. They explained it very briefly in the first 10 minutes, gave people a chance to practice the tool in small groups for 10 minutes, and then debriefed the experience for another 10. The same amount time resulted in far deeper learning than if people had just heard it talked about.

Here is a sample agenda to help you create your own online meeting:

Before the Call

* Make sure everyone has been sent information about when and where the meeting is (and any technical needs they have);

* Create an agenda ahead of time (send it out if you can).

Gathering Time

(5-15 minutes, depending on your group)

* Arrive online a few minutes early to test the technical specifications;

* Welcome folks as they arrive and keep track of who has and has not arrived (decide when to start);

* For large groups, delegate a second person to be present for technical problems.

Warm-Up / Get to Know Each Other

(10-15 minutes)

Offer ways for people to check-in or get to know each other (see go rounds). For example:

Ask each person to share honestly, for example, how they are doing, a lesson from their work, or one thing they're proud of at work;

Ask each person to share something silly ("If you were a vegetable, what kind of vegetable would you be and why...")

Agenda Review

This is after the warm-up so if people are late you don't have to keep repeating the agenda;

Review the goals of the meeting;

If you need notes for the meeting, make sure there is a note-taker.

Group-Building Activities

If you have the time or if it's a helpful for your goals, you may want to add a group-building activity. For example:

Create an online circle: (See Creating Online Small Groups) Ask each person to draw a circle on a piece of paper. Establish a place for each meeting participant in the "circle" by asking each person what number they want to sit at on a clock face. (This can be used for go-arounds and as a way of choosing people.) You can also create an online circle via the drawing tools on Google Slides, with a drawn circle and people "sit" on the circle, e.g.

Meeting Agenda Items

If at all possible, start with something that can be dealt with reasonably easily. This will give the group a sense of accomplishment and energy;

The harder, longer and more urgent items come next. If there are several, plan to have quick breaks between them to restore energy and attention (for example stretching, singing, a quick game or a bathroom break);

A big item may be broken into several small items and discussed one at a time to make it easier. Or it may be helpful to try presenting the item with background information and clarification, breaking into small groups for idea sharing and making priorities, and then returning to the main group for discussion;

Finish with something short and easy to provide a sense of hope for next time.

Announcements / Closing / Evaluation

Depending on your goals, you may want to provide some time for announcements and an evaluation, which allows people to express their feelings about the meeting and a chance to learn how to have better meetings in the future. Evaluations should be done immediately before the end of the workshop because people may forget to fill them out later or forget important details about the experience (see Evaluations);

Try to close a few minutes early-it creates a sense of abundance and energy to end the meeting a few minutes early.

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Only schedule a meeting if you are clear on why you need one and what its goals are. If you have an online meeting of 30 people for an hour, that's 30 people hours! That's a lot of time if you're wasting it.

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The ICT4YOUTHWORK project aims to better enable youth organizations, youth services and youth workers in reaching young people and delivering to them activities that will ensure responsiveness to the trends in society such as the latest progress in technologies and digital media.

The project's effort will allow for these types of organizations to update and adapt their methods to the new technologies to improve outreach to youth. Thus, youth organizations will be better empowered to increase the quality of the youth sector in Europe by sharing know-how across sectors, generating and disseminating new knowledge on methods and practices for use of the latest digital tools and media in youth work.

ICT4YOUTHWORK is a project that is funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships.

The ICT4YOUTHWORK sets to:

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The ICT4YOUTHWORK project aims to better enable youth organizations, youth services and youth workers in reaching young people and delivering to them activities that will ensure responsiveness to the trends in society such as the latest progress in technologies and digital media.

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Please for the love of everything that works on the internet don't suggest Skype .....real-time events for 100s of people with breakout rooms and whiteboards is what you want

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Dance4Life have created a COVID-19 Youth Guide to support young people to navigate their lives in these challenging times.It contains information, links, and resources that can also inspire young people to become leaders in dealing with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read it, share it, love it ❤️

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All young people around the world can choose to be healthy, even in these disruptive times. Dance4Life has compiled this awesome COVID-19 Youth Guide to support them to navigate their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read, love and share! #besafeandkind #stayathome #youthguide #covid19youthguide #youthempowerment #coronavirus #covid19 #srhr #dance4life

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This takes a bit of work to get people using it ....but slack is a good space where you create on online community . Think of it like old school chat rooms ...or a more complex what's app chat

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Examples of innovative practices in delivering digital youth work
--> Policy recommendations on digital youth work;
--> Identification of trainings of youth workers relevant for digital youth work,
--> Collection of training material.

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Aims of the tool

The results of this expert group will be of interest to anyone involved in developments in youth work in the 21st century, especially youth workers, organisations, training providers, policy-makers, other practitioners, and researchers:

--> Youth workers (the results are relevant to their daily work, professional development, changing working field/demands; they will help them adapt, play an active role in children and young people's personal development). Youth workers are provided with a simple overview of competences;
--> Organisations (they need to provide youth workers with tools and support them, offer training, organisations and youth workers should know where to find appropriate training;
--> Policy-makers (the recommendations on the development of innovative methods in youth work, including digital tools, are addressed to policy-makers at local, regional, national and European level);
--> Various others: training providers, professional and standard-setting bodies, curriculum developers, software developers to provide appropriate tools, researchers, etc.

