Talk tools workshop

Click on the "Course Type" Filter below to learn more. Learners will have 2 accounts:. Please call or email Continuing Education to make arrangements. Contact the Continuing Ed Team for details: continuingeducation talktools. For streaming virtual or in-person 1- to 2-day workshops:. During the interactive portion or "practicum" of the workshop, the instructor will lead learners in applying hands-on techniques and strategies they've been learning about in the workshop. For webinars hours.

Training Calendar. Looking for advice on running remote workshops and online meetings? Check out our post on remote facilitation for advice and tips on designing and running workshops and meetings in an online setting! Alternatively, you might want to conduct a needs assessment survey for the preparations. You can choose from a wide range of online survey tools that can do the job for you.

Our favorites are:. For most projects you take part in, sooner or later you will have an endless amount of documents: meeting memos, PowerPoint decks, a batch of documents you receive from your client and dozens of spreadsheets with session agendas, registrations forms… and the list can be continued.

We all usually find a way to dump all these documents into the right folder on our hard drive but what happens when you need to share them with various co-workers to work collaboratively? And what if you work with different people on different projects? Online file storage and sharing solutions allow you to store all your files in the cloud and access them whether you are on your desktop, phone or tablet.

The good thing is that you have plenty of services to choose from, most notably:. As with many online tools, some of your clients might be sensitive about having data about their business stored in the cloud. The difficulty of working with someone who is sitting somewhere else can be reduced when you see each other or you are watching the same screen via screensharing. The solutions to this were pioneered by Skype and Google Hangouts initially, with some other really noteworthy options emerging in the last few years.

Have you ever had to generate ideas or brainstorm with people who were at different locations? Or even planning a series of workshops with a remote team? Seeing each other while video conferencing makes remote working easier.

Complex problem solving often requires a visual platform to brainstorm and online whiteboards can help replicating the feeling of working together in person.

They are not only useful for preparing your workshop with a remote team, but also for online meeting facilitation.

Online whiteboards offer an endless flexible space where you can collaborate and share ideas. You can create an online canvas and use that as a simple whiteboard for jotting down ideas, or as an infinite board for building a project with a remote team. They allow the creation of mockups and schemes, you can quickly add stickers, write down ideas and leave feedback.

Successful workshops and meetings are built on effective communication and this is even more true in online settings. While many meetings can be done over free video chat software, finding online communication tools that work asynchronously or allow groups to work together over longer periods have their place in your toolbox too.

Do you have an endless to-do-list while having multiple facilitation assignments? Set a meeting with your next client, replace all the missing pieces of sticky notes and wallpapers from your magical workshop kit, checking in with the catering about the planned breaks and lunch for your session tomorrow, prepare and send a survey to participants for your next event… the list is endless when you juggle multiple meetings and workshops that you need to facilitate.

There are a vast amount of task management software tools available on the market. Some are part of complex project management suites, while others are dedicated only to keeping your tasks in order.

You can find our favorite ones below:. All three of the tools above have easy-to-use mobile versions and allow syncing over devices. With either of them you can drop lengthy email threads and out-of-date spreadsheets so you can get your tasks organized and collaborate effectively with your co-facilitators. Noting down various bits of information during a session design process is crucial: when talking with clients, jotting down some personal follow-up steps, saving useful links and so on.

Having your trusted notebook with you is essential to register all the information you need in one place, but organizing, finding, and sharing your notes is easier when using digital tools.

Doing this online has never been easier. There are plenty of apps that allow you to write down thoughts, sync them across devices and share them with your colleagues. Below you can find the most popular options with somewhat different strengths:. Although they differ in the way they work, what they have in common is the most important advice for using any software for taking notes and getting your documents organised: you actually need to remember to use it. These tools really become useful when all your notes are in the same place and you can use powerful search and sharing features.

If you are planning to facilitate a group session that spans more than a couple of hours and you have different workshop activities, theory blocks, team building games and energizer activities, then you likely need to have some sort of agenda to plan the sequence of these activities. If you want to avoid having dozens of different versions of Excel or Word files, then an online editable agenda might come handy. Have you ever run a workshop or meeting where you wanted to quickly poll the opinions of all your participants?

Workshops and training sessions are meant to be interactive, two-way communication helps to keep your group engaged. As long as the size of your group allows, you might use plenary conversations so each participant is able to share and elaborate their opinion on the subject at hand. However, there might be some scenarios where the live interaction gets difficult.

Imagine running a large group session with dozens of participants. Or a virtual session. Having a meeting facilitation software that allows your participants to easily interact with each other can be useful in such cases — for instance to easily poll your participants and visualize the results. This is where classroom engagement tools come into the picture where we will focus on three solutions:.

When running sprints or design workshops, being able to collaboratively work on visual assets for product and marketing initiatives can often mean the difference between a productive or unproductive session.

These free online design tools can be a huge benefit to your live and virtual workshops. Bonus: Tools are only part of the solution and while they can make your work easier, the quality of your sessions will come from a thoughtfully designed set of activities.

The rest is history. I've dedicated my entire career to the TalkTools family and our extended family - the people we are able to help through our methods and programs. My role is not only author and lecturer, but most importantly an advocate for evidence based practices that support the work we do.

She has received an award from the Connecticut Down Syndrome Association for her work within this population. Lori consults with children from all over the world, providing evaluations, re-evaluations, program plans and week-long therapy programs.

Lori also provides consults to local school districts and Birth-to-Three organizations. Her goal in addressing feeding and speech challenges is to improve the quality of life for both the children she serves and their families. Lori has lectured on sensory-motor feeding disorders across the United States and internationally.

Lori holds degrees from Hofstra University and Adelphi University and has her neurodevelopmental certification and is a certified lactation counselor. After two semesters of required classes still not sure how biology is related to pre law and introduction to justice research, writing and reasoning, I was closed out of an introduction to judicial process course that I am sure would have been equally boring and just as much writing!

One of my friends was registered for an introduction to speech and hearing sciences class that fulfilled an elective requirement. Needing to fill my schedule, I reluctantly signed up for the course. The professor was the most entertaining and interesting speakers I had thus far in college.

One class led to another and before I knew it I had a dual major, and the unintended major was much more appealing.

It was easy to give up reading law briefs to work with children! The phone rang and a woman introduced herself as Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson. I thanked her and graciously declined the offered, wondering who would offer a job to someone they had not met. Sara was persistent and talked me in to a co-treat session with this child we were sharing. My journey as an SLP, at that time, was filled with more questions than answers. Some of my frustrations included how I should work with children who did not have the underlying motor skills to support intelligible speech and could not look, listen and imitate the sound and WHY I was asked to write language goals to increase the length of utterance in a child who was unintelligible to the uncued listener.

Sara was the first therapist I met who was looking at underlying motor skills.