Workshop for Alabama Conference on Social Work – 2/27/15

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Feb 27, 2015

It is almost the end of February and I find myself in Orange Beach, Alabama presenting at the 2015 Annual Conference of the Alabama Conference on Social Work.  The purpose of this post is to provide supplemental information for my presentation.  The title  is Professional and Ethical Use of Social Media in Social Work Practice, and the presentation will focus on the need for social workers to be aware of and adept at using social media in two important ways.  First, social media can be valuable tools for professional development and continuing education.  Platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and professional websites provide valuable information and resources for practice and opportunities to network and collaborate with other practitioners.  To effectively engage with social media for professional development, social workers need to know how to create digital identities; consume, assess and produce online content; collaborate with others; and educate and motivate other professionals to use social media.  Second, social workers need to understand how to effectively engage client systems with social media.  This includes a range of knowledge and skills from maintaining ethical professional boundaries to educating clients on how to find credible online resources to advocating for those who do not have access to the internet in low-income or rural communities.

By the end of the presentations, participants will be able to:

1. Explain why social workers need to understand social media and digital literacy

2. Discuss the knowledge, skills and values associated with professional use of social media

3. Reflect on own use social media in a professional context

Here is a link to the Prezi presentation that I will show during the workshop and here is a link to a resource handout for the participants.

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I . (2015, February 27).Workshop for Alabama Conference on Social Work – 2/27/15[Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2015/02/27/workshop-acsw-2015/.

Using Google Plus Hangouts in Social Work Education

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Feb 23, 2015

Dr. Jandel Crutchfield is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Mississippi.  In this blog post, she writes about using Google Plus Hangouts to promote synchronous experiences in her online courses.

Until August 2014, my background in online social work education was solely in asynchronous instruction through platforms including Moodle and Blackboard.  Some of the feedback from students in my courses highlighted a lack of “real” interaction with me as their professor. To address this initially, I began to record short video lectures for students to receive some another method of instruction and interaction besides text. Though this improved some student experiences, I still received feedback that students wanted more interaction with me; or that “something was missing.”  Due to university regulations, however, there was little else I could do to enhance the asynchronous experience.

After joining University of Mississippi, Department of Social Work in 2014 and being offered the opportunity to teach online, I began to research ways to conduct completely synchronous session. Since many of the students had not had multiple online courses and were new to the social work department, I wanted to find a way to avoid overwhelming students with the delivery format. I found Google Plus Hangouts (which is a free video conference calling tool from Google), got it approved by the online learning department, and began learning how to use it to conduct synchronous sessions. I studied the online users’ guides from Google and activated my University Gmail account. Then I began to invite friends to participate in video calls and hangouts on air. I recorded several “test” sessions and practiced uploading them to Blackboard to view what students would see after I had shared a recording. I got feedback from my colleagues and friends that participated on the video calls and hangouts on air. I found Google Plus Hangouts to be very user friendly and integrated into larger society more than programs such as Adobe Connect or even Skype. Nearly everyone had at least heard of Google, which would facilitate usage even beyond the classroom for instructors and students alike. Also, Google Plus Hangouts did not require a license or other monitoring by the university technology department.

Spring 2015 Live Twitter Chat for Social Work Students & Educators

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Feb 1, 2015

To help social work students and educators learn about Twitter and develop the skills to participate in a live chat, Jimmy Young of the University of Nebraska-Kearney and I (Laurel Hitchcock of University of Alabama at Birmingham) have designed an assignment for social work students that involves joining a live Twitter chat with other social work students, educators and practitioners from around the country to talk about important social and economic justice issues.  The assignment is designed for a policy or macro-practice course, but it can be incorporated into almost any social work course.  Here are the some of the details of the assignment:

1. Students watch the documentary Inequality for All, and then write a brief reaction paper to movie.

2. Then, students participate in the live Twitter chat scheduled for March 12, 2015 at 8:00 PM CST. This chat will be sponsored by #MacroSW, a bi-weekly Twitter chat focusing on macro social work practice issues, and hosted by Jimmy and myself.  During the chat, we will ask questions about the film and income inequality that will guide the flow of the conversation.