Description of the tool

This publication contains the main outcomes of the expert group:

--> A working definition of 'digital youth work';
--> Examples of innovative practices in delivering digital youth work and upskilling youth workers' digital competences;
--> Policy recommendations on the development of digital youth work;
--> Identification of training needs of youth workers relevant for digital youth work, based on existing competence frameworks for digital skills and for youth work;
--> Collection of training material which is available online and which addresses the identified training needs of youth workers relevant for digital youth work.

Disclaimer

SALTO cannot be held responsible for the inappropriate use of these training tools. Always adapt training tools to your aims, context, target group and to your own skills! These tools have been used in a variety of formats and situations. Please notify SALTO should you know about the origin of or copyright on this tool.

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The results of this expert group will be of interest to anyone involved in developments in youth work in the 21st century, especially youth workers, organisations, training providers, policy-makers, other practitioners, and researchers: --> Youth workers (the results are relevant to their daily work, professional development, changing working field/demands; they will help them adapt, play an active role in children and young people's personal development).

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Great article on the ethics of digital youth work

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Great article on the ethics of digital youth work

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Digital Spaces

Digital spaces can be defined as the digital "locales" where young people gather, with digital places giving meaning, memories and feelings. Spaces provide the arena or setting, whilst places represent attachment, belonging and significance. Belongingness for young people is usually associated with a physical sense of place created by meeting up with friends in spaces such as home, school, youth provision, shopping centres and parks, but also increasingly through digital places such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or gaming environments. Young people, as part of their identity development, describe belonging as "fitting in" and "feeling accepted" and this is associated with connections to specific spaces and places through friendship, "mates" that can be counted on, support, and intimacy (not necessarily of a sexual kind); for many young people, digital places provide a constant connection to their peers, a way of validating who they are becoming, and receiving emotional reassurance that they belong.

One of the advantages of youth work practice is that it can take place in the spaces where young people choose to gather (detached youth work, streetwork or outreach work), and dedicated youth provision (youth clubs, projects and building-based work) can work with young people to create a sense of place to keep them gathering there. However, digital spaces and places present challenges for youth workers, not least because they cannot compete with commercial social media platforms which generate concerns related to access, privacy, purpose, appropriateness and safety. Youth work often states in its offer to young people that it provides safe spaces, yet in the context of using digital spaces and places, the notion of "safe" is subjective, especially when spaces and places for digital youth work are outside a youth worker's control, in that content may be too visible, and can be shared, cloned and changed, and advertisements targeting users may not be appropriate in the context of professional youth work practice.

So, I would encourage you to think about the physical spaces within which young people gather. Are they the same or do they differ from the digital spaces and places in which they meet? Youth workers have the unique ability to be able to work with young people on their own territory, in their own spaces and places. Should this not, therefore, extend to digital spaces and places? John Dewey (1938), whose work on informal and experiential education underpins youth work approaches in the UK, recognised the significance of space and place, in relation to where learning is situated or where it takes place. He talks of the responsibility that educators have to exploit the environment, spaces and places in which they "meet" and work with young people.

I believe that youth workers can work with young people in digital spaces and places in the same way that they might work with young people in a local park, on the streets or through a building-based project. However, in the digital world some of the parameters are changed, and it requires careful planning to protect young workers, youth work organisations and young people, as well as to produce powerful learning outcomes. There are also two essential principles that have come through my research: firstly, that working with young people using digital spaces and places is most effective when it is an extension of an existing face-to-face relationship. This doesn't preclude working with young people virtually, that is where a youth worker only knows a young person through a website. However, I believe this to be a completely different way of working in that such interventions need to be formally structured to protect staff from allegations of inappropriate contact or behaviour, and that it is difficult to know whether the virtual contact is indeed a young person. The UK youth workers that I have worked with describe their best work as a combination of face-to-face and digital engagement, that is where digital spaces and places can extend the possibilities for existing relationships, adding an extra dimension, and a continuation of activities or conversations started face to face.

Secondly, working in digital spaces and places is most effective when young people choose which tools, spaces and places are the best ones to use. As with many physical spaces and places in which young people meet and socialise, youth workers need to go to them. There's no point in trying to get young people to sign up to platforms and apps that they don't use and therefore won't visit.

From my research, four headings have emerged and these can be used to drive both professional and ethical practice, as well as interventions with young people. These can be summarised as follows:

Safety - safe or unsafe digital practices, duty to safeguard and educate about the safe use of digital technologies;

Production - digital literacy skills and behaviours, digital footprint, production of artefacts (campaigns, video, photo, blog, podcast, etc.);

Information - critical consumers of the internet, and broader information, advice and guidance needs;

Communication - marketing and publicising of youth work, generic digital communication skills, self-promotion, digital footprint.

Within the headings, issues related to both professional practice and interventions with young people can be placed on four continuum representations as follows:

safe-unsafe

productive-unproductive

information-misinformation

communication-miscommunication.

These continuums are not intended to represent good and bad aspects of the digital world. Rather, they represent areas to be aware of and supervised in relation to professional practice, and they are also areas that can form the focus of both planned and unplanned work with young people.

© Jane Melvin

These different continuums can be placed into a model as represented here. It is set contextually in digital spaces and places, and these would represent the spaces and places where young people are meeting and socialising, as well as those agreed as spaces and places where youth workers can engage with young people. The four spaces of safety, production, information and communication are represented as interconnected circles, as it is very difficult to view these in isolation. The continuums are also shown as interrelated and connected to each other, and some issues, for example, the impact of a young person's digital footprint, occur throughout.

