Author: Neil Ballantyne

Expatriate Scot working as a senior lecturer in social work at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.
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husITa seeks new editors for the Journal of Technology in Human Services

Call for Proposals HUman Services Information Technology Applications (husITa) seeks an individual or team to serve as the new editor(s) for the Journal of Technology in Human Services (JTHS).  We seek an editor, or editors, who have a demonstrated commitment to the mission of husITa, the aims and scope of the JTHS, and experience with editorial functions or roles (e.g.…

husITa18 to be held in Dublin, Ireland

We are delighted to announce that husITa will organise a human service technology stream at the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development (SWSD2018) to be held at the Royal Dublin Society, Dublin, Ireland from 4th-7th July, 2018. SWSD2018 is organised by a joint committee, representing the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), the International Council…

Board election results announced

The husITa board approved the results of the 2016 husITa ballot, many thanks to the 46 members of our mailing list who selected five from a slate of seven excellent nominees, they were spoiled for choice. Congratulations to Gareth Morgan and Yu-Cheung Wong, our existing board members, who have both been elected for a further three-year term. Welcome aboard to three new board members…

Reflecting on husITa16

As many readers will be aware husITa16 – the 10th international conference of husITa – was held in Seoul, Korea as part of the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development. Over 2,500 delegates from over 80 countries worldwide attended the event. This is the third occasion in which husITa have coordinated the technology subtheme inside the world conference with previous…

Smartphones and parenting

Yu-cheung Wong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong introduces the paper he will be discussing at husITa16. The rise of the permanently connected smartphone has made parental supervision of children’s Internet use almost impossible. In Hong Kong, a city where ICT infrastructure is well-developed and smartphone use very affordable, almost all (98%) school children aged 14-17 have a smartphone. Ownership among…

Nextdoor: A new type of community building tool needing research.

Community organizing is typically taught in human service programs, especially in social work courses.  Social work in the US is rooted in the work of Jane Addams who, in the late 1800s, organized and served a neighborhood community in Chicago. Google “Jane Adams Hull House Chicago maps” to see some of the geographic maps of the neighborhoods she served. Today, with information technology’s embrace of…

Practice Innovation through Technology in the Digital Age: A Grand Challenge for Social Work

Thoughts on the Grand Challenges paper: “Practice Innovation through Technology in the Digital Age: A Grand Challenge for Social Work”

This blog post briefly reviews the concept of Grand Challenges in Social Work and summarizes the working paper, “Practice Innovation through Technology in the Digital Age: A Grand Challenge for Social Work,” which is one of two papers that explore the Grand Challenge, “Harnessing Technology for Social Good.” In 2014 the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare (AASWSW)…

husITa history: CUSSN archive released.

We are delighted to announce the release of our digitized archive of the newsletters of the Computer Use in Social Services Network (CUSSN). CUSSN was formed by a group of US human service technology specialists meeting at a Council of Social Work Education conference in Louisville Kentucky in 1981. The contents of the CUSSN newsletters reveal the preoccupations of human service technologists…