Perspectives and Information from OSEP funded Projects

Elizabeth Kozleski and Elaine MulliganDeaf-Blind Leadership Meeting November 18, 2010Resources and Strategies for Collaboration and Networking

Implementing strategies to improve connectivityFacebook page

Creating a Facebook page (not group) allows you to post resources and information that can be easily accessed by social media users. This can broaden your reach and engage younger, nontraditional community members.2Implementing strategies to improve connectivityBlogs

Writing blogs (or having collaborators write them) helps share best practices and research broadly. Readers can use the blogs to disseminate information to their own networks, as well as to engage in conversations on topics through the comments feature.3Implementing strategies to improve connectivity

Searchable Resource Collections

Technology to inform decision makingGoogle Analytics

If youre not already using Google Analytics to track your website usage, this is a great tool. You can see where your traffic is coming from (other sites in your network, search engines), analyze where your users spend their time, and use this information to guide decisions on what products or supports to develop to meet your users needs and interests.5Technology to inform decision making

Zoomerang or Constant Contact SurveysThere are two good sites for creating and disseminating surveys -- Zoomerang is free, and Constant Contact is fairly inexpensive for small networks. Surveys can help you evaluate the quality of your products, get user feedback on what resources you should develop, and even manage conference presentation proposals.6Technology to inform decision makingData Maps

Publicly available data from IDEA Data, NCEO, and other federal data sites can be used to build Google maps or other formats to show whats happening in your state, region, or nation-wide with disability identification and service delivery.7Engaging partners & stakeholdersDaily Facebook page updates/feed to website

Having a Facebook page wont do much for your traffic unless you post regularly and connect with new users. We do this by setting a daily practice of posting something on our page from our network this is an excellent way of prompting yourself to look at each others websites. Also, if you build a Facebook feed on your webpage, you will have new content on the website daily, which increases search engine traffic to your site.8Engaging partners & stakeholdersResource of the Week/Day

Another way to keep your website content fresh and to increase usage of your resources is to have a Resource of the Week (or Day, if youre that ambitious) on your front page. Use this to highlight useful tools in your collection and offer a little guidance on how to use them.9Engaging partners & stakeholdersConstant Contact

The Constant Contact dissemination service that we showed you for sending out surveys also offers a very easy to use, information-rich email function. You can design announcements to go out to lists of contacts and track who opens them and 10Developing structures for supporting collaboration

Wikis and Discussion ForumsFor more information contact NIUSI-LeadScapeniusileadscape@asu.edu