As a way of illustrating this, at a conference last year in South Africa, I was asked about how this model could support youth workers working with young people around the issues of extremism and radicalisation, and the fact that many young people are known to have been radicalised initially through the internet. Within the safe space of the model, youth workers can raise young people's awareness of safe and unsafe practices, particularly in relation to extremist groups online, but also of the reporting processes if they have concerns about themselves and their friends. Equally, youth workers using digital spaces and places to work with young people on such issues need to be backed and supervised by their employing organisations, operate under professional profiles, and be transparent about their presence and role, so that they are not placing themselves at risk.

The production space might look at what constitutes unproductive behaviour, for example, how a young person's digital footprint is impacted by liking certain pages, or sharing photos or posts relating to radicalised or extremist ideas on social media sites. The digital footprint of a youth worker's professional profile is also of relevance, in that it can serve to positively promote the work of the wider youth work organisation as well as the individual practitioner. Here, there is also the possibility for young people to produce artefacts to promote positive aspects, for example how a group of young people is working to challenge extremist views, such as those of the far right.

The information space includes the idea of creating critical consumers and supporting young people to know what online information is true and what isn't; so it would support working with them to question what they encounter on the internet and not take at face value propaganda, for example. It also encompasses training that youth workers need to be able to support young people who are at risk of being radicalised, which might include knowledge of online resources or specialist organisations.

Within the communication space, youth workers could work with young people to look at how extremist views are communicated, and how targeted individuals can be tracked and contacted. They might, for example, work with young people using gaming sites such as World of Warcraft, to educate them about how gamers are being profiled through organisations like the FBI through such games, but also how extremists can target and contact players.

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Digital spaces can be defined as the digital "locales" where young people gather, with digital places giving meaning, memories and feelings. Spaces provide the arena or setting, whilst places represent attachment, belonging and significance.

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Futurelabs - Tools for the digital youth work

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Hello dear listeners, In this episode, we talked to Snežana Bačlija Knoch, an educational consultant in the European youth field [...]

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Estonia has offered all of its digital education tools out for 

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Estonia has offered all of its digital education tools out for 

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Lehte ei leitud | Haridus-ja Teadusministeerium

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Der #ABHackathon war ein Geistesblitz einer Jugendlichen, die in einem ländlichen Gebiet lebte und an einem Hackathon teilnehmen wollte. Aber es gab keinen in der Nähe des Wohnortes, also beschlossen wir, einen eigenen zu planen! Ziel war es, jungen Menschen in Argyll und Bute die Möglichkeit zu geben, Zugang zu neuen Technologien zu erhalten und sie durch Bildung für STEM-Themen zu begeistern.

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Der #ABHackathon war ein Geistesblitz einer Jugendlichen, die in einem ländlichen Gebiet lebte und an einem Hackathon teilnehmen wollte. Aber es gab keinen in der Nähe des Wohnortes, also beschlossen wir, einen eigenen zu planen! Ziel war es, jungen Menschen in Argyll und Bute die Möglichkeit zu geben, Zugang zu neuen Technologien zu erhalten und sie durch Bildung für STEM-Themen zu begeistern.

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Some good reading on digital youth work 

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Some good reading on digital youth work 

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This publication is one of the outcomes of the 2017 edition of the training course Dig-It Up! - the European training course funded by Erasmus+ / Youth in Action TCA and aimed at youth workers interesting in learning and improving practical skills regarding digital youth work. It has been published by Agenzia Nazionale Giovani, the Italian National Agency for Erasmus+ / Youth in Action. In these pages you will find insights, recommendations and guidelines coming from the ongoing European debate on digital youth work, enriched by the contribution of Dig-It up! trainers' team and participants; you will find information on EU and EC steps in defining and supporting digital youth work, either in terms of statements and documents, and in terms of studies and official collection of best practices, among which we are pleased to count our training course, too. The publication also contains examples and out-takes from the training course's programme, to show how digital youth work activities can be designed and delivered with simple means and tools, even outdoors. We also collected a set of good practices shared and presented by some participants, together with their profiles, expectations and evaluations of the training course. To learn more visit the website http://www.digitup.cloud

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This publication is one of the outcomes of the 2017 edition of the training course Dig-It Up! - the European training course funded by Erasmus+ / Youth in Action TCA and aimed at youth workers interesting in learning and improving practical skills regarding digital youth work.

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Digital Youth Work Toolkit for Youth Workers

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Digital Youth Work Toolkit for Youth Workers

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LOTS of step-by-step session plans on how to run digital workshops with young people. Using an online video tool like Zoom, the activities can easily be adapted for facilitation in an online youth work space!

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Estonia leads the way on the concept of *smart* youth 

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Estonia leads the way on the concept of *smart* youth 

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A very interesting project for online coproduction. I think their tools will be available to all at some point too

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A tool for recognising and reflecting on learning through a series of electronic badges. Think  "challenge unlocked" type stuff like you get in gaming

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Управлять всеми достижениями онлайн

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Build recognition pathways with levels and milestones. Track progress and monitor skills development.

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Great webinar on connecting to young people online 

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Great webinar on connecting to young people online 

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SALTO Participation & Information Resource Centre

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Juha Kiviniemi: Reaching young people online

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This is a tool for doing interactive polls and making live word clouds as part of a presentation. It's mainly designed for in person events, but if you screen share you can use it over a video chat

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Resources to talk with young children about Corona 

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Resources to talk with young children about Corona 

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Is this your domain?Connect it to your Wix website in just a few easy steps:

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Lots of tips, training materials/resources and collection of videos of youth work practitioners sharing their best practice. With a little creativity, the resources can be adapted for online delivery using tools like Zoom, Instagram and Facebook Live.

