Thinking of the Future: innovations for social work practice

Wow! it's been  a whole month since the conference:Social Media for social work. We had a great turnout on the day and very positive evaluations of the sessions (although more time to digest information and discuss the sessions was requested in the feedback). Our participants really enjoyed the range of presentations and workshops and came away with clear plans for what they might implement in practice: we even had a few Twitter converts on the day. For those unable to attend, or who have missed our dissemination activities since the conference see the link here: Learning Wheel which captures most of the themes and presentation slides and activities (you will need a QR code reader to access the presentations)

We heard from practitioners across Scotland who are using social media platforms really effectively to engage with carers (see for example: Aberdeenshire:Fostering and Adoption), and in another service where Facebook is used to  support care leavers. Several presenters showcased their projects using apps for training and development and a new service user feedback app. The social media for social work App was also used to engage practitioners in a fascinating discussion about implications and barriers to of using social media in practice: Social Media App presentation

The really great outcome form the day is the several fabulous contributions to the Innovation Station. Practitioner and academics who work with a variety  of service user groups came up with some exciting ideas for integrating digital technology and social media which the conference team will be looking at in more depth with these innovators to take forward over the coming months.

It was widely acknowledged by participants that this event was only just the start and ongoing support would be needed to integrate social media and digital technology into practice arenas. How lucky we are in Scotland to have IRISS and the support of SSSC to enable these developments in the future.

Countdown to #smswp

With less than a week to go its a bit frantic as the conference organising team finalise the programme. We are going to be hearing from practitioners from all across the UK who are using social media and digital technology really effectively in social work practice,  as well as academics who are designing new ways of supporting social workers in practice with  digital tools. The conference # is #smswp, please use this to share your thoughts and views about the conference presentations and discussions or to follow what is happening if you aren't attending in person.

The Innovation Station will be open throughout the conference and we invite practitioners to come along and talk to our hosts Amanda Taylor, Kane Needham and Deborah Millar about ideas you have for integrating social media in your practice - you will hear about some great initiatives and methods at the conference and we hope these influence and inspire you to try new ideas for yourself in your work.

We have a busy programme but we have left plenty of spaces in the day for networking and discussions. The event sold out quickly and lots of partner agencies helped us promote this unique event. I will blog about what happens and what we achieve next week.

Thinking of the Future: Innovations & Developments for Social Work Practice

We are delighted to announce this unique conference sponsored by the Scottish Social Services Council. We have an outstanding line up of presenters from across the UK, including social work managers, practitioners and academics. The conference will include workshops, presentations, and opportunities for networking and discussions between delegates and presenters.

Delegates will be able to choose from a range of workshops which explore how social media and digital technologies are being used in social work practice.  Delegates will be able to discuss ideas they have with innovation specialists at the Innovation Station hosted by Amanda Taylor who was recently named by JISC as one of the top 50 social media influencers in Higher Education in the UK.

Also Featuring:

Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner and Dr Anne Campbell who  have both developed Apps for social work which are widely used by practitioners and academics for training and development, Ian Watson from IRISS, and practitioners  from across Scotland who are using new technologies to work with and support service users and carers.

Follow the link to book your place: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thinking-of-the-future-innovations-and-developments-for-social-work-practice-tickets-19249165773

Social Media and Digital Technology for Social Work practice

It's been a long time in the planning but it's been well worth it. I have been working  with David McKendrick from GCU and Jon Bolton from the University of Dundee to plan a conference about social media in social work practice. We have been sponsored by the SSSC to hold the event at the Stirling Court Hotel on 8th February 2016.

The three of us hatched the plan for the conference as we recognised that there were pockets of good practice happening and we thought it would be helpful to provide opportunities to share the practice and for social workers to think about what social media and digital technologies could contribute to practice.

There's been a massive amount of interest in this event and we've got a great line up of presenters, who are all innovators in their fields. We have Amanda Taylor one of JISC's top 50 social media influencers hosting our Innovation Station at the conference. The general idea is that practitioners can come along and talk to our tech team about ideas they have for introducing social media into their practice. Our team will discuss the technical, governance and practical aspects of these ideas and explore how they can be taken forward into practice.

We are thrilled that Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner the designer of the Social Media for Social Work App will be demonstrating how this can be used in practice. Dr Anne Campbell is also coming along to talk about several Apps she has been involved in developing for social work training and practice. As well as academics we have several practitioners from across Scotland who will be talking about how they are using social media to support service users and carers.

