Using Innovative Content to Tell the Social Work Story by Chris Ingrao

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 13, 2014

Mr.  Chris Ingrao is the Community Manager of SocialWork@Simmons, the online Masters of Social Work program, offered through the Simmons College School of Social Work. In this blog post, Mr. Ingrao writes about how digital technologies can be used to curate content about the history of social work.  

The possibilities are endless when it comes to curating content for social workers. There is a seemingly infinite amount of topics that touch the lives of professionals in micropractice that are worth sharing. However, I have found that the history behind the profession is rarely discussed. Despite having immersed myself in all things social services for some time now, I discovered that I too knew very little about the historical milestones and legislative shifts that ultimately resulted in what we now know as modern day social work. As a result, our team performed research around the origins of the social services industry and created a chronological resource documenting the evolution of the profession.

AL/MS 2014 Social Work Education Conference

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 10, 2014

This October day finds me in Tuskegee, AL presenting at the 2014 Alabama-Mississippi Social Work Education Conference. The purpose of this post is to provide supplemental information for today’s presentation. My session will focus on how social work educators can incorporate social media into their pedagogy.

Here is a link to the Prezi that I will show during the presentation.

#MacroSW Live Twitter Chat on 10/28/14

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 3, 2014

Jimmy Young (@Jimmysw) and I (@laurelhitchcock) have designed a social media assignment for social work students that involve students watching a documentary and then participating in a live Twitter chat. The assignment is meant for a policy or macro class and involves students watching the documentary Inequality for All, and then participating in a live Twitter chat on October 28^th at 9pm Eastern Standard Time. We have partnered with the wonderful folks that conduct the #MacroSW chat for this special event and will be using their hashtag #MacroSW to facilitate the live chat.

We are interested in piloting this assignment in classrooms across the country and hope that other social work or human service educators might participate by including the assignment in class and providing feedback. Of course if you would rather just join the Live Chat only, that would be wonderful as we hope to have many individuals participate.

Twitter for Social Work Student Organizations

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 11, 2014

About two weeks ago Cyber Social Worker (@CyberSocialWork) sent me a direct message via Twitter asking if and how I work with social work student organizations to use social media, specifically Twitter.  The short answer was…well, not really…but what a great idea!  I immediately sent a tweet to the student social work organizations that I was already following on Twitter, asking how they engaged via social media.  Then, I created a public list of Social Work Students Organizations for my Twitter profile.  While a few dedicated student groups responded, I had only five organizations to add to my list.  Is this because I am not very connected in the Twitterverse, especially with social work student organizations? Or maybe student groups in social work are just not using Twitter?  Maybe they are on Facebook or Instagram? Or are they organizing the old-school way with paper and pens in an empty classroom after hours? Social work students and educators may be missing an opportunity here.