Presented at the State of Virginia's Parent Resource Center Conference:
CONNECT FOR SUCCESS
Promoting Collaborative Connections between Families and Schools
to Improve Student Outcomes
Leveraging New Technology Tools To Better Support Families & Educators
1. STEPHEN D. LUKE, ED.D. Executive Director, National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NDC/NICHCY) http://www.nichcy.org http://www.twitter.com/drnichcy http://www.facebook.com/nichcy Virginia Parent Resource Center Conference: CONNECT FOR SUCCESS Promoting Collaborative Connections between Families and Schools to Improve Student Outcomes November 19, 2009
94. THANK YOU! Stephen D. Luke, Ed.D. [email_address] http://twitter.com/DrNICHCY http://www.facebook.com/nichcy http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenluke
Notes de l'éditeur
Title Slide: Leveraging new technology tools to better support families and educators. Stephen D. Luke, Ed.D. Executive Director, National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities http://www.nichcy.org http://www.twitter.com/drnichcy http://www.facebook.com/nichcy CONNECT FOR SUCCESS Promoting Collaborative Connections between Families and Schools to Improve Student Outcomes (Like my Twitter Bus?)
First some thank you’s to the Virginia DOE!
We are all indebted to the years and years of service, leadership, and passion NICHCY’s long-time director Suzanne Ripley has contributed to this work.. Thank you Suzanne! Suzanne now directs a new project, Family Support Center on Disabilities: Knowledge & Involvement Network (call them KIN for short!) which offers a centralized resource on the full range of options available to individuals with disabilities and their families. http://familysupportclearinghouse.org/Pages/Home.aspx
First it probably makes sense to provide a quick overview of the National Dissemination’s Center. We’ve been around in one form or another for over 25+ years. In October of 2008 we were awarded another 5 year grant from the US Dept of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs to address 2 main priorities: Develop and disseminate information about children with disabilities and IDEA that will be readily accessible to a broad range of audiences. Provide leadership in the design and implementation of integrated, responsive, and effective information dissemination strategies. Activities associated with the first priority are really nothing new for our center as this is the type of work we have been doing over those 25+ years. Over that time we’ve learned a lot about effective dissemination and in our new project period we have been asked to share some of what we’ve learned. To be sure, we’ll also be consolidating and sharing the knowledge that is currently distributed across OSEP’s TA&D network. And a bit about our name…for many years we were known as the National Information Center for Handicapped Children and Youth (NICHCY). During this time NICHCY’s reputation for providing high quality, relevant, and useful information grew considerably as did the list of organizations, agencies, and other relevant centers linking in to our site. For example, at last count, there were 60,000+ results returned for a Google search of “NICHCY.” So, even though we are now officially known as The National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, we’ve retained the acronym NICHCY for brand-recognition purposes. With the “dissemination” as a critical priority in a our new funding period, we’ve added “NDC” to the acronym (“National Dissemination Center”) so you’ll now see us referred to as NDC/NICHCY.
Many of you may be familiar with NICHCY’s old site. It was one that was initially published in 1997 and served us well for many years, but with the emergence of more efficient technologies that make websites easier to maintain and update, as well as provide a more powerful and comprehensive user experience, we moved into our new site in the fall of 2008…
http://www.nichcy.org Here’s a screen shot of the National Dissemination Center’s home page. You’ll notice that we have some topical categories, “Disabilities,” “Help Babies,” “Educate Children,” “Laws,’ etc down the left hand side of the page, and specific target audience sections “Families and Community,” “Early Intervention Providers,” “Schools and Administrators,” and “State Agencies” across the top. There are also links to read current news, sign-up to receive our electronic newsletter, find out more about the OSEP TA&D Network, etc. I’ll walk through these in more detail over the next few slides – let’s begin by clicking on the link to “Disabilities” towards the top of the left-hand navigation column…
http://www.nichcy.org/DISABILITIES/Pages/Default.aspx Here’s the “Disabilities” landing page. You’ll notice that the left navigation column has expanded to reveal the sub-topics under this category. Let’s now click on “Categories Under IDEA”
http://www.nichcy.org/Disabilities/Categories/Pages/Default.aspx This page describes the 14 Disability categories under IDEA, the nation’s special education law. Let’s click on “Autism” where we can look at some of the new web site features and functions in more detail…
http://www.nichcy.org/Disabilities/Specific/Pages/Autism.aspx Here we are on the “Autism” article page. Here you can learn more about autism, including tips for parents and teachers. Along the top of this page (and most other pages on our site) you’ll see an opportunity to “Rate this Page.” Clicking on the link will bring you to the bottom of the page where you can select a rating and leave a comment. We’d monitor this feedback daily and would love to hear from you! Also along the top of the article is a link to “Share This” which allows you to email this page to a friend, post it to your blog, share via Facebook or Twitter, and even send it as a text message to a cell phone! Finally along the top is a link to “Print This Page” which will load a print-friendly version of the article that you may print and photocopy if needed.
