Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology Book Group

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 23, 2019 | 1 comment

If you teach social work with technology, either online or in a traditional classroom, we (Melanie, Nancy and Laurel) invite you to learn with and from peers in this free book group – Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology.  Goals of this virtual book group are to: 1) create a supportive learning community; and 2) provide space for reflection about one’s own professional development with teaching with technology.

This group will run from January to June 2020, with monthly meetings and a moderated online private Facebook group. The group will include live virtual meetings, with discussion moderated by an author and a guest educator.  In between meetings, social work educators will lead and moderate book discussions, and offer reflective questions and simple learning tasks. Participants should have access to the book by January 2020. The schedule follows:

Live meetings will occur Wednesdays at one of the following times:

• Day: 1-2 PM ET (12-1 PM CT/11 A -12 PM MT/10-11 AM PT) 
• Evening: 6-7 PM ET (5-6 PM CT/4-5 PM MT/3-4 PM PT) 

Live meetings allow you to participate and ask questions. However, they will be recorded and you can watch them later.

To sign up for the group, please go to this link https://www.facebook.com/groups/419551155361294/. Then answer the question regarding your time preference.

Privacy Considerations & Facebook
We know you might have concerns about using Facebook; we are also weary about their corporate model, which keeps their services free, but also exploits user data. We chose this platform due to ease of use, access, and familiarity.  Additionally, it has some new features that we wanted to try out – Social Learning Groups. 

We know privacy is important, and the reality is that most social media platforms have issues related to the privacy of personal data. Thus, we offer some recommendations to keep your data as private as possible when engaging with our book group.  Generally, we encourage you to be thoughtful about information you share. This book group will be private, searchable on Facebook (so people can find the group), and members will have to request access to the group. It will not be “open”- that is, people NOT in the group will not have free access to your posts. If you are concerned about the privacy of personal information or data and are not currently a Facebook user and don’t want to use it for other purposes, here are some options:

• Create an account with a minimal profile — you can even set up a profile with your first name and middle name or some other pseudonym, instead of your last name – you are in control of the information you put into your profile, and you don’t have to fill in all the blanks unless it is marked as required (Facebook can’t collect data you don’t share.)
• You can belong to a group without being friends with anyone who is in the group
• You do not need to “friend” anyone in the group – it is not a requirement 
• Use the Facebook privacy options to turn off ads and suggestions
• Do not use your account for anything other than this book group
• Log out of Facebook when you are done looking at Group messages. Log back in when you want to read/post messages.
• Delete your account after the group has ended.

We also know it is important to connect with other social work educators and support each other.  So we also encourage everyone to engage with each other as well as the content of the book. Social work is all about relationships, and we hope to build an interactive group of social work educators.

References:

Hitchcock, L. I., Sage, M., & Smyth, N. J. (2019). Teaching Social Work With Digital Technology. Arlington, VA: CSWE Press.

How to cite blog post:

Hitchcock, L.I., Sage, M. & Smyth, N.J. (2019, September 23). Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology Book Group [Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2019/09/20/teaching-social-work-with-digital-technology-book-group/