There's still a lot of work for us to do but we are really excited to be launching the conference
programme and looking forward to having lots of discussions about how we can make effective use of digital technologies and social media in social work practice.

Booking details and further information available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thinking-of-the-the-future-innovations-and-developments-for-social-work-practice-tickets-19249165773

Social media in social work practice: conference

I'm very lucky to be working with David McKendrick from GCU and Jon Bolton from The University of Dundee on this conference funded by SSSC. It will be held on 8th February 2016 at the Stirling Court Hotel and we have a fantastic programme of speakers and workshops. The conference will invite participants to think about how they can use digital technologies and social media in social work practice and we will have experts on hand to test out ideas and look for how they can be implemented in practice. The programme will be launched in the next couple of weeks and bookings can be made on eventbrite. Watch this space for further details and reserve your place as this promises to be a very popular event.

Social work education :not just "common sense"

I was invited by The Guardian to write a blog about social work education: see link below.

http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/social-life-blog/2015/jun/17/dont-take-social-work-training-away-from-universities

My motivation to write about this issue stems from my desire to ensure that current students and those about to embark on their social work education develop as knowledgeable, reflective and critically aware social work practitioners, and avail themselves of the wide range of additional opportunities which a university education can bring. The Guardian blog explores some of these. I might have added that university education exposes students to knowledge derived from a long standing commitment by the profession to continuously improve practice and service users experiences through rigorous research and inquiry. Familiarity with new technologies and digital competence are also much needed skills for social work practice and  are central to university education.  Social work practitioners  need to be equipped with critical thinking skills, and the confidence and abilities to challenge "common sense" thinking and be emotionally literate. I am not suggesting that private training providers can't facilitate this, I am however suggesting that the emphasis on producing social workers who can "do the job" is driven by ideology. The education of social workers does not end once they begin to practice, indeed their continuing professional development is critical, and the current governments' interest in social work might be better oriented towards supporting and resourcing CPD in the same way that other human service professions are.

Social Media Strategy

First things first: this isn't the actual strategy but thoughts and ideas about what a strategy might contain. Practical advice and suggestions seem to be a good starting point to get people on board initially. In the School of Applied Social Science (SASS) University of Stirling we have developed and delivered several activities to help us to inform our strategy. A small group of us@urbaneprofessor @vikki_mccall  recognised the potential for collaboration in developing our use of social media in research and teaching and so we combined our efforts to apply for school funds which enabled us to employ a research student @Kane_Needham  to assist us with data collection . We designed a survey which was disseminated to staff in SASS, this gathered their experiences of using social media in research and teaching as well as facilitators and barriers. Three of us delivered a seminar about how we had used social media in our own teaching and for research, this generated plenty of discussion and questions. We hosted a social media surgery which allowed people to drop in and ask questions about using social media and try out some social media activities, this was well received and we added 3 new people to Twitter!  We will be carrying out qualitative interviews with a small sample of the survey participants and we will be presenting some initial findings at the School Research Away Day in June. More on the developing strategy soon.

HEA Project: using twitter in social work education and research

This project began with a fabulous event last year: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2013/19_Apr_CLL_Birmingham

Follwing this event the HEA provided funding for several project. the project I ran was developing short instructional films and workshops for  social work academics to learn about how they could use Twitter to contribute to and support their teaching.
I convinced three students from UCLan  School of Media http://www.uclan.ac.uk/schools/journalism_media/index.php to make the two films. Webster, Alex and Tondurayi worked on these as their final year projects. The films were piloted at a session with 9 social work academics in May 2014 along with two linked workshops which supported participants to develop their skills in using Twitter.  The feedback from the workshop at UCLan was really promising and a few tweaks were made to the films following those sessions. In addition the workshops will be presented at JSWEC on Wednesday 23rd July 2014, I am hoping that these will attract SW academics who are interested in Twitter but a little cautious.

It is clear that Twitter and otehr SNS's are here to stay and here @UCLanSocialWork we are keen users of this medium, engaging with each other, our students and colleagues in other institutions and in  countries across the world. It does take time to build up profile and find a balance in using Twitter, but once you start to engage and collaborate you will see the benefits and potnetial. Here's tomany more of these initiatives!

