Tag Archives: Special Parents Confidential

Special Parents Confidential Now On Spotify

Special Parents Confidential Now On Spotify

We are pleased to announce that you can now listen to Special Parents Confidential on Spotify.

Follow any of the links in this text to find out Spotify listing and subscribe to SPC.

Or, use the Spotify button on our new social media listings on the right side of the main page of our website.

We’re now able to add Spotify to our list of other social media subscriptions including iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, PodDirectory, BluBrry, Tumbler, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

We’re working on getting SPC listed on more audio services, and we’ll continue to update our availability as we go.

Thanks for all your continued support! Be sure to share SPC with all of your favorite social media sites. Just use the social media buttons at the bottom of this posting, as well as on the right side of our home page.

New Episodes Coming Soon!

We’re working on some new episodes of SPC that will be posted soon.

Additionally, we’re planning to start a series of episodes on the Americans with Disabilities Act. We’ll take a close look at how and why the Act was written and passed in 1990, and the ADA Amendment Act of 2008. We’ll go through each part of the Act and talk about what it covers, how the laws work, and we’ll try to dispel some of the common misconceptions about ADA and how it affects businesses, education, and public life.

We think this will be a great series, and hope you’ll find it worthwhile.

Make sure you subscribe to us on Spotify, or any other audio service site we’re listed on, so that you won’t miss a single episode!  And be sure to write reviews for our episodes on those subscription service sites as well, to help spread the word about SPC.

Thanks for listening!

 

Special Parents Confidential Episode Transcriptions Are Now Available

Special Parents Confidential Episode Transcriptions Are Now Available.

To all of our listeners:

When I first launched Special Parents Confidential in January of 2013, my goal was (and remains) to provide accurate and credible information for parents of special needs children. My other goal was that these episodes would be free of charge. 

I’m fortunate to say I have achieved both those goals. However, despite that there is no charge to listen to these episodes, there are expenses to creating the podcast. Hosting the website, time spent recording and producing the episodes, and promoting the podcast on social media, are some examples. During all this time, Special Parents Confidential has been entirely funded by myself. The result is, because of the costs, and the commitments I have with a full time job, I can only produce these episodes in my spare time, which isn’t very often.

How You Can Help

To help lower these costs, I would like to ask for your help. Special Parents Confidential episode transcriptions are now available on Amazon Kindle Books. The transcriptions sell for only $5.00 USD for the one time download, and is available to listeners in other countries as well.  Each transcription is in the Kindle eBook format, and contains active links to every website mentioned in the podcast. The Kindle Book Reader is a free app, available for multiple operating systems. You can download it on the Kindle Website here.

The first episode transcription that we are offering for purchase is one of our most recent podcasts. Medical Advocacy Episode 35 with Teri Dreher, RN, of North Shore Patient Advocates. You can find this transcription by clicking here. 

In the coming weeks I’ll be posting other episode transcriptions. If there is a particular episode that you would like to see transcribed, please Like our Facebook Page. Then you can let me know your preference in our status space.

If you have found any information in our episodes useful, purchasing a Special Parents Confidential Transcription eBook is a great way to help support us. This way we can continue producing more episodes in the future. My next goal for Special Parents Confidential is to be able to provide a new episode at least once a week. Your support, through purchasing these transcriptions, can help make that new goal a reality.

Want to help even more? Please be sure to post a review of the episode transcription on the Kindle page. You can also share this post, and your review, with all of your social media sites.

To purchase your eBook Transcription of Special Parents Confidential Episode 35 on Amazon Kindle Publishing, click here.

Thanks for your support!

John Pellegrini

Special Parents Confidential Is Now On Poddirectory

Special Parents Confidential Is Now On Poddirectory.

Poddirectory 300x250

Follow the link to find Special Parents Confidential on Poddirectory by clicking here.

Poddirectory is a quick way to listen and search thousands of podcasts, including Special Parents Confidential. It’s done in a Facebook and Twitter friendly format, which makes searching and playing much easier while using your favorite social media site.  Be sure to repost and retweet our updates whenever you can!

We’re going to keep looking for great places for you to find Special Parents Confidential, and continue to make finding our podcast easier. Thanks for your support!

The Numbers Are In!

The Numbers Are In!

When I started this podcast a little over two years ago I was hoping to be able to fill a need for parents or relatives or friends of special needs children and adults. I had no idea how many people would be interested, but I thought there would be ‘some’.

