Sharing

We've talked about sharing information by reusing and repurposing content that you have found some where else.  Another way to share information is to revise a blog post and submit it for publication somewhere else.


For example, I wrote about my concerns about the effects on a child's brain due anesthesia exposure before age 3 on my personal blog, on this blog and then submitted it for publication on the Special Education Advisor blog, which has a much larger audience than my own. .  

Mobile workspace

Enjoying a latte while planning a presentation on using technology to support & inform.

Expanding your Reach

In my last post I wrote about developing a communications plan as part of a membership drive. I took the time to look at my Facebook friends (612) and then I made a list of the Facebook friends of each of the board members who are administrators for the fanpage for the board I sit on. I subtracted our mutual friends, and then added up all of the potential followers we could pick up.

Potential Facebook Followers
Our potential number of followers was 2500!  2500! Wow! Even if we added only 10% of that number to our membership rolls, we could significantly up the number of members. But knowing that we had a potential universe of 2500 new members that isn't enough.

Maximizing Our Reach
We needed specific strategies. After some thought, I came up with a template for all future blog posts. As part of the development of a blogpost, I would also develop a few sample Facebook status updates and a few sample tweets. Each Board member could then be emailed a link to the latest blog post, a copy of the sample status updates and tweets and asked to post to their own pages, other pages they administer and to the timelines of their friends.

Will it Work?
Well, only time will tell. As of this writing I have one-third of the board following the plan, and we've already seen visits to our blog jump exponentially. We clearly need to stick to our plan, and remember that the outcome isn't visits to the blog, it is membership in our organization. 

Creating a Communications Plan

One of the board's I sit on is reevaluating how it is communicating with its membership. To be honest, that makes it sound like we've been communicating. Unfortunately, we've been too busy doing, to communicate. However, we know that we cannot grow or really be successful if we don't stop for a bit and think about how we communicate.

Self-Assessment
We are using our communications campaign as an adjunct to our membership recruitment campaign. Our first step was to survey our current members so that we could have a better idea of who are members are and what they need from the organization. We also asked them if they had interacted with our website, Facebook fanpage, twitter stream or our website. We then looked at our organization's stated mission and compared that to our current membership.


Making a Plan
The next step was to decide on our outcome. Our communications outcome is to increase membership. We needed to decide how we could use our communication strategy to increase membership. Now I'm  not going to give the particulars of our plan, but we decided that we needed a calendar that identified topic areas for each month, then we needed to insure that our information was posted across our different sites. 


Wait we aren't all proficient with social media
We needed to take a step back. It turns out we needed to go over how to do effectively use each of our media sites. We needed to learn how to use the sites as ourselves and as the organization. We needed to prepare primers on how to use each site. We also needed to have a short campaign to show the board how to share information across platforms. 

Sharing Information

We've asserted that Web 2.0 can be used to share information with families in previous posts here, here and here. And as we stated in the Web 2.0  post, one thing to think about is how information that is already out there can be re-purposed.

Repurposed?
Yes, reused, rewritten, reshared. Think of it as upcycling for information. There are great websites out there with tons of well-written information. Here's a sampling of my favorite early intervention websites: NECTAC, NICHCY, and the IDEA Partnership.This is a great website that is geared towards typical child development: Baby Center. And then there are those websites geared towards specific disabilities: NDSS, Autism Speaks, and dozens of others. There's also Pinterest, and Facebook Fanpages, and tons of wonderful blogs, that focus on a specific diagnosis or therapeutic approach.

One thing that can be helpful is to write a webpage or blog posting that deals with a specific issue and link to these other websites to assist families to learn how to research where they can find information when they are advocating on behalf of their child.

An Example, Please?
My son has an orthopedic impairment called Arthrogryposis.  Our community has a website, online forum, and a Facebook group. Recently we've been talking about a new report that links multiple exposures to anesthesia before age 3 to ADHD and learning disabilities. We've had discussions in the past regarding concerns about learning disabilities and inattentaton. Families shared that despite concerns raised by the child's general education teacher about how this was negatively impacting on the child's education, the IEPs for these students contained no goals or supports to address the concern. Families said that the schools informed them that since the students IEP was addressing an orthopedic impairment the focus was on their child's physical impairments and was not intended to address academic issues.  I did some quick research, got a hand finding the correct citations from a friend, and wrote a blog post that showed families where they could find letters from OSEP like this one explaining that IEP Teams should use the child's unique needs to decide what services to provide, not the disability label.  I also found citations that families could use to ask for additional evaluations.

But isn't this stuff already out there?
Yes, but that doesn't mean that people know where to find it or how to put the information to use.  Repurposing, reusing, rewriting and resharing can help families to find information and see how it might be put to use in the real world. 

Finding Information

There are many websites out there catering to the field of early intervention. Yet, anyone who provides training and support to families of young children knows that they continue to say that they are not finding the information that they want or need. What is the disconnect then?

Is it website design?

