Jacey Tramutt, TAC Specialist and Barbara Buswell, Executive Director, PEAK Parent Center, and Roger Holt, Executive Director, PLUK

In April of 2010, the US Department of Education approached us -- PEAK Parent Center and PLUK (Parents Let's Unite for Kids -- to collaborate with PACER Center to help Parent Centers across the nation use technology strategically to meet their mission.

All Parent Centers have the same mission: to help families of children with disabilities succeed in life, find tools and resources, and develop advocacy strategies despite the many barriers including segregated classrooms, inaccessible communities, and old cultural belief systems about disability. We are committed to changing beliefs like, "You are broken and need to be fixed," to "All people have the right to live in a community free of culturally constructed barriers."

The US Department of Education recognized that Parent Centers could increase their impact through technology and allotted funding for 8 pilot centers that represent the cross section of abilities in the network to test a technology model. The hope is that these 8 centers will become leaders in the Parent Center network, and that eventually all 104 centers will have the ability to use technology to meet their missions.

There is a huge disparity in the network in terms of resources, expertise, and capacity. We have techie centers that run their nonprofits using the latest technology, and we have a few centers that don't yet have websites or even use accounting software. To design a technology model that could address the spectrum of skill in the network would be a challenge. Lucky for us we didn't have to re-invent the wheel: Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission outlined a model and provided us with the foundation we needed to get the ball rolling.

We knew that this technology project was worthy of a significant change in the way we work. We were all tired of endless, expensive phone calls and conferences that had not enabled parent centers to become lean, mean technology machines. And parent centers were asking us for help with deciding if they should "do" Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

We needed a plan that would model the very things we wanted to teach, including ways for centers to:

1. Share expertise, resources, and innovative ideas in a centralized place
2. Create a cultural shift from a top down system of service delivery to a system where everyone is a creator and a consumer simultaneously. (What Holly said in a recent tweet!)
3. Have access to technology information that is individualized and cutting-edge
4. Increase their confidence and competence in using tech tools to support their program work

Attending two Nonprofit Technology Conferences exposed to us to the latest and greatest in nonprofit technology thinking. Echo Ditto’s manifesto outlined the cultural shift we’d been looking for and Civic Actions’ presentation on creating successful virtual teams gave us some needed strategies for working with team members across 4 states. We were also introduced to this really cool guy, John Kenyon (you might have heard of him), who helped us solve our problem with one word: wiki.

Using Wikispaces, we created the Technology Leadership Initiative (TLI) wiki, and invited all stakeholders to be members, including project directors, IT staff, technical assistance providers, and members of the US Deptartment of Education -- a total of 50 members. The TLI wiki is enabling us to meet all of our goals.

Fast forward to Jan. 2011. The pilot centers have been chosen, and the wiki community has been created. We're using technology to teach technology strategies. The big result: we are successfully leveling the playing field, and the players are showing up to bat -- exactly what we want for kids with disabilities, as well.

The TLI is moving the parent center network up and out of its comfort zones and into the 21^st century. Our tagline, "For your mission, and beyond."

Jacey Tramutt works as a Technical Assistance (TA) specialist for PEAK Parent Center, a non-profit that helps parents of children with disabilities navigate the special education system. In her TA role she also assists parent centers in other states in all dimensions of running a non-profit.

Barbara Buswell is the Director of PEAK Parent Center, which is Colorado’s federally funded Parent Training and Information Center, which assists families of children with disabilities. Barb also directs the Region 5 Parent Technical Assistance Center assisting non-profit parent centers in other states be efficient, effective resources for the families in their states.

Roger began a career with PLUK in the fall of 1990 to work with all things technological. Over the years he designed all the data collection/management systems, a statewide computer network for staff, websites, phone systems, and whatever else was needed. He also became one of the first RESNA-certified Assistive Technology Practitioners in the state and assists hundreds of individuals, families, schools, and agencies with technology access issues.