Letters to the Editor

Steve,

I so appreciate that the J. of SW Values and Ethics is so easily accessible online!!  Very helpful!

Thanks so much,
Deana Morrow

Dear Steve:

On behalf of the students and faculty of Slippery Rock University, please accept my belated thanks for helping us celebrate the 25th anniversary of our social work program's accreditation. Your keynote lecture and workshop on teaching social work ethics was informative and offered a challenging assessment of how we should go about formulating the values and ethics that undergird the profession.  We were honored that we could be the host for your first video editorial, which appeared in the Fall 2007 edition.  Surely an advantage of publishing an online journal is the ability to communicate through the use of media that transcend the printed word. I believe the letters you printed in the Winter 2007-8 journal in response to your video editorial offered some valuable opinions.  Mr. Sumpter favored a "shorter and more focused" editorial, and Dr. Kuechler spoke of the tedium resulting from too much information as presented in the charts illustrating the differences between the British and U.S. models used in the development and professional use of social work ethics.

Your presentation was more lecture than editorial. Web lectures that are longer than just a few minutes often result in the "talking heads" problem. To retain viewer interest, videos must be quite short, or else use a variety of techniques, such as the use of music, cut-away scenes, fade outs/fade ins, moving graphics, etc. I do hope you will continue to experiment with the use of video technology. Not many journals are as innovative as JSWVE. Perhaps the video editorials could be true editorials: concise, focused opinions on relevant issues. You might also consider video book reviews, perhaps including interviews with authors or panels of reviewers (which you mentioned to me at our meeting). 

Finally, I don't want to rule out the video lecture; however, as I have described, such an innovative venture would seem to require going beyond the traditional lecture format.

Again, we commend you on the innovative work you are doing and appreciate your visit to western Pennsylvania.

Sincerely yours,
Michael Stowe, Ph.D., ACSW
Associate Professor (ret.)
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
Slippery Rock University