Many of the websites designed for early intervention programs use words that are not familiar to families who are new to early intervention. In fact, even calling it early intervention can be confusing! Families either have a diagnosis (Down syndrome, Arthrogryposis, Prematurity, microcephaly...) or a concern about a delay (not walking yet, delayed speech, not sitting up...). At the beginning of their journey families often don't know the words or jargon that go with early intervention. It is therefore important to think about what words families use when searching online. What information new families might need or want. Organizations can use a small focus group of families new to early intervention to ask them how they searched, what they searched for and what they were hoping to find. Having this information can help to create a website that provides the information in a way that increases the likelihood that families can find what they need, when they need it.

Is it an issue of focus?
State early intervention programs not only share information with families, they share it with other state agencies, county programs, contracted providers and early childcare programs. Each of these audiences have different needs from the website and different levels of expertise with the terms used in early intervention. Again, when designing or redesigning a website it is important to think about how different users will interact with the site. The site can be organized to have different doors or portals for different types of users. Even when thinking only about families we can think about the difference between families with a diagnosis and those with concerns about delays. Families of potentially eligible children have different questions then families of children who have been determined eligible. And families who have moved into leadership positions--joining family advisory councils, parent to parent programs and state Interagency Coordinating Councils (ICCs)--have different informational needs. Thinking through these different groups and their informational needs can help to insure your website is reaching your intended audience.

Social Media Marketing

Let's take a step back.  We started this blog by asserting that web 2.0 could be used to support and inform families of young children with disabilities.  But you may be asking how do people do it?  How do you figure out which media to use? How will you navigate the privacy rights of families while still providing them with the information and support they are seeking?

Outcomes
I believe that the first step is to decide on outcomes.  Do you want to create a space where families can quickly find information about activities?  or applications?  Do you want to provide a place for families to share their questions and tips for one another?  Is your intention to broadcast or discuss?  Your outcomes may change over time, but it is a good idea to start with a few specific outcomes.

Focus
Once you have your outcomes, decide which mediums can help you to meet your outcomes.  If you want families to see how to do something, you might want to use a video sharing site or an image sharing site.  If you want families to share their tips and questions then social networking might be the way to go, or perhaps a wiki.

Outline
The next step is to develop an outline.  What information do you anticipate sharing?  How often will you share information?  Setting realistic expectations for your ability to update information or respond to questions and comments is important.  

Crossposting
To generate a following it is important that you also think about who you will interact with and where you can find more followers.  For example, as I write this blogposting my outline includes posting this to LinkedIn, tweeting it, and to my Facebook page.  My outline includes how I will post to each of these media and when.  It is important to strike a balance between over and underposting and to be mindful of how many of your fans follow you on all of those media.  

Assess
Like all things the outline is not set in stone.  It is something that you have to continually review and revise.  Pinterest wasn't even on my radar a few months ago.  Even once I started using it personally it took some time for me to figure out how best to use it for my purposes.  It is also important to decide when you will simply use the work of others.  The great thing about Web 2.0, is that you can create content simply by sharing the content of others--with attribution of course!

More fun with Pinterest!

We've been talking about Pinterest during our last few posts, here and here.  We have been busy pinning and pinning, adding pinners to our board and well, we realized that our board was getting unwieldy.  So, we've broken the EI Board into a group of boards.


Rearranging Boards
There are no hard and fast rules for how to arrange your Pinterest boards.  However, if you want others to follow you, it is helpful if you think about your board name, what others might look for and how to categorize your board.  So our EI Board:  is now broken into the following boards:

• Adaptive/Behavior/Responsibility
• Assistive Technology
• Fine Motor
• Gross Motor
• Sensory
• Social Emotional
• Speech/Feeding

Added Bonus

Rearranging our boards has also meant that we've picked up new followers!  Folks we hadn't interacted with before.  (Blogging about Pinterest, and sharing our blogs on other sites has also lead us to other Pinterest followers as well).

Sharing federal news

The Office of Civil Rights recently sent letters out to districts across the country regarding how schools define which children have disabilities and how they provide support and assistance to those students.
Guidance Memos
In the not so distant past, a letter such as this guidance letter from OCR one would be sent to districts, who would copy it and send it on to their Directors of Special Education and Principals. Who might add it to their monthly staff meeting discussions. Copies would also be sent out to Parent Training and Information Centers, who would add a blurb in their monthly or quarterly newsletter. And finally, it would be linked to on the US Dept of Education website.

Social Media
Today, however, that same letter has been blogged, tweeted, and Facebooked multiple times.  And this is the second go around for this particular letter! That means that not only is the letter reaching those who are in administration and teaching, and those who are funded to help families with children with disabilities, but also, one can only hope the message is reaching regular folk!

Is there a down-side?
Well, as the article points out the National Association of School Boards is concerned that parent organizations will disseminate the letter, leading to increased parents requesting accommodations. But, perhaps, what it will mean is a move to create a real continuum that includes fully implement RTI (response to intervention), 504 plans and IEPs? Perhaps the move by the University of Florida to merge it's special education and general education programs into one program, that insures that all teachers graduate with a foundation in both disciplines will be implemented elsewhere. In the meantime, I don't see a downside to districts being reminded that just  a child who has a prosthetic limb is still a child with a disability who may need a 504 or IEP plan.