Social Work in the Times of COVID-19: One way to share, document & support

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 20, 2020

The COVID-19 public emergency is unprecedented and affects our personal and professional lives.  From trying to find diapers and toilet paper to figuring out how to work remotely with students and colleagues, few of us were prepared for the speed of which this emergency changed our daily lives.  And we have yet to know and understand what things will look like in the next few weeks or months.  

Thus, we are trying to capture this moment in history by harnessing the power of technology for social good.  Through short videos posted on Flipgrid (a social learning platform designed for video discussion forums), we are hoping to create community while also collecting our stories as social workers (practitioners and educators).  We hope these stories can help us support and learn from each other during a time of social distancing as well as provide a source of information for future directions for the profession (i.e. what are the best ways to work remotely as a social worker or what are best practices for transitioning learning to online environments).  We anticipate that these videos will provide a wealth of information for blogs posts or other scholarship that will inform how social work needs to adapt to complex social problems. This might include qualitative thematic analysis or quotes from posts. Any peer-reviewed content will be anonymized, but please remember that these posts are a form of public social media.

Review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work for 2019

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Dec 26, 2019

It is that time of year again –  the annual review of the Teaching & Learning in Social Work Blog.  This will be my fourth year reflecting on the work of this blog; the first end of the year post was in 2016.  This year, I am thinking more about my motivation for starting and maintaining this blog for the past seven years.  As I think back on why I started Teaching & Learning in Social Work, I’d have to say I wanted to be a more confident writer.  Academic writing is not easy.  This blog helped me to find my academic voice while allowing me to experiment with writing.  I try to be personable in the posts I write, using plain language and concise phrasing.  While I can say I am more comfortable with my professional writing, the greatest benefit to this blog is having space to share my work and the work of others in a very non-traditional space.  Publishing is a peer-reviewed journal is currency for academics, and it is a narrow, rigid, and polished way to share one’s work.  By writing blog posts about my work early in the process, I can share with a wider audience including students, social work practitioners and professionals from other fields. I can also as publish work that may never find a home as a journal article, but is still of value to others.  For example, I write frequently about my assignments and classroom activities on this blog.  I also post information about my conference presentations here so others can easily reference the materials. Overall, I can say with confidence that writing and publishing Teaching & Learning in Social Work has truly be beneficial and motivating for my academic writing.

For 2019, I had three goals for improving the blog: 

Reflections from the Summer 2019 Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Nov 19, 2019

Growing up, I loved summertime! I have some fond memories of traveling, riding my bike, swimming, and general goofing off.  Now, this past summer I worked….okay, there was a little swimming and a lot of traveling, and I took an online course. Not just any course; I am a proud graduate of the Columbia School of Social Work’s Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses.  In what has to be the most tardy “what I did over the summer” essay ever, I want to share why I took this course and more importantly, my key takeaways from this experience. 

The Institute has been around since 2017 and consists of five weeks of modules with a two-hour live session and homework each week. While it is geared toward training instructors for Columbia’s Online Social Work Program, anyone can apply for the Institute, and completing the training doesn’t obligate one to teach for Columbia’s Online Social Work Program.  The Institute models what a typical online course is like at Columbia, and incorporates many best practices for how to teach an online course.  In fact, the Institute has won awards from the International E-Learning Association and United States Distance Learning Association.  To learn more about the Institute I recommend the following articles:

#APM19 – Changing Teaching Practices for Technology: Using the SAMR Model for Technology Integration

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 22, 2019

On October 27, 2019 at 10:00 AM, during the Annual Program Meeting for the Council on Social Work Education in Denver CO, Melanie Sage and I will be sharing some insights from Chapter 4 of our book, Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology, co-written with Nancy Smyth.  If you are still in Denver, please come find us in the Majestic Ballroom –Tower Building of the conference hotel.  We will be sharing how Puentedura’s SAMR Model for Technology Integration can be used to incorporate technology into traditional social justice assignments in social work education.  There will also be time to adopt one of your current assignments using the SMAR Model.

Additionally, we’ll be talking about our virtual book group that will be launch in January 2020.  You can read more about it here:

For those of you who cannot make the presentation, we are including the details in this blog post.

• Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology Book Group

Conference Presentation: Developing a Professional & Ethical Online Presence for Social Work Practice

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 2, 2019

On Thursday, October 3rd, I will be at the Alabama/Mississippi Social Work Education Conference presenting with Allison Curington, Field Director at the University of Alabama, about best practices for social workers in the use of social and digital media when working with clients and communities.  During this workshop, we will cover the basics of social and digital technologies as well lessons learned from experience with training students and social work practitioners.  Additionally, we will be sharing how to access the Social Media Toolkit for Field Educators, a free resource with educator’s guide and a PowerPoint slide deck.

If you won’t be at the conference, I am including all the important details about the presentation in this blog post.

First, you can access your own free copy of the Social Media Toolkit for Field Educators here:
https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2018/11/05/revised-social-media-toolkit/

Second, here is a link to a worksheet from the presentation: Develop your Professional Social Media Policy Worksheet