If you are studying for a master’s of social work or already work in the field, you know how important the right tools can be. One of the best new tools the age of technology has given us is software that can be programmed to suit just about any profession, and social work is no exception. And with clients, notes, outcomes, and loads of responsibilities on the line, having the right tools is very important.

To help give you an idea of what’s out there, we have collected 25 essential software applications for social workers below. They include everything from widely used social work software to some specialty ones and even a few free options anyone looking to get more stuff done can use. (more…)

Twitter is great way to keep up with information going on in your profession without taking up a lot of your time. Twitter offers information in small snippets, so you can keep up while you’re on the go. Here are twenty Twitter accounts that social workers will find especially interesting. You’re sure to want to follow them.

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One of the most rewarding and interested career fields is social work. You have an opportunity to understand people, and help therm, every single day. If you have a Masters in Social Work, you can do even more, specializing in certain areas. For those who are interested in learning more about social work, here are 50 blogs by social work professionals:

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Social work often is demanding, thankless and heartbreaking — but it appears that many professors from large and small colleges and universities are making a difference. The following top 20 most influential social work professors have made headlines recently with their social work and comments. They may also head up influential groups that help people transition into healthier and happier lifestyles. (more…)

There are several avenues of education you can pursue toward a career in a field of social work. One of the best ways to determine if social work is for you is to take some open courseware classes. They are free and can give you a good feel as to whether social work is the right field for you. Open courseware classes in social work are also great for those who are already employed in the social work field, because it allows them to add to their knowledge for free and in the privacy of their homes. Check out these 21 open courseware classes that are geared toward those in the field of social work.

1. Introducing Social Work Practice: This is a great course for those who are trying to decide if social work is the right field for them. It looks at different approaches to social work and the skills involved.
2. Aging and Disability: Transitions into Residential Care: This course, designed for social workers working with the elderly teaches students about the issues involved in transitioning elderly patients from their homes into residential care facilities.
3. The Limits of Primary Care: This class explores the access to community services for those that need them.
4. Community Care: This course explores how language nuances affect attitudes toward social services. It helps social workers learn to communicate appropriately with clients about the community care resources.
5. Becoming a Critical Social Work PractitionerThe unit explores what it means to become a critical social work practitioner by using a series of activities and readings to guide you through some new and important concepts.
6. Diversity and Difference in Communication: This course teaches students to understand and use different communication strategies in order to help them work with a diverse audience.
7. Living with Death and Dying: This course explores how people’s knowledge and beliefs about death and dying affect their lives and how it changes the way they deal with their own death.
8. Homelessness and Need: In this course, you will hear the stories of people who have experienced homelessness.
9. Caring: A Family Affair: This course focuses on care relationships within the family structure.
10. Care Transactions: This course examines the care arrangements people make and the kinds of transactions these arrangements involve.
11. Remaking the Relations of Work and Welfare: This course examines how personal lives intersect with social policies, and the issues that arise from it.
12. Managing to Meet Service Users’ Needs: This course helps the students understand and be aware of the service users needs and use this information to manage those services.
13. Social Work Learning Practice: Eight audio tapes help you to understand the importance of people’s backgrounds and how they affect the relationship between the social worker and client.
14. The Medicalized Context of Bereavement: This course explores the medical aspects of death, dying and bereavement and how medicine is used within these contexts.
15. The Meaning of Home: This course looks at how people become emotionally attached to houses, buildings and other places, and how environment can become a resource for caring.
16. Care Relationships: This course focuses on setting up care relationships that work well.
17. Social Psychology: This class from MIT explores social communities and how they use and share resources and relate to each other.
18. Changing the Face of American Healthcare: This course from Notre Dame explores the strengths and weaknesses of our healthcare system and how changes might help our society.
19. Foundations of Public Health: This course from the University of California at Irvine: This course presents the overarching framework, principles, and core responsibilities of public health research and practice from a multidisciplinary perspective.
20. Social Attitudes and Public Opinion: This course from the University of Massachusetts in Boston explores the nature of attitudes, beliefs, and values, and the influences which individuals’ attitudes have upon their behavior.
21. Substance Abuse and the Family: This course from the University of Massachusetts in Boston explores substance abuse and how it affects the functioning of the family.

These classes can help up and coming social workers or those who want to hone their skills a simple way to learn more about the many areas of human life addressed in the field of social work.

Online, there are many utilities and ideas about for families as available on net.   There are blogs and forums for families where they can share views, reviews, news and ideas about parenting and family issues. However, there are many enjoyable applications too available for families that they can share with others or can enjoy among family members.