Social Media in Social Work Education

The proofs of the book arrived a couple of weeks ago and I have read them and corrected them. I have to say it was enjoyable to read through the chapters again. I still can't quite believe that we managed to get this project turned around in such a short timescale. The front cover looks great, Critical Publishing and OOH have done a great job with the text making it look like and feel like a real book:
 http://criticalpublishing.com/index.php/browse-by-subject-1/social-work/social-media-in-social-work-education.html

We are launching this at JSWEC on Thursday 24th July in the Windsor Building : http://jswec.net/2014/agenda/ we are looking forward to telling people about our experiences of working together on ths project and promoting the projects we discuss in the book.  We will of course be tweeting about the launch on the day as well, for people who can't make it to JSWEC this year.

Fast work and other exciting news

I was delighted with the publishers response to the typescript, until I received it I hadn't realised just how nerve wracking the wait had been. As it turns out the feedback was very positive and the typescript needed a few tweaks and the authors responded in super quick time. I was thrilled to be able to get the revisions completed today just in time for a break! I'm looking forward to the next stage of the production process, having done it twice in recent weeks I feel like I'm knowledgeable and my heart doesn't sink when the copy editor drops an e mail into my inbox anymore.

In other good news on the social media in social work education front: @lizith led an abstract submission including myself and @bonklesoul to present a talk to a learning technology conference later this year about some of the innovative work we are doing in social word education which features in the book. Fingers crossed for that one!

Next on the social media and socia work agenda is the planning of the launch of the book @jswec in the summer. We have already started pooling our ideas for this so look out for a simoultaneous online launch if you can't be there on the day.

We got there in the end...#teamwork

On  Monday, the last day of March the ominous deadline loomed ahead. I don't really know where the energy came from but the book draft was submitted on time (cheers to herself !). The last few hours before the deadline were fraught. I had a clear desk, but a full head. All those little jobs became laborious tasks which took much longer than a couple of minutes each which was my (unrealistic) estimation. Now I feel like an anxious student as I wait impatiently for the publishers comments. Having recently completed another edited collection (jointly with 4 other people) I am somewhat familiar with the never- ending aspect of editing... just when you think the last i is dotted and t crossed another list of corrections come along. However I am very keen to get these as I am, along with the authors so eager to get this book published as social media and social work is such an exciting area. This weekend I'm toasting the fabulous authors whose quick responses and warm acceptance of my comments and edits contributed to the timely submission of this book. Here's to you - Cheers!

Are we there yet?

The final stages of editing a book are quite challenging. As well as trying to draw on the themes discussed in the chapters, it is also important to give a cohesive feel to the book. I have read all of the chapters at least 6 times and I find new and interesting links every time I read them, and so prioriting which to focus on in the concluding chapter has been quite a task.
I learn new things every time I come to the end of a writing project, often associated with how ineffective I am at estimating time. I gave one of my tutees some advice this week which, I decided to use myself today. It is better to do 2 hours of solid, dedicated work than to commit to a long day glued to the PC.
The other "little jobs" left to do before this project comes to its conclusion include checking and re-checking the bibliography, making sure the contents section is accurate, listing the additional sources and clearing up the spelling and grammatical errors (mine not the authors!) pagination, table headings and numbers.... and dealing with my deadline anxiety.... I have scheduled half of my weekend for these jobs. Will it  be enough time to get us there?
So yes we are nearly there, almost.... just a few more things to check and finish and then we will be there... and breath!

...and the tension is building...#deadlines

...Who would have thought that twitter conversations and discussions after JSWEC last year would result in an edited collection by the following March? It just goes to show what a team of dedicated enthusiasts can do when they put their minds to it. At lunchtime I had a blank word doument, this afternoon as I leave I have more than half of the book ready, chapters in order, introduction, conclusions in progress, some final revisions and edits to a couple of chapters. The chapters have been carefully crafted by the social work and social media enthusiasts who signed up to this project back in September and its all coming together really well. I will keep you posted in (more or less) real time as it happens! Happy days!

HEA Twitter project

Last April along with other tweepers and social media in social work groupies from across the UK, I attended a workshop at Birmingham University funded by HEA. Tarsem Singh Cooner @Akali655 and Chris Allen @DrChrisAllen facilitated the event.  It's fair to say we all left the building (some of us had to be escorted out) as high as kites and on fire with enthusiasm.http://storify.com/Akali65/feedback-from-the-changing-the-learning-landscape . The HEA encouraged us to bid for funding to follow up and develop some of the ideas we discussed on that day. I put in a bid for a project to develop a media resource to encourage social work academcis to use Twitter in theIR teaching and research.I was delighted receive an award the Changing the Learning Landscape project. A short progress report is now due.

