 Okay. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event, where a webinar, a webcast, an online show. The terminology is up for debate to some people, and nobody's ever come up with what they want to call these things or what they like to call these things. But whatever you call us, we are here live every Wednesday morning online at 10 a.m. Central Time. But we do record the show, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You guys go to our website later and watch any of our recordings. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where all those recordings are that you can see. We post a recording of the show onto commission's YouTube account. If there are any presentations, like there are slides here today, documents, handouts, anything that is included in the presentation, we share those as well. And any websites that are mentioned, we collect into our delicious account for bookmarking websites and give you all those together as well. So you have everything you need after the show to watch it again. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your colleagues, friends, neighbors, family. Anybody who think you may be interested in any of the topics that we have, they're welcome to join us on Wednesdays or to watch any of our recordings. We do have recordings, and Compass Life started in 2009, and we do have all of our recordings going back that far on the website still. Some of the information, of course, could be updated at this point, but we are librarians, so we archive things. So for historical purposes, things are all there. Go ahead and check out what we have. And we do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions, demos of software products and services. Basically, our only criteria is that it is something library-related, something libraries are doing, a service that we think they might be able to use, something that might be important of interest to them, something they might want to partner with, events happening. Some of our topics, when you look at the title, you might wonder, libraries, what? But trust me, everything comes around to libraries in the end. That's my only criteria, is that you have to have something to do with libraries to be on our show. We do have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes come on the show and do Nebraska-centric things or things that we're doing here at the commission. But we also do bring guest speakers, which we have this morning, as you can see from our slides, too, here. To my left here is Linda Reddish, who is an extension educator from UNL Extension Offices, University of Nebraska, for those of you who are not Nebraska people. And you're out of, from Douglas County, right? Yeah, officially, that's where I'm housed, but I have a statewide appointment. Okay, great, so officially up just near Omaha area, but we'll go anywhere. Yeah, we'll go anywhere. And she reached out to me about doing this presentation. This is something about, as you can see the topic here today, co-parenting for successful kids, a program that our University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension Offices has. And it's a great program, and I'm going to have Linda explain it, of course, but specifically wanting to partner with some libraries to get some of this information out, which is what libraries do. We work with children and teens and all sorts of things. I will just hand it over to you, Linda, to go ahead and take it away. Well, good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us this morning, too, and then expressing your interest in learning a little bit more about what is co-parenting for successful kids and possibly discussing some opportunities here to blend the work around co-parenting for successful kids. I'm pretty passionate about our local libraries and utilize them all the time. I have a three-year-old son who is turning into a pretty voracious reader, so I'm pretty happy about that. We were actually there last night checking out books again. So I spent lots of time there, and it was actually, while I was there with our son, checking out books that I sort of had a moment going, hmm, I wonder if this would be an opportunity to reach out to our local libraries, but really think about this statewide because I was sitting with our son, and we were reading books, and I just was looking around thinking from the perspective of our co-parenting for successful kids program and wondered if parents or family or children were interested, so we'll talk a little bit more about what is co-parenting for successful kids, but where this idea sort of originated is co-parenting is for parents who are in the process of separating or divorcing or in that transition of moving into co-parenting, and so it can be a pretty stressful time, you know, even if the separation is amicable, it's still pretty stressful, but the part of me when I was sitting there was wondering if you were a co-parent and you were thinking about where could you go to find some resources to assist your child and in particular books, especially for that sort of early childhood background which is where I come from, how would you find those? And so that's where I had my sort of moment of clarity as I was sitting in the children's section with my son going, I wonder if this would be an opportunity to direct parents and families, so that's sort of why I'm here today, the intention and where this little spark to reach out to Christos sort of came from, just so you have the history and the context behind why I reached out today and very appreciative of the opportunity to share with everyone. I think it's definitely a great thing that libraries could do. Extension offices have worked with libraries and lots of other projects and programs and things as well. Thank you. You should be able to use the keyboard if it holds up. We have a temperamental keyboard here, but we have a mouse back up, no problem. So the goals for today are, what is co-parenting? I'll share a little bit about what are our current trends that we're seeing within our program. Data is sort of helpful to look at and make decisions