Twitter.

I've now added my Twitter feed to the blog. On the page it's down a bit and left a bit.

I plan to use Twitter to recommend Radio and TV programmes that are related in some way to issues in Applied Social Studies. This means that the links may only work for a limited period. The first of these is a radio 4 programme looking at the subject of 'latch key kids' and touches on the issues of work/life balance, Bowlby's studies of deprivation and childhood independence.

Revise or sleep? Why not do both...

I was watching 'Have I got News for you' on Friday and heard something I thought was worth sharing. It was a story about the 'Sound Asleep Pillow' which is a special pillow to which you can attach an MP3 player. The story claimed that students were using the pillow to listen to dictated revision notes whilst sleeping. The Student Times also ran an article looking into this.

Now, I'm not claiming you immediately go and spend money on this thing but just maybe dictating some notes for your MP3 player might prove beneficial.

After all, it has to be better than ending up like this.

Social Care TV

You may have heard of The Social Care Institute for Excellence.

But for any of you who haven't it's a website featuring all kinds of information on every aspect of Social Care.

There's an open access database which you can search by topic .

It also has a collection of videos called 'Social Care TV' covering many topical issues within Social Work.

The video below is a short promo for these videos.



This all adds up to a very, very good collection of good quality, free resources.

Follow the link here to look at the full range of videos available.

That feeling of post hand-in joy.

I'm currently working towards a teaching qualification in Higher education.
Yesterday at midnight was a deadline for an essay on assessment so the majority of yesterday was spent knitting and hammering away at writing a piece of work I wasn't ashamed to put my own name to.

At 10pm this looked unlikely.

At 10:30pm when I began deleting more than I was writing it looked about as likely as the tabloid press playing down England's chances in the World Cup.

But with a leisurely hour to spare it was submitted and that delightful post hand-in joy (or PHJ as it's now known) suddenly kicked in.

So to all students who've just handed things in I say congratulations and savour your feeling of PHJ.

And to those of you who are nearly there, I hope you make it with more than an hour to spare.

Jargon: or why a "Dewey interface on the Catalogue" isn't helpful.

The Scene: Park Square Library.
The Characters: Myself and 3rd Year student.

Me: You see the thing about Web 2.0 technology is how much it's opened up the Internet to everyone and now you don't need to have programming skills or knowledge of computer languages and because the start ups are so intuitive you can begin downloading content almost immediately and that's why these new virtual communities for user-generated content are so popular and why they're filling in the need for person to person community interaction.

Student: What's Web 2.0?



Scene ended with me skulking away feeling stupid.

Okay. Let's start again. To anyone I've ever talked jargon at, I apologise. I sometimes make unfair assumptions about what a student may know about an issue, or worse still, I'll use language that is bogged down in geekspeak or technobabble.

So here's the deal: if any of you in my training sessions catch me using jargon put your hand up immediately and let me know in no uncertain terms. It's okay, I can take it.

And for the record - Web 2.0 is any website where visitors can add content themselves. The best current examples are probably Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
And the student who I blinded with jargon?
She was already using all those sites already.

Why a man at the zoo changed the Internet.

Hands up who knows why the video below is important?



If you said it was the first video uploaded to YouTube then you're spot on and deserve a biscuit.
The astonishing thing is that the video is less than 5 years old.

I'm fascinated by YouTube. I'm fascinated by the fact that people can talk to webcams, I'm fascinated by the notion of a YouTube 'hit' and also by the idea of a 'YouTube community'.

Learning Resources at UoB has produced a series of 60 second videos for YouTube which you can view here. I can't promise you CGI madness but you may find out something new.

That's the thing about YouTube; it can be about research, connecting with people, home videos and teenage boys falling off skateboards. It's only limited by our imaginations.

How to find Social Work research online.

There are a lot of pitfalls you need to be wary of when using the Internet to find research.

I'd put my Top 3 pitfalls as...

1) It will eat up time like you won't believe.
2) You may end up finding material that you're asked to pay for.
3) There will be times when you can't be certain that what you're referencing is reliable.

But it doesn't have to be hard going. There are guides to help you. Here is the Intute guide to how to research the Internet for students of Social Work.

And there are other guides for Social Policy, health and social care and Social research methods.