Coach Carole :: Blog

I recently visited the Mobile Technology Blog by Sue Waters and realised that my blog was listed there as one of Sue's favourites. When I looked I was aghast, I had not blogged since August. Forgive my absence! Below is a copy of my year in review posting that I made to the Framework Community at the beginning of December 2007. It reminded me that there are many others places where I should be keeping a record of this.

In 2007 I am exploring and implementing the use of an appreciative inquiry approach to group interviews and brainstorming sessions with LearnScope teams across Victoria. This is my learning journey in a nutshell:

February - desktop Literature Review of Appreciative Inquiry (AI)
March - research into the use of technologies suitable to complement AI
April - preparation of a program outline for LearnScope AI
May - training in the use of ZING technologies
June - publish a schedule of AI workshops in the VELs wiki: http://vels.wetpaint.com/ 
June/July - AI workshops begin

The learning that I have gained from running these initial workshops using Zing equipment will be the subject of part 2 of this blog entry:

Appreciative Inquiry Workshops: the middle

When putting together a website, it can seem quite daunting, especially if you don't come from an IT or marketing background. To help make this task a bit easier, here are a few pointers from a coaching call you can hear in Explode Your Practice:

Creating Content to Connect

Most coaching websites include information about what coaching is, how to contact the coach, and past successes. When writing copy for your first site though, think about the feeling you'd like to create as a prospective client reads through your content.

The goal is to make them feel comfortable as they get to know you and that they can trust you ... sort of like you are chatting with them over a cup of coffee.

How much information you provide about yourself is up to you, but a few paragraphs on who you are, how you came to coaching and your personal philosophy on coaching is a good start.

You can also provide links to additional information such as your background, your certifications or other services you offer. By using this technique, you are less likely to overwhelm the prospective client.

Also, don't forget to include a picture or two of yourself. Perhaps pick some that help to represent who you are as a person, your likes, your hobbies, and/or how you coach. These will not only "put a face to the name," but also give the client some insight into your personality and whether they might enjoy working with you in a coaching relationship!

Collecting Information

What types of information should you collect and how much information? Basically, you can go about it in one of three different ways:

1. Email Only: offer a newsletter and collect only a person's email address, and perhaps their first name (fast and easy to collect which may lead to higher response rates).

2. Detailed Information Only: create a form that a person has to complete asking for personal information, goals, what it means to be successful, how long they might be interested in being coached and how much they might be willing to pay for such services (more involved, but it can also be an effective tool for screening prospective clients). See here for an example.

3. Combination: offer a newsletter and collect only a person's email address; follow-up with a page confirming their subscription and a request for additional information. If provided, they will receive an additional bonus gift (fast and easy to collect, but also allows for the opportunity to secure more detailed information if the person is willing).

Whichever way you go, it's good to have the support of an inexpensive programmer to set this all up.

Show a privacy policy prominently, and be up front about what they will receive i.e. don't offer a download and then add them to your newsletter without asking. A great system is to offer a free download, that comes with a complimentary newsletter subscription.

Communicating Niche

If you have defined your niche, explain it in language your clientele will understand and connect with. Then put it in a prominent place on your website. Make it easy for someone to learn about the type of people you work with and why. If you don't have a well-defined niche yet, pick something that interests you, write up a paragraph or two about it and post it to your site. (In other words, at least pretend you have a focus area or specialty. People like to see focus. Before too long, you will be an expert in that area)

Who knows who might show up from that target market and if you find that you enjoy coaching them, even better ... you may have just discovered your true calling.

* * *

If you keep these pointers in mind, you will be well on your way towards creating a compelling and targeted website for your chosen niche. Good luck and happy writing!

* * *

Take action on the 3 C's?

* * *

Some ideas to work on!

• setting goals for eportfolio development 
• planning a data collection project - content, purpose, sharing
• structuring reflective interview sessions
• including multimodal literacies
• introducing frequent 'collect, select and reflect' events

Eleaders are growing in numbers across the Australian VTE landscape and forming, storming and norming into vibrant and effective networks of e-savvy practitioners. Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) continue to encourage and support the development of individual and team capabilities through funded professional development activities. Capability and skill development to complement the growing trends in life based learning is now culminating in the creation of creative and collaborative partnerships. These partnerships enable the development of networks and help to foster effective relationships among their members. Networking is the beginning of their journey towards becoming Communities of Practice.

Network building 

A network emerges from the conversations of like minded practitioners. Relationships based on trust and credibility often foster a desire to collaborate on more purposeful events. Such events form the building blocks for networks.

These are suggested building blocks for a successful network:

1. identify and establish foundations, create guidelines, goals and actions
2. foster network practices and mentoring initiatives
3. schedule network events and project activities
4. consolidate links and share knowledge
5. celebrate - community of practice

Network elements 

Elearning Networks are made up of people (teachers, coordinators, developers, managers) who are focussed on improving their own capabilities and sharing their learning with a wider group of people. This is how a network grows. The quality and momentum of growth is determined by the qualities and values brought to the network by these people.

Networks also require the following essential elements:

• committment
• communication
• cooperation
• collaboration
• connectedness.

The 'Elearning Effect' program for facilitators of networks, combines these building blocks and critical success elements into a flexible series of activities and events.

The 'Elearning Effect' includes:

1. Induction - face to face
2. Goal setting and action planning - online
3. Creating a space for the network - online
4. Communicating with the network - online
5. Eportfolio reflections - online

http://elgg.net/news/weblog/142709.html

This is an interesting video about one student's (Atif Sattar) use of Elgg. From Julie Lindsay's blog:

"I recommend you take 2 minutes to view this young man and listen to his thoughts on social networking. He talks about the ability to be connected to the rest of the world through the learning environment blogging software called ELGG. He talks about not being alone and how he values online friendships as much as offline ones. He talks about living in a country such as Bangladesh where the political instability often makes travel difficult and how online communication provides vital social and academic resources."

http://elgg.net/news/weblog/142080.html

http://elgg.net/bwerdmuller/weblog/141967.html BBC Click Online features Atif Sattar, a Bangladeshi student, talking about Elgg.net. (Click on the article and then 'view the whole interview'.)





We're all really impressed here at the Curverider offices, and thank both Atif and the BBC for the exposure!

http://elgg.net/news/weblog/138935.html

Apologies for the system outage on Elgg.net on November 14th. This was due to a serious hardware failure on the main server, and shouldn't happen again. We are aware that Elgg.net is an essential service for some of you, and as such are using this opportunity to move the site onto the Elgg Spaces infrastructure, which is much faster and more reliable. (Elgg.net is still on the same server it lived on when the Elgg project started, despite getting around 150 times the daily traffic, so it's probably time.) Please stay tuned for more announcements about this.

Meanwhile, we are becoming aware of a number of courses using Elgg.net as a teaching platform. This is fine, but if you're doing this, please drop us a note at system@elgg.net. Thanks.

http://elgg.net/news/weblog/136894.html

http://elgg.net/bwerdmuller/weblog/136782.html We're doing a thought experiment about hosting a small amount of advertising on Elgg.net. The behaviour would be as follows:





1. Logged in users would not see ads by default, but could switch them on in their account settings if they wanted to support Elgg.net.





2. Users viewing pages while not logged into the system would see a small ad on each page.





Note that this would not, of course, affect any other Elgg system (although if there was enough interest we might release the plugin responsible).





We're taking votes: how would you all feel about this? Any further comments?