Online Toolkit for developing a Personal Learning Network with Twitter

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 3, 2015

One of the benefits of having an online presence is making connections with professionals from all over the world. I met Dorlee Michaeli, MBA, LMSW over Twitter a year or so ago. She created and manages Social Work.Career, a blog that provides a variety of resources to help advance an individual’s social work career  for current students or  experienced mental health professionals. In addition to career-related resources, there are interviews, key learnings from conferences/workshops, licensure exam tips, self-care guidance and more for life-long learning as a social work professional.

This summer, we created online toolkits for social work educators based on our blogs. Dorlee’s toolkit, Social Work Career’s Online Toolkit for the Social Work Educator, showcases several blog posts from Social Work.Career that will help prepare undergraduate or graduate social work students become more prepared for a career in social work.  Also included with the toolkit are some possible classroom assignments/tasks. We tip our hat to Ellen Belluomini who wrote this blog post; she was our inspiration for creating the exercises to meet the 2015 CSWE Social Work Competencies.

Here is my toolkit about developing a personal learning network (PLN) with Twitter:

A personal learning network (PLN) offers social workers and students a practical tool to stay current and share information about latest professional news, practice knowledge, and cutting-edge research findings.  I recently wrote about how a social worker can set-up a PLN using professional accounts on different social media platforms.

My favorite social media platform for my own PLN is Twitter, and this post offers tips for using Twitter effectively to maintain and engage with your PLN.  All of these tips come from my blog, Teaching & Learning in Social Work, which focuses on teaching and learning in social work.  While some of the original posts focus on the social work classroom, the practices and content can be easily adapted by any social work practitioner for their own use with a PLN.  Here are eight great ideas for using Twitter with your PLN:

Call for Contributions – Assignment Compendium for Book on Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jul 14, 2015

Dear Social Work Colleague,

You are invited to contribute to an assignment appendix on a book that is tentatively titled Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology, due to be published with CSWE Press in 2016. The book authors are Laurel Hitchcock, Melanie Sage, and Nancy Smyth. The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2015.

The assignment appendix will be resource of contributed assignments or class activities that either educate about, or rely on the use of, technology in social work practice and education. We welcome contributions in which technology plays a supporting role or where technology competency is the practice outcome. For example, assignments may instruct students to: 1) develop a press release about research and announce it via social media: 2) use a videolog to demonstrate a clinical technique; or 3) use Twitter to communicate with a policy-based agency. We expect to include about 50 contributions. This appendix of assignments will be divided by curricular areas (Practice, HBSE, Policy, Research, and Field Education). We envision the appendix as an important resource for educators of all proficiency levels. Each assignment contribution should be about one page; contributions may be edited for clarity or space. You can submit as many assignments as you would like. Please submit each assignment separately. A sample assignment is available at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ro4qy5z0ay8xodm/sample.pdf.

Please submit your contribution at this website: https://und.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_1HSOGmgInnDPSnP.  At the site, you will be asked to give the submission a title, identify the social work curricular area, practice competencies, to explain the assignment as you would to a student (300-600 words), provide the time and technology requirements, and note any other necessary information for instructors.

Personal Learning Networks for Social Workers

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jul 1, 2015

Actually, you probably already have a professional learning network (PLN) of your own, and didn’t even notice it.  A professional learning network (also known as a personalized learning network) includes the tools and processes used by a social worker to stay up-to-date and share information about current news, practice knowledge and the latest research findings. Prior to the explosion in online content and tools, a PLN might have included an article from trusted daily newspaper or a print version of a child welfare journal, which you photocopied to share with employees or colleagues (or if you are a social work educator, with students as part of a class discussion). Today, a PLN exists when a social worker uses social media to collect information related to professional interests, shares this information with others, and also collaborates with others on projects (Richardson & Manacebelli, 2011). For example, a social worker’s PLN might include the use of email alerts from online newspapers, blogs and scholarly journals to receive updates about child welfare research, and then shares this information with employees, colleagues or students via Twitter or a curated list on Diigo, a social bookmarking tool.

There are many benefits to developing a digital PLN with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn:

– First, you can develop a network of trusted resources (individuals, organizations and publishers) that you can access at almost anytime. While learning from other professionals is nothing new, social media expands the number and variety of content, people and groups that you can access such as professionals from other countries, open-access peer-reviewed scholarship, and first-hand accounts of other people’s experiences. Because social media platforms are available 24/7, you can connect with your network when you want and from most any digital device including a laptop, tablet or smart phone.

– Second, you can easily stay up-to-date on any professional interest, quickly add or expand an interest on your network. For example, if you are interested in homelessness, you might start by following local and national housing advocacy agencies on Twitter and, in the process, you might discover individuals who are tweeting about their personal experiences with homelessness.

Financial Social Work: An Emergent Macro Practice Discipline #MacroSW 6/11 at 8 PM CST

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jun 5, 2015

Join #MacroSW Twitter chat partner Sunya Folayan,MSW, ACSW @SunyaFolayan as she interviews her mentor and friend Reeta Wolfsohn, MSW, CMSW @FinancialMSW, the visionary founder of Financial Social Work and the Financial Therapy Network.

Financial Social Work is an emergent Macro practice discipline that is gaining traction within the profession. Financial Social Work is now in the new Oxford Encyclopedia of Social Work.The mission of Financial Social Work (FSW) is to empower social workers and their clients to establish healthy money habits that lead to long-term financial security. FSW’s interactive, introspective behavioral model is strengths based and heavily psychosocial. The certification and client programs incorporate an on-going process of education, motivation and support which contribute to personal growth and improved financial well-being.

The Financial Therapy Network  is where Financial Wellness Begins for consumers. The network includes:

– An online self-help program “My Money Myself” based on the philosophy of Financial Social Work.

– Online Financial Support Groups that offer unique and life changing occasions for women to spend time in a safe and supportive environment with others in similar circumstances.