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Hot chocolate trusts youth work ideas during Corona  

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Hot chocolate trusts youth work ideas during Corona  

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Free apps and resources to support distance learning

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Free apps and resources to support distance learning

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What works for formal education, can also be adapted to non-formal. There are some pretty good ideas!

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Free apps to support distance learning due to the coronavirus outbreak

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Koulu.me - Free apps to support distance learning due to the coronavirus outbreak

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Free apps and resources to support distance learning in schools affected by the coronavirus outbreak

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German scouts are collecting ideas for how to run activites online

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German scouts are collecting ideas for how to run activites online

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English speakers can read through Google translate  https://www.scoutingneverstops.de/

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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Gever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkering

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Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a roller coaster!

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Tools and support  work around wellbeing and mental health online 

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Tools and support  work around wellbeing and mental health online 

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It's a stressful time for all right now...especially children and young people

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MindEd is suitable for all adults working with, or caring for, infants, children or teenagers, adults and older people, including people with a learning disability and autistic people; all the information provided is quality assured by experts, useful, and easy to understand. We aim to give adults who care for, or work with people:

the knowledge to support their wellbeing

the understanding to identify a child, young person or adult at risk of a mental health condition

the confidence to act on their concern and, if needed, signpost to services that can help

MindEd is multi-professional, and can be used by teachers, health and mental health professionals, police and judiciary staff, social workers, youth service volunteers, school counsellors among others to support their professional development.

All registered learners can access a learning path tailored to their needs.

Throughout the MindEd site we make use of images and videos. In all cases, except where specifically noted, these images and videos use actors and are not intended to represent any specific person.

Disclaimer

Please note that the advice provided on MindEd is written and quality assured by experts in mental health and is accurate and comprehensive as possible. It is however only general advice and should not be used as a substitute for any individual advice you might receive from consulting your own doctor/mental health professional. Please use your own judgement when deciding how best to apply our information to any specific situation or proposed treatment. This applies to any clinical professionals, who should use their own clinical judgement when interpreting the information on MindEd and deciding how to best apply it in the treatment of patients.

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MindEd is suitable for all adults working with, or caring for, infants, children or teenagers, adults and older people, including people with a learning disability and autistic people; all the information provided is quality assured by experts, useful, and easy to understand.

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A beginner's guide to offering digital mental health support

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Nice blog on faciltating online sessions 

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Nice blog on faciltating online sessions 

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Going virtual: Top tips for trainers and facilitators | CB Legacy

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This is the start of a series of blogs written by Bootcamp lead trainer Nim Ralph to advise trainers and facilitators on how to run effective online trainings in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. This blog introduces the topic and Nim's top 10 tips.

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Some advice on how to run a large interactive meeting with zoom

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pollly is your perfect partner to gather ideas and opinions in real time, no registering required, free and absolutely fool-proofed.

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published specifically for covid-19 times

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As COVID-19 continues spreading in many countries of the world, how to keep learning in disruption has become a major challenge to the global education community. As stated by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay: "We are entering uncharted territory and working with countries to find hi-tech, low-tech and no-tech solutions to assure the continuity of learning."

At this critical moment, UNESCO IITE, UNESCO International Research and Training Centre for Rural Education (INRULED), Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University and other partners have jointly released a Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption: The Chinese Experience in Maintaining Undisrupted Learning in COVID-19 Outbreak.

The Handbook describes several flexible online learning strategies implemented in China under the Chinese Ministry of Education initiative Disrupted classes, Undisrupted Learning which ensured flexible online learning to over 270 million students from their homes.

The Handbook is available here

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Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption - UNESCO IITE

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As COVID-19 continues spreading in many countries of the world, how to keep learning in disruption has become a major challenge to the global education community. As stated by UNESCO... Read more Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption

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Some great podcasra about online safety 

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Some great podcasra about online safety 

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The SafeToNet Foundation’s Safeguarding podcasts

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The SafeToNet Foundation’s Safeguarding Podcasts, one of the UK’s Top 10 Human Rights podcasts, explore the Law, Culture and Technology of online child safety. Topics include cyber-abuse, cyberbullying, sexting, sextortion, grooming, privacy, and digital wellbeing. Our guest list is peerless, featu…

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advice and guidance on data protection (GDPR) for EU countries

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advice and guidance on data protection (GDPR) for EU countries

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each EU country has an information commissioner, which provides support and regulatory guidance around GDPR. GDPR means thinking about what personal data you are collecting and how , and ensuring you use it legally. Even a pen and paper can be used to break GDPR if you use it incorrectly.

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The material (opinions, working documents, letters etc.) issued by the Article 29 Working Party (Art. 29 WP), available on this website reflect the views only of the Art. 29 WP which has an advisory status and acts independently. They do not reflect the position of the European Commission.