Until now I really had no idea how many people have seen the Special Parents Confidential website, or how many people were listening to the podcast episodes. We don’t have a large number of subscribers on iTunes… this is primarily owing to the fact that the file size for each episode is very large. My crazy insistence on having the sound quality as good as any FM radio station is the cause. Due to these large file sizes, it’s my belief that most of the audience is listening directly on the website rather than downloading the episodes.

Well now I have a better idea of just how many people have been checking out this ‘humble little podcast’. My webmaster guru recently ran a site stat report for me, and I wanted to share some of it here. The report contains large numbers of stats including activity, access, visitors, referrers, browsers, and errors (bots trying to gain access to stuff they’re not supposed to have – don’t worry they didn’t get anything). The numbers are in, and very detailed, so I’ll just post the two most important stats: Since we started in in January of 2013 until April 23 of 2015 (the date the report was generated), Special Parents Confidential has been visited 815,493 times; with 600,882 real people hits and 214,611 spider (bot) hits. More impressively, the total bandwidth usage has been 49.45 GBs. In radio terms, that’s (TSL) Time Spent Listening. This number represents both episode downloads and direct listening time.

Pronouncing the words, “I’m shocked” is a major understatement. I think the phrase, ‘my brain did backflips’ is more appropriate. These are far bigger numbers than I ever expected, or thought possible, given that I haven’t really gone out of my way to promote the site.
To everyone who has visited, listens, and continues to do both, thank you so very much! It’s gratifying to know there are so many more of you than I thought. You have my assurances that I’ll continue to produce episodes that cover subjects you want to know about. You should also know that you have a voice in this process too. Please like our Facebook page or Follow us on Twitter so you can comment directly on each episode (we monitor those the most frequently)*. Also feel free to share episodes and the website on your favorite social media sites.
Thanks!

John

PS- if you’re interested in sponsoring or advertising on our podcast or this website, please use our Contact Page, and I’ll send you a more detailed version of the stat report and we can talk things over.

*We use Facebook and Twitter for podcast comments, rather than a webpage ‘comments section’ in order to reduce spammer advertising.

SPC One Year Anniversary

SPC Studio

SPC One Year Anniversary.

One year ago this week I posted the first two podcasts on the newly minted Special Parents Confidential website. Fifteen episodes in one year, about three more than I thought I would be able to get produced, which puts me ahead of my expectations. And that’s always a good thing.

What does it take to create a podcast? As far as equipment goes, not much really. A mixer, a microphone, a phone interface, headphones, speakers, a digital recording platform, and some wires to connect it all.

But Special Parents Confidential is far more than the equipment. It’s a lot of people who helped me get started nearly six months before this date last year. Those people and their contributions are listed on the About Us page and I’d like to encourage you to take a look at the links to their own websites because they are some amazing people who do incredible things.

Most importantly I’d like to thank the 15 people who agreed to take time out of their busy schedules to answer questions about what parents of special needs children need to know and what they do to help. Some very graciously took a long time, nearly missing important events or meetings, just to make sure they answered every question.

When I started these interviews my goal was to create an online support group for parents of special needs children who aren’t able to attend support group meetings. Thanks to these first 15 people I can say that the goal has been exceeded

Here’s the list of those fine people and their episode subjects once again. If you haven’t heard all these interviews yet, please take a listen!

1. Carol Lippert – Support Groups

2. Dan Blauw – Legal Issues

3. Cyndi Blair – Playdates

4. Dr. Oren Mason – ADD/ADHD

5. Kindy Segovia – Assistive Technology

6. Kathy Holkeboer – Special Education Advocacy

7. Stacy Burns – One Parent’s Journey

8. Chris Kenward – Social Issues In School

9. Julie Wiseman – Deafness and Hearing Impairment

10. Paula Lancaster – Special Education

11. Rev. Mathew Cockrum – Special Needs and Spiritual Needs

12. Elizabeth Welch-Lykens – School Funding and Special Education

13. Rabbi Tzvi Schectman – The Friendship Circle

14. Gabriella McCall Delgado – We Connect Now

15. Conny Raaymakers – Applied Behavior Analysis

It’s been an amazing journey. I’m looking forward to continuing with more episodes in 2014 and beyond.

To everyone who agreed to be interviewed, to everyone who helped out in making this podcast and website a reality, and most of all, to you for finding my site, taking a listen, and then recommending these episodes to people you know:

A huge   T H A N K   Y O U !!!!