For those of you who are following me on Twitter, you have seen my tweets in celebration of Social Work Month. I wanted to add a unique twist to NASW’s Social Work Month photo campaign.
Read more of my thoughts about Social Work Month, the Future, and Technology after the jump!
The future is indeed here. As previously mentioned on this blog, there are so many tools out there that can enhance our practice and make us better in our ability to access resources for ourselves (e.g. assessment tools, self-care, respite) and our clients. With the hardware I have embellished in this forum, delivery of intervention has the potential to be revolutionized, as we can access it at our fingertips.
Technology is important to embrace for the future of our profession because without utilizing it’s full potential for tasks such as resource procurement/development as well as research, we risk stagnating and falling behind our counterparts in the medical (including nursing), educational, psychological, therapeutic and other related fields.
To participate in NASW’s Social Work Month 2011 Photo Campaign, click here. I’d be interested to see your submissions, which can be posted to your Twitter stream or the Facebook page for this site, in addition to the official site.
NASW’s official Social Work Month 2011 gallery can be found here (you need a Flickr ID, which is free)
I’m proud of being a social worker and hope you hold the same pride to show it off!
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One more thing: Check out Mike Langlois’ creative and brand new website! I think he does a great job embracing technology in social work practice and fits the theme of this post!
I think its great you are participating…but there is something that I find uncomfortable about the idea that we were asked to use technology in a way that seems kind of disrespectful to the possbility of technology. I am a social worker, I have a bunch of things that I would say about social work, that wouldn’t make my image the centre of the conversation…although a review of the photos could be a real opportunity for research – who responded and how do the present…
What does it say about social worker’s engagement with digital practices when we have to write what we want to say on a piece of paper and hold it up…it would have been a great opportunity for some community development around digital stuff, rather than a 1.0 way or doing 2.0…IDEPSCA in Los Angeles has a project with Day Workers called Voz Moboz using basic cell phones and open source software to create digital stories…why don’t the social workers use their community developent skills to benefit their own community? Ugh! I feel kind of embarassed.
I don’t quite understand what you meant in this comment.
Ignacio, thanks for considering my comment. I guess what I am saying is that the way the NASW project was set up, was mediatization, not mediation…and it tell me that the US National Org might need to think about how else technology might be used to make new things possible, rather than making old things electronic…I think that there are lots of great community based examples.