Privacy Protections

These days most families of young children with disabilities are using social media to connect with one another. It is important that family leaders and the professionals who provide services and supports to families have discussions about the pros and cons of social media. In fact, it is essential that technical assistance programs get involved in social media and provide families with assistance on how to protect their privacy.

FERPA

Every child who benefits from publicly-funded education services is covered by FERPA or the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act. FERPA limits who can share information and what information they can share about a child and/or family receiving services funded with federal education dollars. Thus children enrolled in early intervention or IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) Part C or birth to three programs are covered by FERPA. Additionally, Parent Training and Information centers and Technical Assistance centers which receive funding under Part D of IDEA have to follow FERPA. 

What About Privacy Settings?

Every social media site, whether Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vimeo or LinkedIn has its own privacy settings. These settings change over time too!  It is important to help families to figure out how to find and use the privacy controls on different sites.      Facebook, for instance, allows users to designate their Facebook "Friends" as close or acquaintances. In addition, users can decide whether to share their posts with only their friends, or to share posts publicly.  

What happens in Vegas, stays on Facebook, Flickr...

It is important to remind families that once they have shared something on a site, they no longer have control over who see's what they have shared or who can re-share their post, picture or video. Anyone can grab a screenshot, download or forward their information.  And in this day and age, most folks won't simply forward, but they may add their own comments or opinions.  

So, you want me to stay off the internet?

No!  Social media can be an incredible avenue for supporting and informing families with young children with disabilities. It can also create movements for system change.  However, it is important that families understand that they do have rights, and that there are ways to minimize what gets shared and with whom.  Finally, it is essential that we remind families that they are sharing on behalf of someone else.  A minor child.  As that child grows up it is important that families have regular check-ins with their child and discuss how much and with whom information is shared on the internet.  

Making your PowerPoint Presentation Interesting

People say they hate PowerPoint presentations. This is not news. Nor is it news that what they really hate are uninteresting PowerPoint presentations. You know the one's that rely on the standard PowerPoint template and only use the bullet point outlines to organize their presentation.

How Does One Improve their PowerPoint Presentation?

First, buy some books and attend some trainings (F2F or IRL) on how to make your PowerPoint slides more interesting. Check out some simple graphic design books too! One of the best tips I found was to create your own photos and clipart. When you are using your own images you don't have to worry about copyright infringement or your participants connecting your images to some other text in their heads.  For example, recently I was working on revising a presentation that discussed special education teams. The photos for the slides looked like this:

I'm concerned that this may result in some cognitive dissonance. As a curriculum designer and presenter I know that my participants are learning new vocabulary and trying to shift their thinking on certain preconceived notions. Thus I don't want cutesy pictures either. I want to be mindful that a picture of a boys baseball team might make people think of winning--there is no "winning" in special education, teams aren't competing, they are working collaboratively, no one team member is more important than another.  I also don't want families to think, "my child will never play on a team like this."  I don't think this is over-thinking things, you may however, disagree.  I'm thinking I may have to get a few friends together, hand out some photo disclosure forms and snap a few pictures.

Pictures Don't Tell the Whole Story

Great design won't make the whole presentation (though it does help). One also needs to know the material and engage the audience. It is important to insure that your intent and your audience's expectations match. If your audience is expecting to share their knowledge, you had better have space in your agenda to let them share their wealth. It is also important to know how to moderate and facilitate the discussion so that one participant doesn't monopolize the conversation. You want your participants to leave your session just like they would leave a great restaurant:  satisfied, yet still wanting more. Rather than handing out doggy bags you can indicate that participants can talk to you after the session if they need more information.

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. .  

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!

We're in love...

On Saturday, I posted about Pinterest. Today I am going to show you how I've been using Pinterest for my early intervention work. I began by just looking at all of the different boards out there, and as I mentioned, like Alice you can find yourself in a any number of crazy places!  So let's backtrack and talk about how I found some of my pins.  

Once I realized that I wanted to collect pins that reflected images around early intervention and assistive technology I first searched the kids section. There I found many other images from OTs, PTs, and SLPs and teachers. Then I went back to some of my tried and true websites and started pinning those images as well.  And then I thought, wait a second, I am repinning from others, why not invite those folks to pin to my board?  And you should see how it has exploded, I've added a dozen followers, too!   

Here's another shot of my EI Board, which you can follow here: http://pinterest.com/caseywaid/ei-ideas/

Are you using Pinterest?  If so, I'd like to follow you and read about what you are doing with your boards.

