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.