Croatia

Croatian Personal Data Protection Agency
Martićeva 14
10000 Zagreb
Tel. +385 1 4609 000
Fax +385 1 4609 099
e-mail: azop@azop.hr or info@azop.hr
Website: http://www.azop.hr/

Finland

Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman
P.O. Box 800
FIN-00521 Helsinki

Ratapihantie 9
FIN-00520 Helsinki

Switchboard: +358 (0)29 566 6700
Registry: +358 (0)29 566 6768
e-mail: tietosuoja@om.fi
Website: http://www.tietosuoja.fi/en/

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Ms Elisa KUMPULA, Head of Department

France

Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés - CNIL
8 rue Vivienne, CS 30223
F-75002 Paris, Cedex 02
Tel. +33 1 53 73 22 22
Fax +33 1 53 73 22 00
e-mail:
Website: http://www.cnil.fr/

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Ms Florence RAYNAL

Germany

The competence for complaints is split among different data protection supervisory authorities in Germany.
Competent authorities can be identified according to the list provided under
https://www.bfdi.bund.de/bfdi_wiki/index.php/Aufsichtsbeh%C3%B6rden_und_Landesdatenschutzbeauftragte

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Prof. Dr. Johannes CASPAR, representative of the federal states

Hungary

Data Protection Commissioner of Hungary
Szilágyi Erzsébet fasor 22/C
H-1125 Budapest
Tel. +36 1 3911 400
e-mail: peterfalvi.attila@naih.hu
Website: http://www.naih.hu/

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Mr Endre Győző SZABÓ Vice-president of the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information

Ireland

Data Protection Commissioner
Canal House
Station Road
Portarlington
Co. Laois
Lo-Call: 1890 25 22 31
Tel. +353 57 868 4800
Fax +353 57 868 4757
e-mail: info@dataprotection.ie
Website: http://www.dataprotection.ie/

Art 29 WP Alternate Members: Mr John O'DWYER, Deputy Commissioner; Mr Dale SUNDERLAND, Deputy Commissioner

Netherlands

Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens
Prins Clauslaan 60
P.O. Box 93374
2509 AJ Den Haag/The Hague
Tel. +31 70 888 8500
Fax +31 70 888 8501
e-mail: info@autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl
Website: https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/nl

Art 29 WP Member: Mr Aleid WOLFSEN, Chairman of Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens
Curriculum Vitae (5 kB)

Poland

The Bureau of the Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data - GIODO
ul. Stawki 2
00-193 Warsaw
Tel. +48 22 53 10 440
Fax +48 22 53 10 441
e-mail: kancelaria@giodo.gov.pl; desiwm@giodo.gov.pl
Website: http://www.giodo.gov.pl/

Romania

The National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing
President: Mrs Ancuţa Gianina Opre
B-dul Magheru 28-30
Sector 1, BUCUREŞTI
Tel. +40 21 252 5599
Fax +40 21 252 5757
e-mail: anspdcp@dataprotection.ro
Website: http://www.dataprotection.ro/

Art 29 WP Member: Ms Ancuţa Gianina OPRE, President of the National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Ms Raluca POPA, Department of International Affairs

Slovakia

Office for Personal Data Protection of the Slovak Republic
Hraničná 12
820 07 Bratislava 27
Tel.: + 421 2 32 31 32 14
Fax: + 421 2 32 31 32 34
e-mail:
Website: http://www.dataprotection.gov.sk/

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Mr Jozef DUDÁŠ, Vice President

Slovenia

Information Commissioner
Ms Mojca Prelesnik
Zaloška 59
1000 Ljubljana
Tel. +386 1 230 9730
Fax +386 1 230 9778
e-mail: gp.ip@ip-rs.si
Website: https://www.ip-rs.si/

Sweden

Datainspektionen
Drottninggatan 29
5th Floor
Box 8114
104 20 Stockholm
Tel. +46 8 657 6100
Fax +46 8 652 8652
e-mail: datainspektionen@datainspektionen.se
Website: http://www.datainspektionen.se/

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Mr Hans-Olof LINDBLOM, Chief Legal Adviser

United Kingdom

The Information Commissioner's Office
Water Lane, Wycliffe House
Wilmslow - Cheshire SK9 5AF
Tel. +44 1625 545 745
e-mail: international.team@ico.org.uk
Website: https://ico.org.uk

Art 29 WP Member: Ms Elizabeth DENHAM, Information Commissioner
Curriculum Vitae (5 kB)

Art 29 WP Alternate Member: Mr Steve WOOD, Deputy Commissioner

European Data Protection Supervisor

Rue Wiertz 60
1047 Bruxelles/Brussel
Office: Rue Montoyer 63, 6th floor
Tel. +32 2 283 19 00
Fax +32 2 283 19 50
e-mail: edps@edps.europa.eu
Website: http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/

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The material (opinions, working documents, letters etc.) issued by the Article 29 Working Party (Art. 29 WP), available on this website reflect the views only of the Art. 29 WP which has an advisory status and acts independently. They do not reflect the position of the European Commission.

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Who doesn't have online access? (Eu stats)

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Who doesn't have online access? (Eu stats)

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Who are we excluding when we begin to move all our lives online......check these stats to find out

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The current health crisis has highlighted the necessity of internet connections in the normal functioning of modern economies. ICTs have become widely available to the general public, both in terms of accessibility as well as cost. A boundary was crossed in 2007, when a majority (53 %) of households in the EU had internet access. This proportion continued to increase, passing three quarters in 2012 and four fifths in 2014 and 90 % in 2020. By 2022, the share of EU households with internet access rose to 93 % (see Figure1).