1. Play Space Finder: This is a wonderful site that is used by families to look at play space for their kids in their community. It includes a Google Map mashup, capacity upload photos of the place, a comments section, an amenities section as to tell kids and parents about toys and structures that they can expect to arrive upon. You can use this mission by taking your kid on a mission by mapping photograph, list and review of playgrounds in the area.  it becomes  a sort of science and media making projects as for improving quality of the content.
2. Tumblon: This is the tool dedicated for parent’s help so that they can chart out their children’s growth while preserving their milestones and memories. The Tumblon tries to teach your children through different milestones that you share with him.  Based on information provided by you Tumblon provide age and other demographic appropriate products like books.
3. Scrapblog: This is a tool for creating out rich and innovative media scrap books that can be shared among family and friends. Scrap blog is just extraordinary in terms of its design elements being simple, creation methods being innovative and options for distribution are innumerable with this family tool. On scrap book the family fall foliage walks can be preserve, birthday and wedding records can be preserved. Scrapblog is just a state of the art method to create projects that parents feel in comfortable in sharing in family media.
4. Google Calendar: It can be accessed from one’s Gmail inbox and gives picture of a good number of calendars on one’s screen. As a family tool that calendar   can be organized as family event calendars on one’s screen. It can be organized as work calendar, menu planner, writing scheduler, homeschool routiner and advertising scheduler for blogs. And that calendar should be shared among among entire family members.
5. Audible: This resource and tool is very helpful for the family that like to read books and it is resource to a good number of audiobooks. As audiobook is a good entertainment choice for a child when he is quiet at home. And these are the tools that we use at in our everyday persona use.

Career in social work has its own level of learning pattern, code of ethics, practice standards, credentials, state licensing and accredited education program. Therefore, these programs let a professional social worker to combine all this with his personal knowledge with desire to help others. A social worker can work in wide areas and field of working like as public agencies, private businesses, hospitals, clinics, schools, nursing homes, private practices, police departments, courts and many other such places of greater importance and value.

Social workers can work in different capacity like being as individuals, families and communities on designations like managers, supervisors and administrators.  And they even can work at each and every level of government being therapist and researchers. As for earning potential of BSW (Bachelor of Social Works) they can expect salary ranging and starting from $30,000 as on the basis of experience, work and many other geographic factors. A social worker with an MSW degree can have annual income amounting around $40,000. For a private practitioners and senior administrators you can earn as much as $100,000 per year.  A general idea about the salary of social work in the United States is as following Child welfare social worker: $32,500, Community practitioner: $32,500, Court social worker: $32,500, HMO social worker: $37,500, School social worker: $37,500, Member, private practice: $47,500, Solo private practitioner: $52,500

Where as according to another research entry level salary is $32,500, middle level salary is $47,500 and top level salary is $52,500 in social work. However, salary determination is quite different from the stat from organizations to organizations. For private profit organizations the average payout salary go as as much as upto the level of USD $56,700 per annum. The salary of social workers in non profit organization goes to USD 41.300 per annum.

However, merely having masters in education you can not receive this amount of salary, what you need to do is to compete with your educational and licensing requirements. The degree one having in social work from college and university should have accreditation from Council on Social Work Education.  Degree programs include classroom study as well as practical field experience. A DSW or PhD happens to very useful in doing research and teaching at the university level.

Moreover in the United States, it is expected by states that a social worker should be licensed, certified or registered according to the prescribed norms. Licensing is one issue, where as for becoming a social worker a person should also have aptitude for the profession.  They must have strong desire to help others and improve people live, to heal fragile relationships, family problems, diseases and substance abuse. More a social worker can help by providing solutions to the problem of inadequate employment, housing and disability, etc. For becoming a social worker a person should be emotionally mature, objective, sensitive, and responsible and willing to work freely.

Social work is one of the most satisfying careers in the modern day. The job outlook is good and the remuneration is also quite satisfactory. It is also a fairly competitive field. If you want to improve your chances of becoming a high profile social worker then the best option would be to get a masters degree in social work. It can be hard going for classes when you are working, but this should not discourage you for there are several online colleges that offer similar degrees.

Online masters of social work degree will help you work and study at the same time. You will not have to worry about being late for classes since you will be studying at your own convenience. Better yet, you can do your studies from anywhere that pleases, even from the comfort of your home.

Earning your masters degree through an online college is not only flexible but is also cheap. The whole course will take you 2 years to complete if you apply for the regular full time study mode. The part time program usually takes one to two years longer. In most online colleges, the entry requirement for this program is usually a G.P.A of 3.0 and above for undergraduate degree holders. Some of the colleges also require the applicants to have GRE scores that are over 450.

During the first semester in the masters of social work degree program, most online colleges offer foundational courses and then move on to the more crucial courses after that. Some of the core courses include human behavior, policy analysis, research methods, social justice, general psychology, anthropology, cultural awareness, social sciences and history. Normally, you will be required to specialize in a particular area of study and complete around 900 hours of field work in any credible agency before you are allowed to graduate.

It is advisable to be on the lookout for online conmen when you are looking for online colleges that offer masters programs in social work. Make sure that the college you are applying to is fully accredited. Once you identify a credible college, go ahead and apply for masters of social work degree and you will see how your life will change for the better. Some of the accredited online colleges that offer masters degrees in social sciences include University of Denver, Florida State University and Valdosta State University.