from, and so I'll be happy to share with you that. And then I'm really hoping to sort of leave some time in the opportunity, so as we first got started, please share any feedback or questions, comments, those types of things, and we'll talk about the bulk of that time to talk about as little or as big as we can sort of think about once you have an opportunity to hear more about the program. So the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, we offer co-parenting for successful kids. It is a research-based class. We developed the course, leveraging research that we knew was best practices around co-parenting and how to best support young children during that transition and their parents as well. We offer it both on-site at our local extension offices throughout the state, and we also offer the program online. The goal of it is really to develop respectful and responsible co-parenting. Our course, as I was sharing, is rooted in research, but the other part of our course is that we are a class that's approved by the Nebraska Supreme Court as a basic parenting class. The class is mandated. It is a state statute requirement for parents experiencing divorce separation or custody. But we are one of the approved courses and we work closely with that administrative office to make sure that we continue to keep our course current, informed, and very relevant for the topic. As shared, our program content is really focused on the child. Actually, our logo right there says co-parenting for successful kids. There are other co-parenting courses, but ours, which is pretty unique because it's really focused on the child and we offer it online. We're one of the few that offer it online. We offer it in English and Spanish and participants can be able to take the course in their own home language. The class is approximately three hours. If they completed it on site, we have an instructor. All of our Extension educators have a background. We have previous instructors and professors from the University who have taught the class and we really work with co-parents to take that time to really reflect on as they're going through this transition, how are they going to be able to support their child to be successful. Every parent, right? We really want our children to be successful and so that's the main focus of the class. If they participate on site, they complete worksheets, we have a booklet and they go through it with the instructor. If they do it online, they complete quizzes and we actually have a journal where parents are able to enter in and answer specific questions to sort of reflect around their transition and their process and it's, again, we have the questions linked to skills and strategies that we know are really effective for helping at that, helping reduce the stress for both child and parent at that time. The other thing is that we actually offer feedback. So Extension educators, there really is another person on the other side and it's not just you're doing an online course there's no interaction with any anyone else. And that's what really makes our course unique. We have some really interesting data from our participants that say that they really value the instructor's feedback. You know, there's opportunities to ask questions. One of the questions we typically get asked about is I'm noticing that my child is experiencing some grief. Can you point us in the right direction for resources and so we're able to do that. So yeah, their journal entries are really reviewed by Extension educators and we really take our time to make sure that we're responding and providing feedback to co-parents who are taking the course. There's a cost to taking the course. We certainly never turn anyone away from an inability to pay and we have scholarships available as well. So and it's on really a sliding fee and our scholarship application is available on our website as well. And I'll have that contact information at the end but the other thing that really makes our program content pretty unique is whether they register online or on site we continue to provide resources afterwards. So it's not just a sort of one stop, take a class and then move on. We continue to link with parents and have additional resources available to check in and we actually have the UR parent app that can be downloaded through the app store. If you have an iOS or an Android system that's accessible and you can sign up for it and you get text related to your child's development regardless of what period of development they're at. So if they're at early childhood it's very focused around early childhood. If you have an infant toddler strategies around how to calm a fussy baby those types of things. Get into adolescence, how do you sort of nurture that autonomy and self-direction and all of those things. And we certainly include handouts and again related resources that have been pretty vetted to make sure that it's good quality information. Here's just some examples if you'd like to see what it could look like. So on one side of the screen you have where it says Nebraska Resources Legal Support Services if the individual is in a high conflict transition we have some resources there. Again these are offered in both English and in Spanish too. So and then on the other side there's the information where they're able to access on our website and see where could a parent go to learn more if they have questions or things like that. So there's an example just some of our additional resources. What we're noticing is an enrollment trend. So when the course first started about 80% of our classes were online but we've been seeing a shift and I'll have some data to sort of show you in the next slide. But our enrollment since 1999 we've had over 18,000 parents have participated in the course and 42,000 children have been impacted by that and we've had participants from 85 of the 93 Nebraska counties participate in it. Here's just some of the data trends that we're seeing. So as I was sharing you know in 2011 we were 100% online then we started to see a shift so 2012 half then you can see in 2014 we were 80-20 that's where we've