Here at NICHCY we are always striving to enhance the ways in which we deliver the information you need to help
you help children with disabilities. Our Evidence for Education product series is one example, as is the comprehensive
suite of materials in Building the Legacy: A Training Curriculum on IDEA 2004. Our web site, of course, is
yet another. Here we list some of the features and functions we've built into our website -- all designed to make your
visits as rich and informative as possible:
ADVANCED, STATE-OF-THE-ART SEARCH CAPACITY
There's really no overstating the power of NICHCY's search engine. It's as powerful as any in use today -- anywhere.
NICHCY's Custom Search Engine truly is a centralized resource that provides easy access to the large body of
disabilities-related information available across OSEP's TA&D network. This is a revolutionary enhancement that will
provide you access to a wealth of information from one location.
Once you perform a search you'll have the option to narrow the results along a number of dimensions. For
example, if you're only interested in results pertaining to "early childhood" you can choose to limit the search
to NICHCY content specially marked as being relevant to early intervention, or you can choose to search only
results from NECTAC.org, OSEP's TA&D Center on early childhood.
WEB 2.0 ENABLED
Social Content
NICHCY's website supports Web 2.0 functionality as a way to "socialize" content, making it easier to share the
good stuff with others. Users can rate and share specific content, which increases the use of the information and
drives additional users to the NICHCY site. And all content is available in printer friendly format.
Users can also use the "ShareThis" tool to:
- Share content directly with others through Instant Messaging, email, popular social networking sites such as
Facebook or MySpace, and more.
- Save NICHCY info to popular social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, digg, google bookmarks and more.
- Automatically post NICHCY content to their blog.
Use ShareThis to share NICHCY information on Social Bookmarking and Networking Sites.
Use ShareThis to post NICHCY information directly on a blog or Social Networking Site.
Finally, you can use ShareThis to send NICHCY information via email, instant message, MySpace, and even text
for use with mobile phones!
RSS Feeds
NICHCY also leverages the ability to provide RSS feeds for frequently updated content, such as blog entries, news
articles, and podcasts. RSS technology makes it possible for users to subscribe to feeds that are automatically
updated and delivered whenever NICHCY publishes new content in an area of interest. Additionally, RSS aggregator
services such as those offered by Google and Yahoo, are able to receive and present NICHCY content on their
respective sites.
NICHCY's RSS Feed as read by the Yahoo! News Aggregator.
NICHCY's RSS Feed as read by the Google News Aggregator.
Like to know more about RSS feeds and why they'll save you time and energy online? See below for a
great video that explains it all in "plain English."
Similarly, NICHCY's site has the capacity to aggregate relevant RSS feeds from key education and disability
sites that produce them. For example, the U.S. Department of Education and individual State Departments
of Education, research journals, professional organizations, and major media outlets such as CNN and the
New York Times all produce RSS feeds.
Taken together, these Web2.0 features transform NICHCY content into “portable” information that is able
to live outside the boundaries of a traditional static website, ultimately improving user experience and
efficiently and automatically extending our dissemination reach.