In 2022, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland reported the highest proportion of households with internet access with 98 % (see Figure 2). Spain (96 %) and Denmark (95 %) were also among the EU Member States with the highest rate of household internet access. Greece (85 %), Croatia (86 %) and Bulgaria (87 %) presented the lowest rates of household internet access among the EU Member States. Nevertheless, while a saturation of household internet access is seen among some of the top Member States, a catching-up was observed between 2017 and 2022 with increases of 20 % for Bulgaria, 15 % for Cyprus, and 13 % for Spain, Latvia, Romania and Lithuania. In 2022, the proportion of household with internet access was 99 % in Norway, slightly over the EU Member States highest scores of 98 % presented by the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland. The share in Türkiye was 94 % a percentage point over the EU average of 93 %.

Figure 3 highlights the urban-rural divide within the EU in terms of internet access. In 2022, cities presented greater household internet access with 94 % compare with 92 % for towns and suburbs and 90 % for rural areas. Belgium, Slovenia and Estonia were the exception to that general trend with towns and suburbs presenting highest household internet access compare with cities and rural areas. Malta was the only EU Member State where the highest household internet access was in rural areas. In Germany, cities and rural areas shared the highest percentage of household internet access. Among some of the Member States close to saturation, the difference in household internet access between cities, suburbs and rural areas was very narrow in 2022. In Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the difference was around 1 or 2 percentage points between the three geographical areas. Norway shared a similar situation. In Greece and in Portugal, the gap between cities and rural areas in household internet access reached 14 % (each) and 12 % in Romania.

Use of internet

In 2022, 90 % of EU individuals aged between 16 and 74 years used the internet at least once within the three months prior to the survey date. Fourteen Member States were above that EU average in 2022. The highest share of internet users were in Luxembourg and Denmark with 98 % of individuals, followed by Finland and Sweden with 97 %. In 2022, Bulgaria (79 %) Croatia (82 %) and Greece (83 %) reported the lowest rates of internet users in the EU. The proportion of the population that had never used the internet was 7 % in 2022 in the EU, but reached 14 % in Greece and Portugal, and 13 % in Croatia and Bulgaria. In 2022, 84 % of individuals in the EU accessed the internet on a daily basis(see Figure 4) with a further 5 % using it at least once a week (but not daily). As such, 89 % of EU individuals aged between 16 and 74 were regular internet users (at least weekly). Norway reported a share of 100 % of individuals having used internet in the last three months before the survey. The share dropped to 96 % for the daily users of the internet. In Montenegro, the share of individuals having used the internet in the last three months prior to the survey was 88 %, close to the EU average of 90 %. In Serbia and Türkiye, the share of internet users was 84 % and 83 %, respectively, in 2022.

Purpose of the use of internet

The internet is basically a means of communication. However, communication is an indispensable activity in all areas of everyday life. As a result, the internet has spread in a wide variety of domains. ICT surveys collect data on the mediation of the internet for a very large number of purposes such as communication, access to the information, use of entertainment, etc. In this publication, the focus has been restricted to 3 purposes: e-learning, civic and political actions, and the seeking of health information online.
E-learning: In 2022, the proportion of individuals in the EU who followed an online course was 16 %. In the Netherlands and in Finland, more than 30 % of individuals aged between 16 and 74 had followed an online course in 2022. By comparison, the share of individuals who followed an online course was under the double digits in Romania (3 %), Poland and Bulgaria (8 % each).

Civic and political actions: EU Member States present a contrasted figure as regards to the role of the internet in the domain of civic and political actions. Only 8 % of EU individuals reported having participated in online consultations or voting to define civic or political issues in 2022. The share grew to 14 % for the individuals who expressed opinions on civic or political issues on websites or in social media and 18 % for those who reported civic or political participation (see Table 1). Among the Member States with the highest share in these three categories, the internet appears to play a significant role when it comes to participating in civic and political actions. In Finland and in Malta, 26 % and 28 % of individuals respectively had civic or political participation online. By contrast, the share dropped to 9 % in Germany. In Norway and in Montenegro, the internet played a significant role in civic and political participation in 2022.

The seeking of health information online: In 2022, 52 % of EU individuals sought health-related information online (e.g. injuries, diseases, nutrition, improving health, etc.). In Finland, the proportion reached 81 % and it was over 70 % in three other Member States: the Netherlands (78 %), Cyprus (73%) and Denmark (71 %). Romania (29 %) and Germany (37 %) reported the lowest share among the Member States in 2022 (see Figure 6).

The collection of indicators on Green ICT is necessary for the policies related to the European Green Deal. In 2022, a limited number of indicators has been proposed, aiming at investigating mainly: - Information on recycling habits of individuals/households regarding IT equipment not used anymore; - Information on the importance of sustainability aspects for purchasing decisions of IT equipment. While data on a large number of IT equipment are available, this publication focusses on mobile phones and smartphones. Looking at mobile phones and smartphones no longer in use, almost half of the EU individuals aged between 16 and 74 kept the old device in their household compared with 10 % who recycled their old device. 17 % of the individuals gave or sold the old device while an average of 2 % simply threw it away without recycling. In 2022 among the Member States, the proportion of individuals that kept the old mobile and smartphone ranged from 65 % in Latvia and Finland to 14 % in Croatia. Regarding the individuals who sold or gave away their mobile or smartphone, the highest shares in the EU were in Croatia (32 %) and the Netherlands (24 %). Recycling is still to be further developed in the EU as a credible destination of the old ICT devices at least for mobiles and smartphones. Greece (18 %) and Austria (17 %) reported the highest rates in the EU of individuals who had recycled their old mobile or smartphone in 2022. See Table2

Concerning the importance of sustainability aspects for purchasing decisions of IT equipment, it appeared that, in 2022, the price was considered as an important characteristic for 66 % of EU individuals in the purchase of their mobile or smartphone. The other important characteristics were: hard drive or processor speed (54 %), energy efficiency (22 %), eco-design (13 %), the possibility to extend the life span (9 %), the take-back scheme by the seller or the manufacturer (7 %), none of these characteristics (6 %). 5 % of EU individuals reported to have never bought a mobile or a smartphone.