Whew...we're back!

Last month we talked about using Delicious for keeping track of our bookmarks. In the weeks since, we've found that many of our friends are more excited by Pinterest. Pinterest is an app (or application) that can be used as an add-on to Facebook or separately. To use Pinterest, one must be invited by another user. It seems to take some folks a little time to get the hang of how it works, this post will explain how we are using it. Once you've gotten over those hurdles the fun begins!  

Pinning as a way to Bookmark

Pinterest really comes out of the design world. Users have boards, think inspiration boards or bulletin boards. Onto which they "pin" images. You can then follow other users, their individual pins or just repin their finds to your own boards. When you first join you start with some generic boards, onto which you can pin your first finds. You can also create your own boards, with their own names. The fun is watching what is hot and popular (more on that later).  

As someone who doesn't self-identify as particularly crafty or arty I was a reluctant pinterest user. But I can safely say that I have both gotten the hang of it and I'm having fun! My neighbors are both crafty and involved in architecture and design so their boards have lots of design ideas, they separate them out by color or period. Meanwhile, not suprisingly, I am using some of my boards to collect ideas around early intervention and assistive technology, as you may be able to see here: http://pinterest.com/caseywaid/ei-ideas/

Popular Pins

One can find, that like Alice you drop into a rabbit hole when hanging out on Pinterest, so beware! You can view all pins, or search by categories, you can get lost, nah sucked into viewing loads of boards and pins! Then you may even find yourself down at the IKEA searching for spice racks that will make the most marvelous little bookshelves...found on this great blog:  theplanetpink.com . Unfortunately, our local IKEA is out of stock on this lovely item...they pegged me immediately as a Pinterest user, and said that though the folks over at http://www.ikeahackers.net/ had been at this for much longer it wasn't until Pinterest that they really saw DIYers who intended to hack their wares for other purposes.  

Hacking Pinterest

And my use of Pinterest to track early intervention strategies and assistve technology would probably fit under the heading of Pinterest hack. It can be hard to predict which social media site or app will be popular. I will probably use both Delicious and Pinterest for now. Let me know which ones you are using and how you are using them!

Bookmarking

With so many websites, videos, and blogs out there, bookmarking is even more important than ever. We are currently grooving on the new Delicious site to keep track of our bookmarks. The new Delicious allows you to create stacks, or interest areas, identify images from the website, etc., and share your stacks with others. You can also follow others stacks.


Why Bookmark?
We would argue why not. But, O.K., we'll bite. Delicious, Reddit, Digg, and other Bookmarking sites, allow you to create lists of sites so that you can quickly find those sites,even when away from your own computer.  Here's an interesting overview of how to use social bookmarking sites, I haven't decided if I completely like the aesthetic, let me know what you think: social bookmarking know how


What Are We Bookmarking?
This week we were researching Assistive Technology, and each time we found a new bookmark we quickly added it to our stack. We can share our stack via email, links or they can be found by other Delicious users who can follow our stack. We can also search Delicious for other stacks.


What Will You Bookmark?
What bookmarks will you create? What will you include in your stacks?

More on Using Webinars to Inform

Preparing to Present

In our last blog posting, we talked about how to develop an engaging webinar. Now let's turn our attention to the next steps for insuring that your webinar is successful. Once you have your presentation prepared, it is important to practice, practice, practice. I personally don't advocate creating a very tight script, but you should have a loose script for each slide. Your audience can tell if you are reading your script, and to be frank, if that's what you are doing, they'd rather you emailed them the script and let them read it.  Decide beforehand how you'l handle the chat.  Will you, as the presenter, scan the chat and read it aloud? Will you have the producer read the questions/comments at certain points during the presentation? You will notice that I have only spoken about how to minimize the cognitive load of the learner--I don't want to scare you, but the cognitive load on the presenter is quite high. So be prepared. I estimate that the load is twice as high as a F2F training. You will be tired--but if your learners enjoyed your session and got a lot out of it it is all worth it.