Continuing to the right column of the page you’ll note a “Related Information” and “OSEP Resources” boxes. We’re able to tag all of our content behind the scenes so clicking on any of these links will filter content related to the central topic of the page. Clicking on “Organizations” for example…
http://www.nichcy.org/Pages/Organizations.aspx?PageContext=Autism%20Spectrum Will load a list of organizations directly related to “Autism.”
http://www.nichcy.org/Pages/relatednews.aspx?PageContext=Autism%20Spectrum Similarly, clicking on “Related News” calls up only autism related news items.
Heading back to our home page, you’ll see a link to “Building the Legacy | Construyendo el Legado | A Training Curriculum on IDEA 2004” …
http://www.nichcy.org/Laws/IDEA/Pages/BuildingTheLegacy.aspx … that takes you to a landing page housing a number of training modules pertaining to IDEA 2004, the last authorization of our nation’s special education law. Each module comes with a handy trainer’s guide designed to help you lead trainings on the various aspects of the law, including: Theme A: Welcome to IDEA | ¡Bienvenido a IDEA! Take a broad look at IDEA 2004 with these 2 modules--the first welcomes newcomers to IDEA and the second identifies what's different in the 2004 reauthorization of the law. Module 1 | Top 10 Basics of Special Education Module 2 | Key Changes in the Law and Regulations Theme B: IDEA and General Education | IDEA y la Educación General See how IDEA aligns with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and explore topics on general education and children with disabilities. Module 5 | Disproportionality and Overrepresentation Module 6 | Early Intervening Services and Response to Intervention Module 7 | Highly Qualified Teachers Module 8 | NIMAS Theme C: Evaluating Children for Disability | Las Evaluaciones Bajo IDEA When children are struggling in school, the possibility exists that they may have a disability. The 3 modules in Theme C look at the evaluation process under IDEA, which is intended to determine if, indeed, there is a disability affecting a child's school progress and, if so, whether the child needs special education and related services. Module 9 | Introduction to Evaluation Module 10 | Initial Evaluation and Reevaluation Module 11 | Identification of Children with Specific Learning Disabilities Theme D: Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) | Los Programas Educativos Individualizados The IEP is the cornerstone in the education of every child with a disability. Learn about everything IEP and more! Module 12 | The IEP Team: Who is a Member? Module 13 | Content of the IEP Module 14 | Meetings of the IEP Team Module 15 | LRE Decision Making Module 16 | Children Enrolled by Their Parents in Private Schools Theme E: Procedural Safeguards | Las Garantías Procesales Prior written notice, informed written consent, access to records, just a few of the critical safeguards in IDEA for families and schools. Module 17 | Introduction to Procedural Safeguards Module 18 | Options for Dispute Resolution Module 19 | IDEA's Discipline Provisions
In the lower left column of the left navigation you’ll see a map of the US above the “Phrase State Specific Info” – clicking on the arrow below will take you to our State Specific Info page…
http://www.nichcy.org/Pages/StateSpecificInfo.aspx?State=VA … where you’ll find a range of disability and special education resources listed by state. In the right column you’ll see a “Table of Contents” block that will allow you to jump down to the any section of the page. Below that box is another box, “Popular Searches” which allows you to filter out extraneous information and display just the type of information you’re looking for.
Now we’ll visit the audience tabs which appear at the top of each page on our site. Clicking on the “Families and Community” page…
http://www.nichcy.org/FamiliesAndCommunity/Pages/Default.aspx Takes you to a page where we’ve selected information relevant to this audience.