3. After the live chat, students write a brief self-reflection essay about the experience of participating in the chat.

While the written parts of the assignment are optional to participate in the chat, we highly recommend some type of reflection so students are engaged with the content from the documentary prior to the chat, and have an opportunity to critically assess how the experience can inform their future social work practice.  We have written in more detail about the assignment on respective blogs (see JimmySW’s Blog) which includes detailed instructions for the assignment, grading rubrics and tips on how to introduce your students to Twitter.  Our first chat was held on October 28, 2014, and you can read details about it here, including a transcript of tweets from the conversation.  There is no cost to educators or students to participate in the chat, and we welcome anyone, especially social work practitioners, to join the chat.

Because we are working to improve the chat and the assignment as an educational experience for social work students, we are very interested in any feedback from social work educators.  Please contact us (by clicking on our names below) if you plan to have your class or maybe a student group participate in the chat.  We also welcome questions.

Jimmy Young

Laurel Hitchcock

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2015, February 1). Spring 2015 Live Twitter Chat for Social Work Students & Educators[Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2015/02/01/spring-2015-live-twitter-chat-for-social-work-students-educators/.

How to participate in a Live Twitter Chat – Tips for Social Workers

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jan 8, 2015

Live Twitter chats (a scheduled event when Twitter users communicate via tweets in real time) can be a great way for social workers and students to stay informed about all types of issues and interests relevant to the profession. For example, medical experts from the Mayo Clinic frequently host chats to share and discuss new treatment options in healthcare. Professionals can also use this tool to meet and talk (for free) with new colleagues from just around the corner to the other side the world. A good example is the #SPSM chat which hosts a weekly forum for mental health professionals interested in using social media to prevent suicide. During a chat like this one, a social worker might engage with influential thought leaders in their field and make their own contributions to the professional conversations that influence and shape social work practice. The Political Social Worker suggests that Twitter can be a powerful networking tool for social workers in her blog post The Benefits of Live Twitter Chats.

But participating in a live Twitter chat requires preparation. Live chats move fast and have guidelines to set the parameters of the conversation. More obvious is the need to be familiar with Twitter (a microblogging platform) before participating in a chat. Understanding what a tweet is and how to write one is a must to chat on Twitter. Being able to communicate and network with professionals in online environments is considered an important digital media skill for any 21^st century professional including social workers (Rheingold, 2012).

Here are some practical tips for social work students, educators and practitioners interested in being part of a live Twitter chat:

Q & A: Student Perspective on Twitter Assignment

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Dec 12, 2014

Ms. Bobbi Arrington (@bobbielle) is an instructor at School of Social Work at Monmouth University.   In this blog post  Ms. Arrington interviews Ms. Nadia Jeter, a BSW student at Monmouth University, who participated in Twitter assignment during an Human Behavior and the Social Environment course.  In another post, Ms. Arrington and Dr. Becky Anthony (@becky_anthony ), an assistant professor of social work at Salisbury University, write about how they developed and managed an assignment using Twitter in their Human Behavior and the Social Environment Courses. 

Recently, I sat down with Nadia Jeter, a BSW social work student at Monmouth University.    Nadia was in Professor Becky Anthony’s class when the Twitter project was started.  Nadia and I sat down in the back of a brightly lit classroom, papers and books cluttered the desk as her last class had just finished.  She has a bright infectious smile and a large personality that is charismatic.  It’s not surprising that she has become a major advocate for vulnerable and marginalized populations using Twitter.  It took just a few seconds for her to recall back to the spring of 2013 and the assignment.

BA:  What did you initially think of the assignment?

NJ:  I hated it!  I asked was it mandatory and Professor Anthony, with her nice smile and her hands folded (she imitates Professor Anthony’s hand expression) she said, “Yes – but don’t worry.  We’ll show you how to do it!”  I had just got on facebook and I hated it!  It wasn’t user friendly.

BA: How was it learning to use Twitter?

NJ:  It’s actually very user friendly.  I took me all of two minutes to set up.  It’s really easy, accept for the fact that you have only one hundred forty characters to express yourself!  This was a very good tool for me because it was so simple and I really value simplicity.

BA:  How did you develop your tweets and how you responded to replies? 

NJ:  (she laughs)  In the end I was actually very thankful that you only have one hundred forty characters!  Having only a few words made you choose what was important.  You had to take out the bread and just give the meat.  Because…yeah…you have to just give them a fact.  No explanation.  So if you retweet an article you just give them a brief statement.  Say you’re reading something and you say to yourself…this is so corrupt.  You can retweet and just say “corruption in the judicial system.”  The person has to look to see what you are talking about.