Preparing for Disaster
OK, that sounds bad, but really, it is important to think about what you will do if the video suddenly crashes, or if the audio isn't working.  I use two computers whenever I am presenting. I log in to one as a moderator and the other as a guest. That way if one suddenly crashes, I can hopefully stay connected via the second one. I prefer using VOIP to present, but will call-in using a phone line in a pinch. You should be very familiar with how to troubleshoot the audio and video before your first webinar. I also print out a copy of my PowerPoint--I lie, I print out two, one has each slide individually, the other has the outline with the trainer notes. I also prefer to give learners a second phone number and email address that will connect them directly with the producer. That way, everyone on the line isn't listening as the producer troubleshoots Susie's problems with her java download. Once I have my redundancies in place, I hope for the best and if the worst happens I try to keep calm and carry on. Remember, your learners won't know if things are not going as planned if you don't let them know!  

Informing Using Webinars

Webinars
Hosting webinars, and recording for later viewing, is another way that we can inform and support families and professionals. But it is important to understand that a webinar is not as simple as taking your current face-to-face presentation and showing it via the internet. All learning requires that the learner take their current knowledge, examine the new information and somehow combine the two. While webinars mean that learners can do this from the comfort of their living rooms, it also means that they have many more distractions--dogs, kids, Facebook, email. You get the picture. But have no fear, there are ways to grab their attention, keep it and inform them! 

Developing Instruction
Think about what your audience wants to learn. How will you help them combine this new knowledge with what they already know? To be useful, your instruction must meet their needs. Do not to overload them--really think through if you need that animation or audio clip.  Balance using the available technology with its usefulness. It is important to base your instruction on how people learn. Thankfully there is plenty of evidenced-based practice in this area. If you have both words and pictures on a page, place your words near the pictures. A separation of words and pictures tells the brain that it is looking at two different ideas. You are already asking the brain to work hard, don't mistakenly ask it to overwork.

Engaging the Learners
One of the advantages of a webinar, or synchronous learning environment, is the interactivity.  You can post a poll, ask people to raise their hands, answer questions using the microphones or in the chat box. If you want your audience to interact, you should begin your session asking folks to answer a question. Where is everyone?  Are they at home? the office? When planning out your presentation think about natural points where you can check in with your learners. This helps them stay engaged. With a webinar you need to be more deliberate than in an face-to-face (F2F) training. In a F2F training you know if the room is with you, against you or asleep! Online, you've got limited ability to see what others are up to--some webinars allow you to "peek" at your learner's desktop--but it seems too "Big Brother" for me! Rather than stalk your learners, make sure you are more engaging than Farmville! One way to prepare participants that you are expecting this to be a two-way interaction is to open the room early, begin to engage with participants using the available technology. I often open up the webinar room a half-hour before the session, which means that my producer (the person who handles all of the technical aspects of the training) and I are "in" the room about an hour before the session.  We have the PowerPoint loaded, we've checked the audio, the call-in line, etc. And we hope, fingers crossed, that we don't have any glitches.

Web 2.0 Can Help Provide Families with Basic Information

Families Need Basic Information
When families first discover that their child has a diagnosed disability or they suspect that s/he has a delay, they need basic information about how early intervention works.  Let's think about how Web 2.0 can help families think about:

Can Web 2.0 Support Families?

There are a number of factors to consider when deciding whether or not to use social media to interact with potential website visitors.  In order to make that decision it is important to look at the current social media landscape, your company’s focus and your website.

What is Web 2.0?Web 2.0 means that users are no longer limited by what they can find and download (Web 1.0).  Now users can upload and create their own internet content without needing extensive expertise in programming code.  Users can also refashion what they have found elsewhere and link it to their own work and that of others[i].    It is important to recognize that information posted to the web will be repurposed and repackaged by users.  It is also important to stay connected to a site’s users, to identify user’s informational needs and how they are repackaging information found your site.  One way of doing this is to use other social media sites to both drive users to your site and to interact with them.  

Social Media Can Support Families Enrolled in Early Intervention

Welcome!
If you have heard of social media, but haven't had the time to figure out how to use it to reach families of young children with disabilities, this is the blog for you! If you have a Facebook fanpage but you haven't figured out how to make the most of it, this is the place for you! The internet is exploding with new ways to find, share and inform families of young children with disabilities.  Many families of children with disabilities are comfortable with these platforms, but they continue to report that they are not finding the facts or support that they need from official channels. These new platforms can help you to build your brand, support your existing website and keep families and professionals informed.


We'll discuss how web 2.0 is a game-changer, what it means for families and providers, and more importantly, how to use different social media platforms to reach families and share information. We will discuss why it is important to create a social media plan, how Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media platforms work and how to use them effectively. We'll also talk about how to inform and engage families and professionals without violating their privacy rights or spending 24/7 at your computer.