On the right side of our home page you can follow a link to sign up for our monthly “News You Can Use” newsletter. http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1101994471447&p=oi
And at the very top of each page you can follow a link to newsletter archives.
http://www.nichcy.org/Newsletters/Pages/November2009.aspx Here you can see a copy of the newsletter. In each issue we bring you loads of news in each of the following categories: This Month from the National Dissemination Center It All Starts...in Families...and Communities The Little Ones: Early Intervention/Early Childhood Schools, K-12 State & System Tools Special Focus Topic (Rotates Monthly)
Also at the top of each page you’ll find a link to our publications page…
You’ll also note a link to Spanish language content at the top of the page…
http://www.nichcy.org/Pages/Publicaciones.aspx
Our Search is a powerful and revolutionary new tool we’ve rolled out in the new project period. From our search users are able to enter a keyword and our search engine will return results from projects across the TA&D network. To be clear, we’re not talking about products that individual centers are manually entering into a database, we’re talking their entire site’s content, web pages, PowerPoints, Word documents, Excel files, PDF’s etc. You can see in this screen shot a search for “rti” returns over 1,000 results. Note the “Content Source” section on the right hand side, here is an expandable list of centers across the TA&D Network that have information and resources on Response to Intervention. No surprise that the National Center on Response to Intervention returns the most results, followed by the PBIS site, IDEA Partnership, then our own, the Center on Instruction, and so on. (Note: in order to expand the “Content Source” and other boxes on the right hand side of the page, you’ll need to be working from within Internet Explorer or Firefox with IE Tab enabled. This feature also works find in Google Chrome and Safari.)
We’ve effectively become OSEP TA&D’s Google! Prior to this functionality you’d have to visit each of these sites individual and hunt for content!
If you’re only interested in seeing results from a specific project, you can click on the project name and our search will filter results to display only those results from that project’s web site. Here we’ve filtered results to show only RTI-related results from the PBIS site.
Similarly, you may be interested in only seeing PowerPoints related to RTI. Easy, just click on the PowerPoint link and you’ll receive results from those centers that have PowerPoints related to RTI on their website. In this example you can see that there appear to be 42 PowerPoint presentations related to RTI from projects such as the PBIS Center, the Center on Instruction, the National High School Center, IDEA Partnership, the Alliance, etc. You’re welcome to use any and of all of this information for use in your own presentations!
http://www.facebook.com/nichcy NDC/NICHCY maintains a fan page on Facebook and it has served us well in a number of important ways: By establishing a presence on the world’s largest social network, we increase our exposure to people who may not have known about our website and services – we’ve gone to where the users and potential users are already living and communicating with their networks of friends and colleagues. People can choose to become a “fan,” which allows them to show their appreciation and allegiance your work. When someone becomes a fan others in their network will be alerted to our work. In fact when we ask how people found our site in Facebook, a growing percentage mention that they had noticed a friend had first become a fan. While we’ve been able to track the volume of users to our website over the years, we never really have had the chance to interact with them or even see their faces! When we post content to our Facebook page, it automatically shows up on each of our fan’s page which means our information automatically goes to them, they don’t have to come to our page to see if there have been any updates.
http://twitter.com/DrNICHCY NDC/NICHCY is also actively involved in the “Twittersphere” and has integrated this highly effective tool into its dissemination repertoire. A comprehensive review of Twitter is beyond the scope of this presentation (look for a dedicated Twitter tutorial in the near future), but there are a few important points worth noting – with Twitter it is: Extremely quick and easy to pass along information and resources – simply compose a message within the 140 character limit and submit. No need to spend a lot of time writing a lengthy article or blog. In fact, many refer to Twitter as a “microblogging” platform. Possible to discover, connect, and communicate directly with others holding similar needs and interests. Share or “retweet” information you discover from others with the click of a button.
After you begin to “follow” more and more users on Twitter you might find that it’s more difficult to keep up with all the “Tweets” streaming through...
If you try to read every tweet in your stream as if it were an email in your inbox you’ll soon look like this.
Twitter is probably better viewed as a fountain, dipped into at single points of time.
Here’s a tweet I posted to Twitter on October 22, 2009. A few things to note: The “#” or “hashtag” as it’s referred to, is a Twitter convention that allows you to assign a topic to your post. Other users in the Twitterverse interested in specialed can simply click on the term and all other tweets marked with the same hashtag will be displayed. This is a great way to discover related information and connect with others interested in the same topic. The funny looking url is the product of a url shortening service that transforms long urls into short ones (very important when you’re limited to 140 characters!) Once tweeted, this post shows up in the stream of the 1,149 people following DrNICHCY.
Here’s a tweet I posted to Twitter on October 22, 2009. A few things to note: The “#” or “hashtag” as it’s referred to, is a Twitter convention that allows you to assign a topic to your post. Other users in the Twitterverse interested in specialed can simply click on the term and all other tweets marked with the same hashtag will be displayed. This is a great way to discover related information and connect with others interested in the same topic. The funny looking url is the product of a url shortening service that transforms long urls into short ones (very important when you’re limited to 140 characters!) Once tweeted, this post shows up in the stream of the 1,149 people following DrNICHCY.