Ordering or buying goods and services

The proportion of individuals aged 16 to 74 in the EU who ordered or bought goods or services over the internet for private use was 68 % in 2022, up from 54 % in 2017 (see Figure 7). With 88 %, Denmark and the Netherlands reported the highest shares of people having ordered or bought goods and services online. In the following Member States, the share of individuals who ordered or bought goods and services exceeded 75 %: Sweden, Luxembourg, Finland, Czechia, Slovakia, Germany and France. By contrast, this proportion was the lowest in Romania (30 %) and Bulgaria (23 %). The largest increase in the proportion of individuals who ordered or bought goods or services over the internet between 2017 and 2022 were observed in Hungary (up 31 percentage points), and in Romania (up 30 percentage points).

Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)

Data sources

Rapid technological change in areas related to the internet and other new applications of ICTs pose challenges for statistics. As such, there has been a considerable degree of development in this area, with statistical tools being adapted to satisfy new demands for data. Indeed, statistics within this domain are reassessed on an annual basis in order to meet user needs and reflect the rapid pace of change.

This approach is replicated in Eurostat's survey on ICT usage in households and by individuals. This annual survey is used to benchmark ICT-driven developments, both by following developments for core variables over time and by looking in greater depth at other aspects at a specific point in time. While the survey initially concentrated on access and connectivity issues, its scope has subsequently been extended to cover a variety of subjects (for example, e-government and e-commerce) and socioeconomic analysis (such as regional diversity, gender specificity, differences in age, education and the employment situation). The scope of the survey with respect to different technologies is also adapted so as to cover new product groups and means of delivering communication technologies to end-users (such as introducing new questions about online peer-to-peer accommodation or transport services in 2017).

The reference period for the survey on ICT usage in households and by individuals is in most cases the first quarter of each year; in most countries, the survey is conducted in the second quarter of each year.

Coverage and definitions

The household ICT survey covers those households having at least one member in the age group 16 to 74 years old. Internet access of households refers to the percentage of households that have an internet access, so that anyone in the household could use the internet at home, if so desired, even simply to send an e-mail.

Internet users are defined as all individuals aged 16 to 74 who had used the internet in the three months prior to the survey. Regular internet users are individuals who used the internet, on average, at least once a week in the three months prior to the survey.

The wired technologies most commonly used to access the internet are divided between broadband and dial-up access over a normal or an ISDN telephone line. Broadband includes digital subscriber lines (DSL) and uses technology that transports data at high speeds. Broadband lines are defined as having a capacity higher than ISDN, meaning equal to or higher than 144 kbit/s. Popular devices to access the internet at home include desktop and portable computers, while more recently there has been an expansion in other internet-enabled technologies.

Mobile internet usage is defined as using the internet away from home or work on portable computers or handheld devices via mobile phone networks or wireless connections.

The ordering of goods and services by individuals refers to the 3-month period prior to the survey and includes rented accommodation or transport services, purchasing financial investments, telecommunication services, video games or software, as well as information services from the internet that are directly paid for. Goods and services that are obtained via the internet for free are excluded. Orders made by manually typed e-mails, SMS or MMS are also excluded.

In 2019, the new European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, described how she wanted the EU to grasp the opportunities presented by the digital age. Such a digital transformation is based on the premise that digital technologies and solutions should: open up new opportunities for businesses; boost the development of trustworthy technology; foster an open and democratic society; enable a vibrant and sustainable economy; help fight climate change.

Data from this survey supports measuring the implementation of one of the six priorities for the period 2019-2024 of the von der Leyen European Commission - A Europe fit for the digital age. The strategy is built on three pillars: (1) Technology that works for the people; (2) A fair and competitive digital economy; (3) An open, democratic and sustainable society. Furthermore, it facilitates the monitoring of the EU's digital targets for 2030, set by the Digital Compass for the EU's Digital Decade, evolving around four cardinal points: skills, digital transformation of businesses, secure and sustainable digital infrastructures, and digitalization of public services. On 15 September 2021, the Commission proposed the Path to the digital decade, which introduces a governance framework to reach the targets set out by the 2030 Digital Compass. Data on the use of ICT in households and by individuals appears among the monitoring indicators of the European Skills Agenda.

Other links:

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Digital economy and society statistics - households and individuals

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The current health crisis has highlighted the necessity of internet connections in the normal functioning of modern economies. ICTs have become widely available to the general public, both in terms of accessibility as well as cost. A boundary was crossed in 2007, when a majority (53 %) of households in the EU had internet access.

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Great list and guide to various digital  tools from the youth at work partnership here

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Tools for collaborating on virtual whiteboards - from the DYPALL network

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Tools for collaborating on virtual whiteboards - from the DYPALL network

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the folks over at DYPALL are great -they really know their stuff.

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If we could identify with one, single object NGOs, CSOs, and more in general youth work around Europe, it would be without any doubt represented by a white board.

White boards are great to brainstorm, develop a project, or even describe graphically an idea or a process.

