A Scoutmaster's Blog

I recently wrote an article about recruiting parents to become involved in the pack and troop. I posted an interesting talk I found called the “adding machine tape presentation”. I decided to use it during the Pack’s recruitment drive and recorded it. I was surprised to see how well it worked to get the parents to think about their time with their boys. Click HERE if you would like to read the presentation.

As today’s post to the Melrose Scout Production Podcast, I submit the “Adding Machine Tape Presentation”. Have you used this in your own Pack or Troop? If you have, how did parents receive it?

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One of the reasons I enjoy Twitter is that I can keep in touch with Scout leaders from around the country, and around the world. Sometimes they post links to something that is pretty cool. Like today, for example, David Copeland posted a link to a thread about wearing the Scout uniform. It is a fun video created by a troop in Utah featuring the Boy Scouts singing a rap about wearing the uniform properly. I enjoyed watching the video and thought you may enjoy it also, so here it is.

What do you think about the video?

Those of you who read this blog and follow me on Twitter (stevejb68) may have noticed that out troop has been having some rough times. Last month I sat down with the Boy Scouts during a troop meeting and discussed the future of the troop with them. We needed to make some changes. They seemed to be ready to do what needs to be done. Tonight was a night that really began to take us in that direction.

Tonight’s troop meeting would be the first one in which the new senior patrol leader and his assistant would really take charge of the troop. They had been elected last month but last month’s meetings were a little chaotic and not planned well. This month’s had been planned by the new ASPL (the only Scout who attended the patrol leader council meeting) and were planned out very well.

Even though I have been a scoutmaster for 29 years I have been finding myself being up in front of the boys too much during a troop meeting. Tonight would be different. I pulled my assistant scoutmaster off to the side when he arrived and explained that we are going to sit in back of the room tonight and let the boys run the meeting, something we should have always been doing but were not. I wanted to be behind the boys tonight, out of direct eyesight with them.

The boys did pretty well. Oh, everyone was a bit late coming to the meeting. Yes, there was some goofing off and joking around but they did get much of the meeting’s agenda covered. I only stepped in front of the troop twice for short moments; once to ask a few questions about the menu and plans for the weekend outing at the end of the month followed by a quick uniform inspection, and at the end of the meeting to give announcements and a scoutmaster minute. All in all, it was a successful meeting.

It will be interesting to see how things go during the next few meetings. Actually, for the next few months. I have decided to step back, like a scoutmaster should, and let the boys handle things. It is the best way for them to learn. Unfortunately, I have to re-learn a few things again. Or, may not so much re-learn as much as re-apply the things I already know.

A few years ago, I started posting videos about Boy Scouting to YouTube to share them with other Scouts and Scouters. I soon began seeing more people posting Scouting related videos and thought we should have a channel group to post our videos. I began a YouTube group called “Boy Scout Stuff”. While most of the videos of the group were ones that I posted, there were others who began using to group. The group grew to 135 members and 176 videos.

A couple months ago I began having problems approving new videos posted to the group, and new members who wished to join. I thought it might be a problem with my computer at first, or that YouTube was having a few problems. I tried again tonight to approve 8 new members to the group but I was not able to get past the spinning ball. So I Googled the problem to see if anyone else was having a problem. I quickly discovered that many more group administrators were having the same things happen in their groups.

Google/YouTube has decided to drop support of YouTube groups. According to YT-Josh, who claims to be a Google employee:

Hey folks – bad news here I’m afraid. We’re no longer supporting groups and will likely remove them from the site in the next couple months.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that we have some cool ideas about how to re-create groups in the context of collaborative channels. Probably going to take awhile, but stay tuned.

And again, sorry we can’t continue to support the old groups.

Well, thank you very little Google/YouTube! Not only did you quit supporting our groups, but you want to eliminate them? Once again, thank you very little.

It will be interesting to see what these new collaborative channels will be. Until then, I guess we have no choice but to sit here twiddling our thumbs with a group(s) we cannot change.

It sure makes me glad I have my podcasts.