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:

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.

Career Building Skills for Social Workers: #MacroSW Chat 5/14 8 PM CST

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on May 5, 2015

This is a re-post from the #MacroSW Chat website.  I will be hosting this chat on 5/14/15 so please join us!  Click here for more information on how to participate in a live Twitter chat.

Are you a newly graduated social worker looking for a job? Thinking about going back to graduate school for that MSW? Then join us for a chat with guest experts Melissa Whatley & Joy Jones from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s (UAB) Career & Professional Development. They will be answering your most pressing questions about searching and interviewing for that first social work job, how to tell your professional story through a resume, and best practices for networking, off-line & online.

We also invite social workers to share their own experiences about finding a social work job, especially a macro position, how they made the decision to go back to graduate school, or their best tip for networking, interviewing or building a resume.

Here is how the chat will work:
Melissa (tweeting from @uabcareerserve) and Joy (tweeting from @UABJoy ) will be answering your most pressing career development questions so come prepared.  You can also submit your questions in advance to @laurelhitchcock.  Melissa and Joy will be selecting questions from your submissions/posts.  (Disclaimer: We may not be able to get to everyone’s question due to the time limit of the chat). Possible topics include:

1. What needs to be included on my resume?
2. How can I use social media to get a job?
3. What can I expect during a job interview?
4. What do I need to know to be successful in a social work career?

We also invite anyone joining our chat to share their thoughts and best career advice along side Melissa & Joy.

Making Social Policy Relevant Through Social Media

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on May 1, 2015

Dr. Casey Bohrman (@CaseyBohrman) is an assistant professor in the Department of Undergraduate Social Work at West Chester University. In this blog post, she writes about how she uses blogging tools such as Twitter and Tumblr in her social welfare policy courses to engage student in current events and practice advocacy skills.

During the winter of 2013, I frequently listened to Tell Me More, an NPR radio program focused on issues impacting people of color.  I noticed that many of the experts on the show came from the “blogosphere” or gained their standing through prolific tweeting.  Wanting my social policy class to be relevant to modern policy discussions, I decided to have students join Twitter as part of a class assignment in Spring 2014.

Because Twitter is limited to 140 characters, I also wanted students to have the opportunity to comment on social issues in a more comprehensive fashion.  Inspired by David Jaffee, a sociologist from the University of North Florida who blogs about his perspective on current socio-economic issues, I decided to have my students also create blogs. The first time I taught the class we used WordPress, as it was the site recommended to me by our librarian.  In future classes, I used Tumblr as it was more user-friendly and allowed for easier incorporation of audio-visual material.

I asked students create a Twitter account and a blog about a particular area of interest, such as mental health policy or how social policy might directly impact women.  I asked students to tweet several times per week and post a blog entry once a month about current issues in their policy area.  I also asked them to follow a range of accounts from traditional news outlets, advocacy organization, and people directly experiencing an issue.  One of the strengths of using Twitter to learn about policy is that it gives students a broader and more current perspective on an issue than they can get from a textbook.   It is particularly important for social workers to hear and learn from the perspectives of people who directly impacted by a social issue. For example, there are a number of users who identify with Black Twitter (such as @Feministajones, @Karnythia, and @TheBlackVoice) who provide important perspectives on racial issues.