Live Blogging From a Remote Location

One of the things I learned how to do last year was to live blog, from a remote location. First, I just love the sound of it! It's live, but I'm not there! Last year I would log into a webcast every quarter, and watch a live Interagency Coordinating Council meeting and blog about what was happening. I would type up quick notes, add links to relevant regulations or articles, explain abbreviations or add any other tidbits I knew from over 2 decades of following the policy making. 


Today, I put those same skills to work while awaiting the Supreme Court Decision on the Affordable Care Act. I logged into the SCOTUS Blog, opened up a new page in my blog site, got my hootsuite account all ready to go and started tweeting, posting and writing. It was fun to be both "there" and not "there". I was still in my pj's, since the anticipatory discussions started at 5:00am my time. I knew that CNN had called it wrong initially--more on that later--because I was monitoring the SCOTUS blog and I know that those folks spend more time with the Court and understand the nuances of these types of decisions.

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.

Webinar

I joined an online training on Thursday. I have been joining a biweekly webinar group to keep my online training skills up while I work on curriculum development. One thing that I realized during the training was it is a good thing to have a few experienced folks in the training. Particularly during online trainings. This training was on Google+ and Twitter, both platforms that I have familiarity with, though I did learn new things!

Experienced?

This was a hands-on training. Some of the training was on the fly. As the trainer showed participants how to set up a new google+ account or twitter account, it helped that some of us have already done this and could quickly link back to the account so that the others could see an existing account. Those of us who had used the two platforms were also able to answer questions either in chat or via phone during the training will the trainer opened the social media or uploaded documents.

Sharing the wealth

I enjoyed the opportunity to join others concerned with disseminating information and learning new software. I enjoy learning how to use new software and figuring out how to make the most of it for my own uses.

Is it stealing?

One of the things that I love about Web 2.0 is how free many folks are with their information and expertise. I've been researching how to assist people when researching on the internet. For me that has lead me down many other paths--I was the type of student who could spend hours looking up one word in the dictionary, because I found so many other interesting words on my way to the one I wanted/needed.  But I digress. 


Researching on the Internet
I've been tooling around today over on the NICHCY website. I've always turned to NICHCY for information on early intervention and special education. They've also got some great information on sharing or disseminating information and how to research.
Steal This!
The section I love the most, is their page called steal these dissemination strategies. They have model language for social media policies, Facebook posts and tweets and they encourage sharing, re-purposing and linking like this.
So I don't think it's stealing if it is encouraged, but I love that it is encouraged! What do you steal--or shall I say repurpose?  And do you make sure to mention where you originally found your material?

Family-Directed Assessments

The new Part C regulations have been revised to place additional importance on the voluntary family-directed assessment. For some this is new information, for others it is simply a confirmation of the how to perform initial and ongoing assessments. To create an IFSP that truly serves a child and their family, it is important that families decide if they want to participate in a family-directed assessment, who is involved (parents, grandparents, siblings, caregivers, even a neighbor), and how much to share (everything, something, nothing--though this won't really lead to an effective IFSP). The regulations require that qualified personnel use an assessment tool and an interview when performing a voluntary family-assessment.

Preparation

But how can families prepare? Families report that the initial assessment can be a whilrwind of new information and terms. One way is to provide families with a form that they can fill out before meeting with the assessment team.That form can help families to organize their thoughts, and begin the process of thinking about their concerns, priorities and resources. 

Training

Providing training to families on outcomes, what they are, and how families enrolled in early intervention can develop both child-focused and family-focused outcomes can be beneficial. Families and professionals also need to learn the difference between Part C outcomes and Part B goals. It can also be helpful to inform families and professionals about how goals in Part B can be developed that are student-focused or teacher-focused.

Telling Your Story

If we are to effect policy change, those of us who are impacted by policies must be ready, willing and able to tell our story.

Assisting families to think about their story, to identify which part of their story is relevant, and how to tell it in a way that gets their point across, is an important part of helping families to become leaders. If you watch any political debate you can easily see that politicians know the importance of staying on message. No matter what question is thrown at them they give the answer they prepared in debate prep. Family advocates need to learn this same skill. They need to identify their message, hone it and often be prepared to deliver it with minimal prep time.

How does one do this?
The first thing to do is to identify your most important point. For example, I was recently asked to talk about the Affordable Care Act. I support the Affordable Care Act, though I'm still waiting for the benefits to kick in for my family and for insurance to become "affordable". When I was contacted I was told the general scope of the article and had to take some time to prepare my thoughts.

But what to say? Our insurance isn't affordable yet, our son is under 18 so we can't take advantage of the fact that he can stay on our insurance until 26, we haven't hit our lifetime caps and we're the very people who need others to be mandated to buy insurance so that coverage becomes affordable for us. I had to think about how to say all of that in a way that still supported the ACA. I framed my comments by first talking about how rare our child's condition is, how expensive it has been, and how we've used credit cards to cover needed surgeries. Then I talked about how the ACA would relieve our financial and emotional stress because our son's future is brighter now with its passage. You can read the actual article here and decide if I told my family's story in a way that was relevant and got my point across.

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. .