Second Edition of the Social Media Toolkit for Social Work Field Educators

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Nov 5, 2018

We are pleased to announce the availability of the second edition of Social Media Toolkit for Social Work Field Educators (2018), which has been updated to address the recent changes to the Code of Ethics from the National Association of Social Workers.

This toolkit provides social work field educators with tools and resources to help social work students and field instructors assess, develop, and maintain an online identity for professional purposes.  There are two parts to the toolkit – an Educator’s Guide and a PowerPoint Slide Deck.  The Educator’s Guide provides directions, descriptions, and handouts related to the content of the toolkit while the Slide Deck includes pre-formatted slides with selected content for presenting in the classroom or a workshop. The content of this toolkit is divided into six different topics centered on how to use social media professionally as a social worker:

1. Ethical Considerations for Social Media Use in Social Work Practice
2. Reflecting on Social Media Use in Social Work Practice
3. Engaging and Self-Assessment with Social Media
4. Professional Practice with Social Media
5. Case Studies for Students & Field Educators
6. Social Media Learning Activities for Field Education

Specific content for these topic areas include learning activities about why, when, and how to use social media as a practicing social work professional; skills for managing an online identity; guidelines for developing one’s own professional social media policy; and case studies to help develop professional and ethical competency.

BPD Technology Committee’s Technology Assessment Checklist for Social Work Practice

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 30, 2018

Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by myself and my colleague, Dr. Nathalie P. Jones.  We have been the co-chairs of the BPD Technology Committee for the past two-years (2017-2019) and served as editors for the Technology Assessment Checklist described and shared in this post.

In response to the growing influence of technology in the lives of individuals and families, the Technology Committee for the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors (BPD) has created the Technology Assessment Checklist for Social Work Practice.  This tool is designed to help social workers assess clients’ relationships and comfort with technology, including strengths, needs, risks, and challenges. This blog post describes the process used by the BPD Technology Committee to create this list as well as providing a description.

History of the BPD Technology Assessment Checklist

At the 2016 Annual Conference in Dallas, TX, the BPD Technology Committee embarked on a project to help create an assessment tool for social work practitioners and educators related to digital and social technologies.  The goal was for the committee members, and others who were interested in the project, to work collaboratively to develop questions that could be used with individuals and families for the purposes of assessing clients’ use and relationships with digital and social technology.  After the meeting, a call was put out on the BPD Listserv and a group of ten social workers agreed to assist with creating a technology-based assessment.

Three things I learned at #IPECSpring18

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on May 16, 2018

About two weeks ago, I attended my fourth conference of the spring semester – the 2018 Spring Institute of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) held in Washington, DC from April 30 – May 2, 2018.  As I was flying home, I tried to reflect on what I had learned at the IPEC Conference as compared to my other three conferences from the semester. Not surprisingly, I struggled to remember the names and even locations of the other three conferences, including one that I attended in mid-April.  Even now as write this post in mid-May, my memories of the IPEC conference are fading.  Given all the time, energy, and resources that goes into attending a conference, I wondered about what I was learning at all of these conferences, how it was informing my work as a social work educator; and  how I might be able to utilize or share my learning with others.

A quick internet search turned up a few articles about the impact of academic conferences on scientific research, professional development of individual academics, and on disciplines as a whole.  A blog post by Donald Nicolson, The last great unknown? The impact of academic conferences, offers a good answer to my own questions and proposed another – How do academic conferences make a difference in the lives of academics and wider society?  The short answer is we really don’t know, especially in social work education and practice.  Here is a ripe research opportunity for someone with more time and energy than me.  I am not looking for another research project, so feel free to let your doctoral students know about this one.  I did, however, come up with a solution to my challenge of integrating what I learned at conference into my professional life as a social work educator – I should blog about every conference.  Not only will I able to reflect on my conference experiences through the process of writing, blogging also lets me share my thoughts with others adding value (hopefully) for those who couldn’t attend the conference or maybe are interested in a social worker’s perspective on a conference.