been and actually I just updated our numbers last week we are actually for 2016 it was 93% online. Wow. Okay. Look at the convenience of it I think. Yeah. And I share this information how does it relate back to you. We have families who share with us and co-parents who share with us that they go to their local library and utilize the computers there to take the course and that was another sort of moment that I was wondering oh are our local branches aware of and throughout the state that parents are actually coming in and taking this course there and using that as a resource so I hope we can talk a little bit about that too how we can for individuals who want to take the class online because maybe the onsite class is not offered in their county where we can direct them if they do not have the computer easily accessible to them. So what are sort of the benefits for both onsite and online and sort of tracking you know here what we see for as a benefit for both parents and children but again it's research based practices and all extension is all about bringing research out into the field and sort of we teach and partner with others around how do you bring that information out into the field where it impacts and extension actually does that with children and families too that's one of the areas that we're really trying to share as we work closely as the learning child team around that for most participants we've learned that this is their first parenting class and they learn a lot of information I'll share a slide a little bit from a quote from a parent who shared said I wish I had known about this before you know very vulnerable in her quote but she did share this was a real learning curve for her and it really strengthened her families and understanding as a parent you know knowing what's best for their children and most parents really do and then we also evaluate our program so we're constantly striving again to keep the program both relevant rooted in what we know as research and then responding to the feedback that we also receive from co-parents we really do take the time to read through their feedback and the evaluation and use it to improve our program so as I was sharing I'll just leave this up for a little bit and give you a minute to sort of skim through it but here's a comment from one of our class participants I wish this course was mandated before having kids yes I sure many parents would think that going into that blind is just when you're not worrying about divorce or anything at all just parenting in general we you know is an interesting journey to go on as a young mother myself you know with my three year old and he's now transitioning to preschool and that's you know he's three and a half that whole thing you know so but being able to know you know how do you best support a young child who might be experiencing grief what are some of the appropriate ways for disciplining and parenting styles and that can be effected even during separation or custody or transition and then the part that's really helpful about this is that very effective common sense materials it's very practical and so that you can take the information and really apply it right away so here's where I'm hoping we can spend the bulk of this particular presentation I am happy to continue the conversation afterwards too especially for those who might be watching this after that please please do not hesitate to call me and have conversation afterwards again this could be as little as working closely with you to identify which books you have at your particular branch so that we can add them to our resources to say here are books that are available within the Bresva libraries that you can go to and you can check out yourself to use or you know if you're open and willing to having information on site and we can refer parents back to that location if they're in that particular county and they need access to take the class online or something you know larger scale where we possibly look at creating some resources to be available and station there so as I shared we know parents are using computers at the local library I literally walked a parent through this like two weeks ago and we were coordinating because she was going back and forth and taking the course and I was helping her through it so we know we have participants who are going on site and using them and we're happy to have them you know refer back to the local library definitely you know depending on what age of their child to deferring them back there to find books and those types of things within our class we talk about magical ordinary moments and one of the things we suggest is to read with your child but those are that that is a magical moment with your child and something seemingly ordinary is actually quite quite magical and wonderful so important for that bonding with the child and keeping things good and steady while turmoil may be happening elsewhere in the family yeah that opportunity to bond and read books and the other part of it is we would obviously like to build being Nebraska we're very Nebraskans and so building on local resources to check out materials and having materials available within local areas and one of the things I actually did when I was there at my local library last night was I looked up the books on divorce and you know and there was a few there were a couple books there but it was it was one of the other things I had kind of wondered is when you want to go and look up those materials you don't just go and say I'm looking for these materials and so how could we even sort of make that question a little bit easier and not so maybe intimidating to go and to ask the parent for the parent and then the bigger thing could be is possibly looking at some additional opportunities of partner whether that's you know sharing the resources we have NebGuides when I say sharing the resources developed at UNEL that we have had instructors we have extension specialists who have their background and family or children and so they review all of these articles it's a very much rigorous peer reviewed and so we could even