The following free tools bring collaborative white boards online, so you can collaborate with your colleagues at any time, and picture your future projects together.. without the need for markers.
Miro
Besides the regular online whiteboard features of uploading images, creating notes and drawing in different colors and sizes in freehand mode, Miro offers a great template library to conveniently find the right structure you need for your whiteboard. The free version offers up to 3 boards for your team.
Mural
Mural is a versatile online whiteboard tool for remote team meetings. It is particularly strong as a team tool, allowing you to create different rooms for your board with differentiated access rights. Besides, it offers a wide range of workshop and meeting templates, including planning, design, issue analysis and idea generation board templates. Unfortunately, Mural does not have a free version, but it extended its free trial period up to 90 days during the COVID outbreak period.
Stormboard
Stormboard focuses on idea generation, organization and prioritization: you can add different type of notes, combine them together, comment in threads and vote on ideas using colored dots. It has a strong reporting functionality that allows to instantly turn your online sticky notes into structured meeting reports. With its MS Office integration, the reports can be collaboratively edited and then shared immediately with meeting participants or key stakeholders. The free version offers 5 boards with maximum 5 collaborators for each.

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Tools for collaborating on virtual whiteboards

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If we could identify with one, single object NGOs, CSOs, and more in general youth work around Europe, it would be without any doubt represented by a white board. White boards are great to brainstorm, develop a project, or even describe graphically an idea or a process.

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Resources to support childrena and young people mental  health during covid

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Resources to support childrena and young people mental  health during covid

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Resources and toolkits for children, young people, parents and carers

We would like to use this space to share our members' resources and information on children and young people's mental health that could be helpful for children, young people, parents and carers.

If any of our members would like to add their resources to this list, please get in touch with Shizana.Arshad@cypmhc.org.uk

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We would like to use this space to share our members' resources and information on children and young people's mental health that could be helpful for children, young people, parents and carers.

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Interactive Learning Sites for Education

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Interactive Learning Sites for Education

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Interactive learning Sites for the Classroom

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Facilitators are an essential part of the success of Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange activities. They are multi-partial and neutral process leaders, seeking to elicit self-group awareness and understanding, by providing a safe and effective learning environment. Facilitators are trained on the necessary dialogue facilitation tools, the use of technology and conflict resolution skills to guide and deepen cross-cultural conversations.

These highly motivated and talented facilitators can be deployed across Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange activities.

Become an Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange Facilitator! Join a diverse community of over 300 people. Below are featured some of our highly motivated and talented facilitators.

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Facilitators are an essential part of the success of Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange activities. They are multi-partial and neutral process leaders, seeking to elicit self-group awareness and understanding, by providing a safe and effective learning environment. Facilitators are trained on the necessary dialogue facilitation tools, the use of technology and conflict resolution skills to guide and deepen cross-cultural conversations.

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SALTO Training and Cooperation Resource Centre

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Competence Based Development for Youth Workers

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Competence Based Development for Youth Workers

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Competence Based Development for Youth Workers

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The way to play is simple: the facilitator calls out something to touch, for example: "Touch blue!" Each person then has to move and touch something with that colour (a blue marker, a co-worker with a blue shirt, etc). The facilitator continues, "touch red... yellow... something fluffy..." This is great with video teleconferences as you see your colleagues stretching and moving around together-but the laughter is also rewarding.

For the advanced group, you can get more complex: "With your left foot, touch something on your desk... while doing that, with your right elbow, touch something yellow..."
This game has been used for decades, but we learned its online version from Sarah Gough, Play for Peace (playforpeace.org).
Appreciation Circle

Ahead of a major distributed day of action, one 350 campaigner ended a call with an "appreciation circle" where each person took a turn giving good wishes for each other's actions. It was a way to close the session with a positive energy. This can be adapted in a number of ways:

what's something you're proud of about how this group is moving forward;

(get the group in an online circle) share an appreciation to the person on your left, or someone else in the group;

what did you appreciate about your participation in the action.

(Read more about Closing Circles.)

Online Songs

Yes! It can be done online. Conference calls keep us sitting and staring at our computers or phones. You can integrate songs in online meetings-beyond just having people talk! (Read more about Songs.)

Check-In With a Go-Round

350 staff calls regularly include a chance to hear from each person as a check-in. The check-in is a chance to hear everyone's voice - and on something that's not a work topic. It can also be a chance to build the strength of the team, especially with a little bit of self-revealing and connection, while still being fun. As examples:

What's a song that represents who you are (if available online, we share and create a 350 playlist)?

What's an object that's around you that says something about you?

What's one thing you're proud of from your last week?

What's one risk you took this last week?

What's something you haven't shared with the 350 team?

Bonus: As an alternative to doing a "go-around": someone does this check-in and then announces who will go next. Rather than going in a standard order or around a circle, this method means you never know if you might be the next person to go - and therefore it can increase people's attention (which is always a challenge for conference calls).

(Read more about Go Rounds.)

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The way to play is simple: the facilitator calls out something to touch, for example: "Touch blue!" Each person then has to move and touch something with that colour (a blue marker, a co-worker with a blue shirt, etc). The facilitator continues, "touch red... yellow... something fluffy..."

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Evden öğrenme ve çalışmayı kolaylaştıran 18 uygulama

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Evden öğrenme ve çalışmayı kolaylaştıran 18 uygulama

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Evden öğrenme ve çalışmayı kolaylaştıran 18 uygulama