Tips for Trainers

When planning and implementing the Parent Internet Education training, consider some of these tips:

During the Planning:

• Setting up teams in a school:

Your local school PIE team should consist of the library media specialist, a classroom teacher, a parent, a student, a senior citizen, and an administrator. You are certainly welcome to invite other participants to join.

Notify your local branch of BCPL when and where you will be conducting your training sessions; they may have personnel who might want to attend to connect with the community, they may want to take advantage of the opportunity for staff development, or they may want to send an additional expert to serve with your group. Consider asking a public librarian to be on your PIE team.

• Consider combining your training sessions with other schools - either one or more of your feeder schools or perhaps a neighboring school on the same grade level.
  
• Suggestions for time lines for offering sessions:

Your PIE Team will determine when during the school year you will offer the individual training sessions. The PIE Training Materials Committee offers two suggestions:

- To spread the program throughout the year, consider scheduling a session during the months of September (America Links Up Week, Sept. 16-23 or Net Weekend, Sept. 26 & 27), October, November, January, February, March.

- To condense the schedule so as not to loose momentum and interest, consider scheduling two sessions during each of the months of September (including America Links Up Week and/or Net Weekend), October, and November or one during September, two during October, two during November, and one during January.

• Recommended times to schedule sessions:

The Baltimore County Public Library has been offering Internet training sessions to the public at various local branches for some time now. Their marketing department has found that adults seem to prefer weekday evening hours over daytime or weekend hours.

• The PIE Training Materials Committee suggests that each session be two hours in length, with actual content slightly less to allow time for questions and additional exploration of topics.
  
• Public relations/advertising:
  
  • Post the schedule of sessions EARLY with your school community - through flyers, posters, PTA newsletters, principal's newsletter, etc.
    
  • Consider issuing an announcement with a letter of interest attached that potential participants could return to your school indicating their interest in particular sessions.
    
  • When advertising the training sessions, be clear as to who the target audience is. For example, "Session 2: Introduction to the Internet: Getting Started" is not intended for someone already surfing the Net; it's for the inexperienced person who wants to know a bit about what the Internet is, some of its terminology, and how they might go about getting an account to begin.
    
• Refreshments
  • Ask PTA to help
  • Local business to sponsor
    
• Child care
  • Chapter I Schools may have funds
  • Volunteers
  • Encourage parents help each other
    
• Some sessions lend themselves better to demonstrations and some to hands-on experiences in lab settings. However, all six sessions can be presented as demonstrations. Many of the web pages can be printed out and used as handouts.

If your team would like to present a session hands-on in a lab but doesn't have one in your school, consider working cooperatively with a school nearby that does have such facilities.

During the Training:

• Poll your audience at the beginning of a session based on the listed objectives; find out what they already know and what they want to know. Consider adapting the session to their specific needs.
  
• Know your audience; don't dwell on any one area too long (unless you plan to continue the session at another time or to extend the time of the session).
  
• If there is enough interest on the part of participants for more information about a particular session topic, or if there is not enough time to cover the designated topics in one session, consider offering another related session.
  
• "Session 1: The Issues" has more information than can fit into two hours; after reviewing the content, pick and choose what your PIE team would like to cover; if you want to cover it all, consider making the session longer.
  
• Don't get bogged down in a discussion about ISPs; participants may want very specific information about certain providers or on how to connect. Refer them to the handout list of providers in Session 1 and then to the provider they choose for specific connection information.
  
• You may encounter a "know-it-all" in your audience; this can be annoying and counterproductive. Try to determine his or her motivation (some are really into the topic while some just want attention). Be considerate of your whole audience and their different learning stages and remind the person that since you are at a different point or level from him/her that you would be willing discuss his/her concern or topic afterwards.
  
• Remember to obtain feedback throughout the year, from both the session participants and from your PIE team members. Feedback/evaluation forms are included with the web training materials.
• Email Della Curtis with strategies, tips and suggestions that you have found successful. None of us is as smart as all of us!