provide those and have them available and accessible maybe in a little kit of some sort that parents would be able to access when they're checking out books or something like that so again I'm happy to have a conversation on what this could look like but please if you have any questions or comments here's an opportunity to do that and has anybody out there I was actually curious has anybody out there known of anyone coming into your library is doing this have you had experience helping with anybody who has gone through this program and as you said you've got 93% of your people who need to take this class are doing it online so a lot of those probably are in that public library how many how many classes is 93 how many individuals or is that how you count it or how many so access to the how many have access to the course we usually come to by how many have access to the book by person so we know that for all of our participants for that year 93% of them from the class online okay so if anybody has had any encounters with this or any ideas about it let us know in your chat something I was wondering about the partner and you said you do have the onsite still do in person classes would that be something that you would do at a public library or do you guys just use your own offices around the stage so so far we've only been using our extension offices for the most part and simply just because that's where extension offices are and we're educators and they're there and they're there we had we used to have it in I think more spaces but again we've been seeing the shift right yeah so it's this balance but there's opportunities to offer in other places that may be more accessible to families certainly open to sort of exploring that too and what that might look like and I know there people do when you're talking about going to taking college courses or school courses people do learn better online some better online some do better in person I think the interaction online is important though too because we do that here we have classes that we teach basic skills classes to librarians and the same kind of thing it's online but there's always an instructor there that's monitoring every single class and if you have questions and they participate in the discussion boards and things they participate in that as well so it makes it more than just like a mindless screen that you're interacting with and you know there's other people in there yeah it is not passive in many times it's just to sort of click and move it is this back and forth interactive our on-site course we also have interpreters available so if a parent would need an interpreter our class is happy to accommodate that with proper notice we are able to find someone you said you have Spanish have there been requests for any other languages I know we have a lot of other communities that Vietnamese that are big at least here in Lincoln has there been any requests for any other languages or so far we have not not yet we we certainly have it on our radar you know if they're additional where we typically have other languages pop up as far on-site class that's usually we get an interpreter who requests or a different language if it's not primarily Spanish okay yeah cool if individuals are interested in learning more about the program they can visit it's child.unl.edu that's where you can go to learn more information about co-parenting for successful kids a little bit more about the learning child team it is a team of extension educators beyond just co-parenting co-parenting is my particular program area of focus but we have other extension educators on the learning child team and again our focus is birth through third grade but that also includes family we're very focused on that young child but we do everything from offering childcare provider training to coaching those types of things we also have different extension educators who do some pretty unique things online too we've got some pretty remarkable long distance online opportunities so there's a little bit more than just co-parenting that's my particular area that I'm passionate and focused on but and again we have extension educators throughout each county on the learning child team so you can certainly look specific to your branch and see who's your extension educator I'm a statewide appointment because the nature of co-parenting is statewide but there are lots of opportunities to sort of explore on that website looking at the site here I was looking at it on the laptop lots of the different areas the specific things for military families which is a whole other situation to deal with healthy kids and I there's another thing I saw about grandparenting obviously the grandparents have to be more participating in the raising of children just because of the situations we have a pretty robust health and nutrition program so lots of go active get play very robust nature explore program too we have extension educators who talk a lot about going outside into the classroom or into the child care program or into the home program if you're a family home provider so yeah cool here's my personal information so please feel free to email me at any time typically pretty quick in responding that is my direct office line so you can call me there we certainly have a more toll free number for our co-parenting course but if you're really interested in co-parenting materials you can call me and I can mail you co-parenting information to and send it directly out to you we're going to be doing our big mid-year mailing here in June we share a lot of our information so if you'd like to get on that I'd be more than happy to send that to you or if you'd like to talk about partnering opportunities like I said I'm statewide so wherever you're at I'm a person to contact and happy to connect with you so if anybody have any questions about the program or what you would do as far as partnering with them type into the questions section so you can get your questions answered now while you're here we do have one that you just get typed in here to I'll start with well it sounds like your program is Nebraska