The following series of slides depict individual Twitter users who retweeted this specific post. Highlighted on each profile is the number of followers that particular user has.
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Here you begin to recognize the power of the platform
Hopefully you can begin to recognize the power of the platform to reach others and extend your message!
NDC/NICHCY has a presence on Wikipedia as well. According to TechCrunch’s August 4, 2009 article, Wikipedia is the 5 th most popular web site in the world. It’s no wonder that Wikipedia consistently ranks in the top 10 of all www.nichcy.org site referrals.
The National Dissemination Center has integrated two of the more popular social bookmarking services, Delicious and Diigo into its daily operations. Unlike using a traditional browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox which save “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” to your own individual browser, social bookmarking sites like those mentioned here allow you to save your bookmarks their online service. This has the immediate practical value of providing you access to your bookmarks on any computer with internet access. It also allows you to tag the content in whatever way that makes sense to you and “share” your bookmarks with others who also use the service.
You can also do the equivalent of “Googling” yourself to assess your relative presence in the social bookmarking scene…
You can also perform a topic-specific search, not only to assess your reputation in such a space, but also to get a sense of other sites people are finding useful. Here we searched by the tag “special_education” to see what came up….
Here a search for “rti” returns some familiar results, and perhaps others not so familiar. One might care to take a look at those sites that have high numbers of bookmarks to see what type of information is available there. So one can use social bookmarking sites as another tool for discovery. Certainly Google has its value in returning pertinent information, but with social bookmarking you can directly leverage the wisdom of the crowd to guide you to helpful information.
Here a search for “rti” returns some familiar results, and perhaps others not so familiar. One might care to take a look at those sites that have high numbers of bookmarks to see what type of information is available there. So one can use social bookmarking sites as another tool for discovery. Certainly Google has its value in returning pertinent information, but with social bookmarking you can directly leverage the wisdom of the crowd to guide you to helpful information.
While not yet a major dissemination vehicle for us, NDC/NICHCY does have a channel on YouTube. We do bookmark our favorite videos which you are welcome to view. We’ll be sure to add a few of our own over time…
NDC/NICHCY is also leveraging Ning, another social networking space designed to facilitate Communities of Practice. We’re part of a larger CoP intended to connect members of OSEP’s Technical Assistance & Dissemination Network. We’ve established a separate sub-community for “Dissemination” and frequently post blog and forum entries as well. Social networking of this type is a great way to meet & connect with others who hold similar interests.
Due to reductions in funding for our current 5 year project period, NDC/NICHCY has had to operate with a significantly reduced staff. Nonetheless, due to improvements in our website and our implementation of a broad-based social media approach, we’ve been able to increase visits to our site by 87% over the first year of the project. These tools have allowed us to work much more efficiently and have extended our reach to new communities of users.
Facebook and Twitter which have both experienced tremendous growth over the past year. While Facebook stands as the world’s most popular social network, Twitter’s rate of growth outpaces that of any other. Facebook, in fact, is the 4 th most popular destination in the web behind Google, Microsoft, & Yahoo.
Unfortunately, there are many school districts who block the use of social media sites. Perhaps there is a concern that the sites do not present any professional or educational benefit. Hopefully the preceding information helps to highlight the number of ways social media tools can enhance and extend communications and outreach to parents and other community members. We’ve been able to work with the US Dept of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs to convey the features and functions such tools can provide. They were then able to present a business case to their IT Dept to unblock a number of useful social networking sites. If the previous slides were not enough to convince them, perhaps the following slides will!
If there were any question about the educational impact such tools could present, take a look at a couple of Google searches… This one for “twitter education” = 278,000,000 hits!
This search for “twitter classroom” = 18,500,000 hits!
And this one for “facebook education” = 311,000,000 hits!!!
And this one for “facebook classroom” = 19,700,000 hits!
Beyond the inherent ability these tools offer to enhance communications, build communities, and provide professional development, one should not overlook their capacity to instill 21 st century skills. These and similar tools are already an integral component to the current generation of students. Considering they will be the ones to build and extend these tools for future use, it is important to provide opportunities for immersive educational exposure.
Bit if you’ve already dipped your toe into Twitter’s waters, or are considering it, here are a few places to begin…
I want to acknowledge the tireless efforts of an incredibly dedicated staff, who I’ve somehow managed to convince that these tools could be of value. Without them none of this would be possible.