Spirit Lake Consulting Forum

Since there have been a lot of questions about  the objectives on RUSH, I have posted them below:

            I.     Disseminating our research findings on the effectiveness of the Disability Access Virtual Schoolhouse model directly to 300 individuals with disabilities and their caregivers on six other large reservations and reservation communities in the Great Plains; Standing Rock, White Earth, Crow, Sisseton, Trenton Indian Service Area and Fort Peck . These 300 individuals will participate in an abbreviated version of our computer-integrated training that includes only those sections of the different modules which relate to the Individual Education Plan.

              II.     Increasing the number reached by our monthly e-newsletter from the current 359 concentrated overwhelmingly on the Spirit Lake, Turtle Mountain and Fort Berthold reservations to over 1,200 spread among eleven reservations across four states.

               III.     Reaching over 150 staff members serving persons with disabilities and their families through regional and national meetings predominantly attended by staff of Native American programs.

                IV.     Disseminating our results to over 10,000 readers in the target population through publication in reservation-based agency newsletters and the Tribal College Journal.

              V.     Disseminating our research findings via the web to over 10,000 users per month, an increase from the current average of 2,700 per month.

We are over 9,300 visits this month and it is only the 19th. Erich is presenting at INMED today and we were at CANAR in February. I know we were considering the mid-year CANAR conference also for staff presentations. We made the front page of the Turtel Mountain Times with a two-page article on Disability Access (thanks to Willie's efforts).

Objectives are different, of course, from activities, which include the Information Use Surveys and Information Use Interviews, both in progress and creation of the IEP module CD, which I am working on as soon as I type the period at the end of this sentence.