specific yes of course being through UNL and she says I'm a youth services librarian in Virginia I don't know if classes like yours are mandated in our state but it sounds like a great program that'd be something to look into Shwasa are you aware of any similar programs in other states that are out there yes there's like a few other states do similar we actually have partnerships with two other states who utilize our course material so we are more than happy to partner and they are with actually two other universities too so we work closely with them to provide this information into their own state I'm not as familiar if it's mandated in Virginia or not we do have individuals who take our course from out of state so I've had people from that was which is a second question was could our residents access your program and materials online yep so is the online are the online is the online version of the class restricted just to Nebraska no it is not we've had other people from out of state who have used it so you are certainly welcome to follow up with me we can have a conversation a little further around that and I'd be happy to even point you in the right direction to around who to contact then if you're interested in assessing if it's accepted as parenting course within Virginia so the course itself then obviously is not the fact that we have things that are mandated for Nebraska and it's Nebraska specific with the course content is not Nebraska specific it's broad enough that anybody can use it yep and we've had other people adapt the content and made it a little bit more unique for their particular state and then tweak their resources for their own state and things like that so yeah happy to follow up about that so yeah so share just like libraries share the information it's not like it's copyright protected that kind of thing yeah we use the course material what program does the online course we're on Moodle so yeah you can only access the course content obviously within the class because that particular information you know is just accessible through the course and that's sort of unique to the program but we have resources available online that are accessible free to access those types of things yeah Moodle is a great program there's lots of different online university type things you can use Blackboard and other ones some are easier to use than others we've found Moodle is pretty good that's actually the basic skills classes that we have for our librarians in the state we use Moodle for it's their online modules on different topics in librarianship to keep up to speed we're doing continuing education and things like that don't usually have too many problems with people being able to get in, log in and use it so it works pretty well I think we're happy with it we're even extending into other classes that we're teaching now it's a great platform to sort of get that content and that information so any other questions go ahead and type them in we can ask them now or obviously Linda's contact info is there the question I was thinking of this is through the UNL extension office so the funds to run this program, does that come from the university or is it part because the state is mandating these classes are the supports do they help make them happen would be nice the funding courses offered independently of its own so the course is pretty self-sustaining so there's no budget really that's all I was thinking about the budget to put on the courses and materials and whatnot and each co-parenting class charges something a little bit different if you did mention there was cost but then there is also scholarships because obviously we're a university so we have things that are accessible and available and scholarship and sliding fees they don't turn anyone away from an inability to take a course especially in this case they're making them take it typically our course costs $50 and of course those funds all go back into the program which is what helps the class continue to maintain itself and run the program and all of those different things and you said it's a three week how long does it take to go through it it just depends so it's three hours on site the online class our average says it could take you 30 days to complete it just depends on the individual how long you want to spend sitting there working through it so if you do it on site when it's just three hours then you're done which is a lot of information to take in especially if you can then in the online version it's go at your own pace the thing you could take up to 30 days to get through it all exactly not bad for 50 bucks it doesn't look like anybody has any questions right now alright so then I think we can wrap up any last words anything else you want to share before we do wrap up for this morning show just thank you all for your time this morning and your openness to sort of hear a little bit more about it as I share please do not hesitate to call me if you're interested in any other possible opportunities to sort of think about offering co-parenting information either at your local branch or what I could be doing to provide additional resources available even just to have it there I know many of you have sections with community resources and newsletters and as I said I spent a lot of time at my little library with my son and so certainly familiar with how you have lots of information there available so I'd be more than happy to send you information you can shoot me an email with your address or if you want to continue the conversation after this please don't I'll say this is a great resource for libraries across the state definitely I know there's always new services and programs you're trying to think of how to serve the community and you already know these people are coming into the library to do this and how do you help support them and create and get the resources together and figure out what are the books and the journal articles and the things that could help them and that can take time but Linda I'll do that part for you that's the great thing you can just contact her and say we know people need this