The YeS Project
About this resource
Target audience
Level
Middle secondary, Upper secondary
Keywords
Type of resource
Workshop handbook, teacher guide, video, planning map, infographic summary
Timeframe
Choose up to 12 standalone, 60-minute workshops
Australian curriculum
Key learning areas
General capabilities
What is The YeS Project?
Key outcomes
The YeS Project is a workshop-based digital and social health program that encourages young people to act as positive leaders and supportive friends in all their social spaces, especially online. The YeS Project will enable students to learn about their digital communities, and to transform them.
The YeS Project moves through three themes:
- ME – students reflect on their own digital and social practices
- YOU – students focus on their interactions and support with friends and peers, including how to provide informed advice
- WE – students explore and plan for improvements to online safety practices and cultures within their schools and communities.
The YeS Project mirrors other health education programs that use an ethics framework to support young people caring for themselves, their peers and their worlds, and links to the Health and Physical Education, Personal and Social Capability and Ethical Understanding areas for Years 9 and 10 within the Australian Curriculum.
Using this resource
Choose from up to 12 standalone workshops to design a program which best resonates with your specific school context and structure.
Templates are available in the teacher guide (Educator Guide) for planning a 10-week classroom-based unit, a 2-day intensive program, or a series of 5 lessons that expand on existing Respectful Relationships education programs.
You can also send your students the link to the student homepage and let them explore on their own.
The Educator Guide also provides background material including:
- research which underpins The YeS Project
- suggestions for how to fit The YeS Project into your school or setting
- advice on how the program links to the Australian Curriculum and other programs
- recommendations for planning and facilitating The YeS Project
The Workshop Handbook includes:
- an outline of each of the themes and workshops
- workshop activity outlines
- supporting material for each activity
- tips and ideas for facilitating activities
- a list of references and resources
Structure
Theme 1: ME — How do I fit in the digital world?
- Workshop 1: Setting the scene (60 mins)
- Workshop 2: Digital cultures (60 mins)
- Workshop 3: Laws, tech and media (60 mins)
- Workshop 4: Online images — the good, the bad and the ugly (60 mins)
- Workshop 5: Difference and diversity (60 mins)
- Workshop 6: Friendship and digital stress (60 mins)
Theme 2: YOU — How do I support and connect with others?
- Workshop 7: Resources (60 mins)
- Workshop 8: Influencers and connectors (60 mins)
- Workshop 9: Mentoring and supporting (60 mins)
Theme 3: WE — How can we make change?
- Workshop 10: Change makers (60 mins)
- Workshop 11: Getting it done (60 mins)
- Workshop 12: Shape your world (60 mins)
Materials: Complete Workshop Handbook, Educator Guide, 1 x planning map, 1 x infographic summary or download individual handbooks for each theme below
Theme 1: ME — How do I fit in the digital world?
Key outcomes:
- Introduce students to The YeS Project, inviting them to reflect on their online cultures to identify how they could be improved.
- Ignite the potential for students to make positive change in their schools and communities with activities and discussions focusing on challenging the status quo.
- Explore students’ social and digital worlds including the challenges they encounter.
Download:
Workshop 1: Setting the scene, 60 mins
Introduces students to the program and invites them to establish group norms: to feel that their ideas and differences are valued. This workshop ‘sets the scene’ by reviewing The YeS Project video and ensuring that students know where they can find support for social or digital challenges they may encounter.
Media: YeS Project video (3 minutes, 6 seconds).
Workshop 2: Digital cultures, 60 mins
Explores how social media platforms and other digital technologies shape the potential for what young people do online. Students link ideas about the affordances of media (what they can do with media) to their feelings. This starts them thinking about which aspects of digital cultures they want to enjoy and use more often, or to imagine how they would like them to be.
Workshop 3: Laws, tech and media, 60 mins
Provides an overview of current legal frameworks for digital and technology-based harassment, abuse and discrimination, including image-based abuse and cyberbullying. It might be a new area for students, or consolidate their knowledge and beliefs from other online safety programs.
Workshop 4: Online images — the good, the bad and the ugly, 60 mins
Explores how different people take, use and make meanings from images. It encourages students to consider the possible negative impact of taking or sharing images, and looks at ways to address this.
Workshop 5: Difference and diversity, 60 mins
Considers how digital cultures are often diverse — and reflect our differences in other settings including schools and local communities. Students explore how assumptions about other people, and what they do, can exclude other people.
Workshop 6: Friendship and digital stress, 60 mins
Invites students to identify the unspoken social norms that shape their digital cultures, including their friends’ expectations, and the expectations they have of their friends.
Theme 2: YOU — How do I support and connect with others?
Key outcomes:
- Introduce students to resources to address social and digital challenges including cyberbullying and image-based abuse.
- Skill-up students to lead, influence, mentor and support peers.
- Explore how connecting with others helps to better shape students’ own digital cultures and communities.
Download:
Workshop 7: Resources, 60 mins
Invites students to identify and evaluate school, eSafety and community resources to respond to social and digital challenges. The audit may also reveal ways that safety and wellbeing resources could be improved.
Workshop 8: Influencers and connectors, 60 mins
Explores different ways students can lead and influence. It provides students with opportunities to identify who influences them and how.
Workshop 9: Mentoring and supporting, 60 mins
Turns to ‘quieter’ ways of making change through mentoring others and safely supporting peers and their networks, without turning into a counsellor.
Theme 3: WE — How can we make change?
Key outcomes:
- Investigate how individuals, groups and communities have inspired change in their digital cultures and communities.
- Evaluate the opportunities and limitations of using technology, digital tools or social media to inspire and enact social change.
- Consider the most significant or prevalent problems or issues in students’ digital lives and commit to making changes to address these issues.
- Identify what influences and contributes to these problems and challenges.
Download:
Workshop 10: Change makers, 60 mins
Explores individuals, groups and communities who have inspired change. The workshop invites students to develop their own projects to make change.
Workshop 11: Getting it done, 60 mins
Provides an opportunity to develop an ‘elevator pitch’ to guide their projects and plans, as well as to continue developing their projects.
Workshop 12: Shape your world, 60 mins
Completes the theme and reorients students to think about the progress they have made on their own project, as well as reflecting on their learning during The YeS Project.