Blogs & Podcasts
Share your ideas & meet new people.
Blogs & Podcasts
The College of Direct Support’s CDS Blog and CDS Podcasts are both available now. These two communications devices offer anyone with an interest related to being a Direct Support Professional or someone with an interest in training this workforce to take advantage and become part of the conversation.
The new CDS Blog is free and open to one and all to keep us in conversation and connected with one another, whether you are a CDS subscriber or a non-subscriber. The new CDS Podcasts will be posted once and month and a tentative lineup of topics is listed below.
Both the new CDS Blog and the CDS Podcasts are accessible at http://collegeofdirectsupport.blogspot.com/ and on the Learner’s Personal page as well.
Kristin Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Research and Training Center is our Blog Master. If you are interested in posting on the blog or have a suggestion for a podcast, please contact her at deanx032@umn.edu
A blog is strictly opinion based. So, if you have an opinion you would like to share you can create your own posts by contacting Dean for help with this option.
Here’s what you can do on the CDS Blog:
- Make your blog postings on topics of interest to DSPs.
- You can comment on the postings of others.
- Hear what others in your field are thinking.
- Talk about your experiences in the field of direct support.
- Talk about what it is like to be a family member of a person with a disability.
- Talk about what it is like to be a person with a disability.
- You can subscribe to the blog so that you can receive a notice whenever the blog has been updated.
The new CDS podcasts will be posted at least once a month and will include first-hand accounts of being a person with a disability, working as a DSP, being a family member supporting a person with a disability, as well as other relevant topics of interest.
Podcasts can be downloaded from iTunes and played on your iPod or iPhone as well as viewed on the web. To do this click on this link: iTunes downloads.
Here is a tentative schedule for the monthly podcasts:
- A Day in the life of a DSP
- A Day in the life of a parent of a person with a disability
- A Day in the life of someone being supported
- Assistive Technology
- Top 10 list (topic to be decided later)
- Traveling with a disability
- History of disability services
- Death & Dying
- Autism vaccine
- Person 1st language
- Re-inventing quality conference re-cap
- Zambia Disability Connection
"Given the budgetary constraints under which disability services agencies must operate today, Web-based training has emerged as a crucial element in any well-designed strategy for addressing the growing workforce crisis in the United States. Since it was launched the College of Direct Support has demonstrated the extraordinary value of bringing online education to the doorsteps on tens of thousands of disability service organizations nationwide. Harnessing the tools of modern technology is the key to building a highly competent, stable direct support work force and the College of Direct Support has blazed the trail toward this promising future."
Bob Gettings
Former Executive Director
National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services