in the community give us the resources and then it's just kind of already done and all you've got to do is kind of guide them to it which is what we generally are all about so I strongly recommend you reaching out to her get this into your libraries and even if you're not sure some of these people are probably coming in like you said don't want to talk to the librarian about it necessarily but they just want the resources to know that it's there privacy issue or embarrassment issue especially in small towns and whatnot get the resources out there have the flyers handouts whatever available to them and Linda can get that off to you so that you can just make it available and they can use your library and it's nice to know that you have materials that are sort of rooted in best practices and research too and that's I think too I'm sure it's hard, librarians we don't study generally child development and things like that but you do so you know these are the good ones, these are not so good ones so yeah and again our program goal is really focused around the child in no way that's respectful and responsive and so yes please and certainly if you are interested like you were saying and having those materials there or being a spot that we can refer parents to and say this if you're looking for a place to go and take the class we know that your local library is familiar with that and they are happy to have you come there and use their computers and public library having this university research level of information available to them is a really great partnership I think well thank you alright nobody typed in any desperate questions you had right now so I think we'll wrap it up for today contact info, reach out to her let her know what you'd like to work with her on so we'll officially wrap up for today we are recording the show so the recording will be available later probably later this afternoon I'll give you guys all the link to that I'll let you know too if you want to share it like I said all our recordings are out there free I've got her presentation here at the PowerPoint so you'll have that as well and I have been saving the links that were mentioning the main page for the learning child child.unl.edu as well as the specific sub-page there's lots of stuff in that page for the what we were just talking about today the co-parenting and then a link to the information about the app the UR parent app great there's a specific page out there that I link to as well so you can get more information about that after the fact alright thank you thank you for your time oh thanks so I'm going to grab back control here and escape to the bottom trying to find there alright so that will officially wrap it up for today's show and it will be posted on our website this is the library commission's website and I'll see you at Nebraska.gov where we do have our Encompass Live page off here but you can just Google us so far we're the only thing called that on the internet so if you Google Encompass Live that's it so far nobody else call anything this please you can see it's off of our NLC website Encompass Live so the recording will be available right here these are upcoming shows coming up the rest of May but here is where Archive will be all of our other previous shows are archived this is the one from a few weeks ago we had a recording presentation link you'll have the same thing for today's show available for you I'll send you guys all a direct link when it's ready and available I'm at the mercy of YouTube and how quickly they will process our recording and everything but usually it's done the same day so that will be where those will be next week's show is Nebraska Libraries on the Web I just added this to the schedule it wasn't up there previously you're still working out some details on it here at the Nebraska Library Commission we do offer free hosting of websites for free for public libraries across the state it's called our Nebraska Libraries on the Web program WordPress based we do the hosting it doesn't cost you anything just your time to maintain your website Craig Lefteroff who is our technology innovation librarian will be with us next week to talk about the program so if you are a library looking for a website, if you don't have one if you want to upgrade your current one you're just looking for a change you want something easy to maintain quick to set up and under your own control rather than potentially your city or your county I know sometimes that's where the library is situated check in with our show next week to see how you can participate in the program we've got at least 50 libraries over 50 libraries in the state on the the Nebraska Libraries on the Web so far so please do sign up for that show and any of our other future shows coming up we've got our Mays booked and I'm working on sessions for June and July and future ones of course just keep an eye on our website you'll see all the new ones as I confirm them added to our schedule and Compass Live is also on Facebook you can see up here we have a Facebook link so you can pop over there if you are a big Facebook user yeah no I don't want to log in right now and you can see what's going on on the show you can see here I have a reminder about today's show reminder is when previous recordings are available are all on here so if you are big on Facebook please do give us a like and you will be notified through that route of what's going on within Compass Live other than that I think that will wrap it up for today this is really great I'm glad to get this information out there I'm glad that you reached out to me to share it because this is I think a good thing for libraries more partnerships more things you can do to not have to do get someone else to do the work for you get their information out that's what we're all about is partnering and community and helping with whatever they need out there this is a great program they've already got set up ready to go and they're coming into your library anyways whether you know it or not no alright so thank you very much and we will see you next time on Compass Live thanks everyone