Join the Convo – NASW needs feedback on Draft Technology Standards in SW

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jul 8, 2016

I am so pleased that the draft Technology Standards for Social Work Practice have been released for public review.  NASW, CSWE, CSWA, and ASWB developed a task force to collaboratively draft these technology standards, which you can access the draft standards here.

I am working with several groups to provide comments to the task force and, I also plan to submit my own comments.  Once adopted, these standards will be considered a model for best practice in social work. Given the important legal and ethical role that practice standards have in the professional lives of social workers, I believe it is essential to offer constructive and timely feedback on this document.  I want to encourage everyone in the social work community to review and submit their feedback.  You do not need to be a member of any group to offer feedback. The timeline is short for submitting comments – the one-month comment period closes July 20th.

Here are some highlights about the document. The draft standards and their interpretations are 82 pages.  If you do not want to read 82 pages, you may want to know that these standards cover the following:

• Section 1: Provision of Information to the Public
• Section 2: Designing and Delivering Services – Part A: Individuals, Families, and Groups and Part B: Communities, Organizations, Administration, and Policy
• Section 3: Gathering, Managing, and Storing Information
• Section 4: Communication with and about Clients
• Section 5: Social Work Education (especially distance education)

Social Media How-To Guide for Social Work Educators

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jun 24, 2016

This post was written by Drs. Becky Anthony and Jennifer Jewell.  Dr. Becky Anthony (@becky_anthony) is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at Salisbury University. Dr. Jennifer Jewell (@jennrjewell) is an associate professor and Director of the BASW program in the Department of Social Work at Salisbury University, in Salisbury, Maryland. In this blog post, they write a guide for how social work educators can best utilize social media to meet their educational goals.

With the changing nature of educational delivery and knowledge consumption, social work educators are increasingly utilizing social media to help students meet course learning goals and objectives. Students are able to use social media to network with social work professionals, enhance connections between peers, advocate and raise awareness about social concerns, and find resources that help them practice effective social work (Jewell & Anthony, 2016). Some social work educators want to utilize social media in their courses to help students meet learning goals, but are unsure about how to get started. This blog post reviews steps to help social work educators prepare and implement social media assignments and activities into the classroom.

STEP 1: Think about and reflect on your own usage of social media. You need to determine what you will do to abide by professional ethical standards, maintain your own personal boundaries, and explore how you will utilize social media. In this first step, you will create social media guidelines for the course, the department, and/or the professional self.   Laurel Hitchcock provides an effective and thorough example of that here: My Guidelines for using Digital and Social Tech in the Classroom and Beyond. This first step allows you to learn about your own professional usage of social media and your own personal boundaries and professional ethics.

STEP 2: Identify specific goals for using social media in this course or with this specific assignment.  Once goals are established, you will need to research the different tools (specific social media platforms).  For example, Instagram is utilized to share photos and videos and Twitter only allows for 140 characters in each post. Social work educators, during step two, should answer the following questions: 1. What do you want the students to learn? 2. What social media method will work best to achieve this goal?

STEP 3:  Increase your own social media knowledge and skills. Specifically, focus on the social media platform you will utilize in your course. You will find it helpful to create an account (if you do not already have one), watch tutorial videos online, utilize tip guides, and practice using this social media before asking your students to use it. This becomes very important because a number of students will not have previously utilized this social media platform and will ask you questions about how to get started and where to find resources.

Revised Technology-Based Learning Task List for Social Work Education

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jun 13, 2016

Back in April 2016, Melanie Sage, Nancy Smyth, and I first shared a list of technology-based learning activities that we developed based on Council on Social Work Education’s Social Work Competencies from the 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS).  The purpose of this list is to help social educators infuse learning about and with technology across the social work curriculum. We have updated our list to keep with the evolving understanding of how to apply CSWE’s 2015 EPAS.  Here are the main features of the list:

– Over 100 different example assignments and learning tasks with brief directions that can be incorporated into social work courses across the curriculum.

– Assignments are designed to encourage students to share their work with a class/seminar or practicum field instructor.

– For assessment purposes, each assignment and learning task is grouped by competency and component behaviors, and then labelled with the relevant competency dimensions using the following key: K = Knowledge; V=Values; S= Skills; and CA = Cognitive and Affective Processes.

You can access the new version of the list here: Technology-Based Learning Task List for Social Work Education (Version 1.1 – 6/13/16)

Review of #SWDE2016

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on May 2, 2016

In case you didn’t make it to the Second Annual Social Work Distance Education Conference (#SWDE2016) in Indianapolis this year, there are plenty of online resources to make you feel like you were there…almost.

First, the conference website has a downloadable copy of the program from this year and last year (2015), and will soon have copies of handouts from this year’s breakout sessions.  You can also find handouts from last year’s sessions as well as videos from the plenary sessions.  Check back soon for this year’s information.

Next, Sean Erreger (@StuckonSW) created a Storify transcript of tweets from the conference, using the conference hashtag #SWDE2016.  This transcript will show you who was tweeting and what they were saying about the conference and individual sessions.  You can also search for the hashtag directly on Twitter to see the same tweets. You should also check out Sean’s video where he interviews three of the conference’s participants – Melanie Sage, Todd Sage & Linda Grobman.

Finally, here are some blog posts about happenings at the conference:

Tools for Practice Tuesday: Keeping up with #SWDE2016: This post is by Sean Erreger who observed the conference from afar.

Social Work in Distance Education (SWDE) 2016 Conference: This post is Melanie Sage who attended the conference.

#SWDE2016 Incorporating Digital & Social Technologies into Social Work Education: This post highlights the session that Melanie Sage, Nancy J. Smyth and I did about incorporating technology in teaching.

#SWDE2016 Teaching & Learning Professional Social Work Skills w/ Twitter: This post describes the conference session about the work Jimmy Young and I have done on using Twitter in the Classroom.

Did anyone else blog about the conference? Please post a comment and I will add your post this list!

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2016, May 2).Review of #SWDE2016 [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2016/05/02/review-of-swde2016/.