 

In October three students from the School of Journalism, Media and Communication @WebsterMugavazi @TonderayiMach @AMLabelle started to work with me on the project. This is part of their final year studies for their degree.  They have designed a film which will instruct academics in some of the features of  Twitter to get them started with the basics of running a twitter account.  I saw a short version of this in December,  the film is now complete and I will be having a preview next week. The team are making a second film which will instruct viewers in how to make the most of twitter as a teaching resource, and how to use some of the advanced functions. Earlier this week I submitted an abstract about the film project to @jswec conference and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I am successful. I hope to use the opportunity @jswec to formally launch the films. There will be a full preview here @UCLanSocialWork in May and I have a growing list of sceptical but interested colleagues who are keen to come along and pilot test the films.

 

The films will be available on-line sometime later this year along with instructions on how to facilitate a seminar/webinar to use them.

A flurry of excitement

Next time I am getting worn down with working on academic texts I will remember my feelings of delight and elation when the book cover appears online! This happened today and the authors who are contributing to the book I am editing on social media in social work education were tweeting happily. It certainly gave me the final push to complete my work on the introduction and conclusions. Watch this space :-)

Lots of progress in social media and socia work

There's been a lot going on behind the scenes in the last few months. Amanda, David and I have just about finalised the work we carried out using twitter in social work education. I'm delighted that some fantastic authors and social media advocates have contributed to a new book I have been editing all about using social media in social work education which is going to be published later this year. One of the authors wrote an App (https://sites.google.com/site/socialworksocialmedia/) and my review of this has just been published in the Journal of Social Work Education. I really did enjoy using the Social Media in Social Work App : http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SPvkUjNG4mNjpNfd9ZNx/full and I would encourage academics and practitioners to  engage with these types of approaches to teaching and learning in social work.

The tweep up continues...

We were all delighted on Friday 19th April to have the opportunity to meet up again in Birmingham at an HEA (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/disciplines/social-work-and-social-policy)  event workshop to exchange ideas bout how to integrate social media in social work education. The tweeting was extensive! We thoroughly enjoyed learning how to set up a Storify and a closed Facebook groups and we all took back some ideas for integrating this in our tecahing next semester.

We are hoping to meet up again at the end of June this time in Glasgow to finalise our presentation for JSWEC http://www.jswec.net/index.php/annual/2013 In the meantime wath this space for some snippets about how we intend to take our project forward....

The tweep up

Well it finally happened! A little less than a week ago, David McKendrick and Amanda Taylor and I met at UCLan to review and analyse the data we collated during the live twitter debate on 14th February.

We spent the day locked in a lecture theatre in Adelphi building discussing the responses to the surveys which our participants completed before and after the  twitter debate. There were some really interesting findings about the resources Social Work students in both countries choose to use and how they compliment their formal studies with social media and social networking sites.

 

We are of course thrilled that our paper has been accepted at the forthocming JSWEC 2013 conference in July, and we spent a part of the session discussing our plans for that. Watch this space....

 

We will be meeting up again next time in Scotland we hope when we will finalise our paper and our presentation for the conference. In the meantime we will be working on e mails, on twitter and Adobe Connect to keep connected and ensure we continue having a dialogue, sharing our thoughts and intepretation of the data and our findings.

Great progress with SNS research project

The good thing about this project is that myself and the other researchers can catch up on a regular basis using twitter or adobe connect platforms. So even though we don't physically meet up we do keep discussing the project, our thoughts about it and crucially now how to analys the mass of data we have produced. Over 50 students participated in the debate we hosted on 14th February and we are slowly going through the data and the survey responses.

Our first official face to face meet up is in March which will be a busy day for us as we work on the data analysis and report on our findings. We are hoping to present our research and have submitted an abstract based on our research to the JSWEC conference in July 2013. We are all hoping to be involved in a mass social media activity too! watch this space :-)

Great progress with SNS research project

The good thing about this project is that myself and the other researchers can catch up on a regular basis using twitter or adobe connect platforms. So even though we don't physically meet up we do keep discussing the project, our thoughts about it and crucially now how to analys the mass of data we have produced. Over 50 students participated in the debate we hosted on 14th February and we are slowly going through the data and the survey responses.

Our first official face to face meet up is in March which will be a busy day for us as we work on the data analysis and report on our findings. We are hoping to present our research and have submitted an abstract based on our research to the JSWEC conference in July 2013. We are all hoping to be involved in a mass social media activity too! watch this space :-)