So how do I go about blogging about a conference?  For a few years now, I have been posting information about my own conference presentations.  My structure for these post is to take my original conference session proposal, add copies of the slides or handouts, and include some information about the conference and my co-presenters, and viola, a quick and easy blog post.  Here is my most recent conference blog post from the third annual Social Work Distance Education Conference in April 2018.  While this is a great way to re-use that conference proposal, these blog posts are not reflective of my own learning nor do they offer professional insight about a conference as a whole.  To help me write about academic conferences I went back to the internet and I found this blog post, 12 ways to write a conference blog post by Alison Bolen.  She her suggestions for blogging about conferences range from a simple summary of one’s impressions from the conference to sharing a to-do list of actions and ideas that you plan to pursue following the conference.  Another of Bolen’s ideas is to discuss one’s personal lessons learned, which resonated with me as the IPEC Conference was all about new ideas for me.  So without further ado, here are the three most valuable things I learned about Interprofessional Education (IPE) at #IPECSpring2018:

#SW2018 Visualizing Data: Infographic Assignments across the Social Work Curriculum

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Apr 13, 2018

Right to Left: Laurel, Nathalie & Melanie

This year at the 4^th Annual Social Work Distance Education conference, Nathalie Jones of Tarleton State University, Melanie Sage of the University at Buffalo and I presented on the use of infographics in the social work curriculum.  This blog post does a few things: 1) it offers an example of infographics as a tool for improving digital literacy; 2) it offers a sample of what a hands-on conference workshop proposal looks like, and; 3) it helps us share our research.

The three of us (Laurel, Nathalie, Melanie) have been working together on polishing our infographic assignments for a few years. In a previous blog post, we offer assignment details and even rubrics you can use to build your assignments if you are a social work educator.  We share these in the spirit of service to our profession and to support your work.

We’ve been using infographics as an assignment in our classrooms for several years and have even collected some data across our universities to ask students about the pros and cons.  Guess what?  The students overwhelmingly love infographic assignments. They appreciate working their creative muscles, like the opportunity to learn a new and transferable skill, and say they’ll use infographics again.  Also, the technology can be a little bit frustrating, and some students are uncomfortable with the lack of structure. (We argue that it’s good for students to sometimes get uncomfortable with lack of structure- this experience of managing some ambiguity is an important practice skill, as we know well!)

Here are the slides from the presentation:

#BPD2018 Harnessing Technology for one’s own Good: Professional Learning Networks in Social Work

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 16, 2018

Today, Dr. Nathalie Jones and I will be presenting about Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) at the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors in Atlanta, GA.  This year’s theme is the Grand Challenges of Political Change, and we have been talking with our colleagues about how do we, as social workers, affect change in today’s political and social environments – change to improve the lives of vulnerable populations we serve; change to improve learning outcomes for our students; and change for ourselves as social work educators.  Nathalie and I share a common desire to help other social work educators develop their own tool kits for teaching, scholarship, and service in their lives as academics, mentors, and partners with constituents and communities.  One tool that we know works is having a Professional Learning Network, and we know this because it has worked for us – we met via Twitter using our PLNs.  We have been working with our good colleagues – Drs. Melanie Sage and Nancy J. Smyth (both at the University at Buffalo) – to share what we know about PLNs to help raise awareness about this tool in social work education and practice.

Nathalie Jones & Laurel Hitchcock’s #BPD2018 Official Conference Selfie

We hope you will join us at 1:45 PM in Georgia 2 in the Atlanta Sheraton.  We will describe what what a PLN is and why to use one; demonstrate how to establish your own PLN and how to incorporate; and share how theory helps to inform the process of adopting technology tools for social work practice and education.

Here is a link to the slides from our workshop: https://goo.gl/qCxQdm.

You can also access a copy of the Professional Learning Network (PLN) Worksheet.