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1. What is My eCoach?
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My eCoach is an online community for educators that is safe, secure, and cost effective.
We do not sell your data and do not have advertising. We never will.
My eCoach was designed by educators for educators to have an online place to keep all of their projects, resources, and to connect with other educators around the world. Over 20,000 educators and others outside the profession have joined My eCoach to use the website builder where others use the survey tool. Many schools and universities create their own communities (called Teams) for their courses, discussions, and sharing ideas. There are
My eCoach was based on a coaching platform so eCoaches can support others in their teams. We offer a train-the-coach program and so much more. More Info
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2. What does My eCoach do?
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My eCoach:
- gives you a personal place to organize your tools, resources, and projects.
- provides opportunities for you to connect with other educators around the world.
- allows public and private spaces for you to do and share your work.
- provides tools for you to publish your work.
- helps you reach your learning goals with your individual learning plans.
- offers training for those who want to develop coaching skills.
- offers coaching support for your projects.
- and so much more
More info
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3. What tools and features does My eCoach provide?
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My eCoach has numerous useful tools and features such as blogs, calendars, surveys, quizzes, website builder, citation builder, individual learning plans, an eLibrary with 50,000 royalty-free resources and projects, a standards and goals an alignment tool, team and reporting tools, tags, friends, groups, widgets, and much more. We have a new text editor, so make sure you check out the New Editor Tutorial
For more information and details, go to tools and features.
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4. What is eCoaching?
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eCoaching helps you get better at whatever you do and guides individuals and organizations towards realizing specific goals and shared visions: - through online training, facilitation and support
- using outside programs and/or the My eCoach program
- in an effective and sustainable, train-the-trainer model
eCoaches help organizations determine their goals, refine expectations, find strengths of each member, choose the appropriate people from their organization to be eCoaches, design an effective and sustainable program to reach those goals, and train and support the eCoaches in implementing their goals.
More info
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5. Why was My eCoach created?
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Barbara Bray originally created My eCoach to supplement and enhance face-to-face professional development and coaching sessions in a sustainable, cost-effective way. She wanted to make sure teachers had access to the tools and resources they need all in one place whenever they want them.
Initially, My eCoach was developed with teachers, students, schools and districts in mind. Since then, My eCoach has evolved to become an online community focused on collaboration, learning, and coaching for organizations and groups beyond education.
More on history and goals
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6. Why choose My eCoach over other services and providers?
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My eCoach is a division of Computer Strategies, LLC. My eCoach was created, because there was no other online platform at that time built on a coaching platform to help teachers learn and attain their learning goals. Now ove 20, 500 people use My eCoach to create, collaborate, and share with others. Some questions to consider:
Are you concerned about setting up a page on certain social media platforms?
Have you created surveys on other survey programs and found limited functions or reach?
Would you like to make multiple websites with different looks?
Don't you want to own your work and keep it in a safe place online?
Would you like to collaborate on projects and surveys with others?
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to copy or clone something you already created?
You can do all of these things and more with My eCoach. With these questions in mind, My eCoach offers unique services and features:
- Everything you need, all in one safe and secure place.
- No programmers or engineers needed.
- Cost-effective- an Individual Lifetime Membership is only $35 for life.
- Trial members have full access for 30 days, then continue with free limited access.
- You own and control all of your work.
- Set up your own teams within the larger eCoach community.
- Customizable tools with cloning and co-authoring capabilities.
- No advertisements on member pages.
- 50,000 royalty-free projects and resources in the eLibrary.
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7. I want to sign up. What do I do first?
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For individual memberships, click SIGN UP on the left hand menu or click here. You can join My eCoach today or sign up for a 30-day trial account. Once you are signed up, fill out your profile and upload a picture. You can learn more by viewing our tutorials and FAQ, exploring My eCoach features on your own, or by signing up for a team.
If you are with a group, school, district, company or organization, please contact us through the Contact Form to get you and your team started.
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8. If I sign up as a 30-day Trial Member, what happens after my membership expires?
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After the 30-day Trial Membership expires, you can choose to join the My eCoach community as an individual for only $35 for a Lifetime Membership. If you want to get your group, school, district, company, or organization started, contact us through the Contact Form. If you choose not to join, you continue in My eCoach as a Free Member with limited access to features.
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9. I’m an individual and would like to receive the added benefits of team membership. Can I join an existing team?
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Certificated eCoaches will be offering free and for-fee teams that any Individual Member can join. Teams may be online courses, book clubs, support groups, and ongoing coaching. You can access these teams by logging in and choosing My Community from the left hand navigation bar. Go to Teams to Join and select a team that you wish to join.*
If you were told by an eCoach to join a specific team or course and were given a code, then:
- go to https://my-ecoach.com
- click Sign Up
- click New Member
- put in the account code in the form to sign up
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10. I would like to do a workshop or presentation at my school or district about My eCoach. Do you have resources available to help?
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Yes. We can help you demonstrate the benefits of My eCoach by providing you with talking points, brochures, promotional material, and handouts. If you would like help, our staff and Certificated eCoaches are available to support you and/or provide a workshop. Contact us with the date, place of your presentation, and materials you might need for your presentation.
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11. Can I receive coaching? Can I become an eCoach?
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Yes. My eCoach trains mentors/trainers/coaches to be eCoaches when groups sign up as a team or on a contract basis. We also offer our training through our Basic eCoach Training and Certificated eCoach Program. Contact us through our Contact Form.
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12. How can I find resources matched to standards?
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First go to the left sidebar to My Toolkit > Standards to see a list of standards, goals, and competencies.
- There are national content standards, professional national and some state professional standards, technology standards, goals like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Education Competencies, and Universal Design for Learning Principles.
- The standards tool is designed in a tree structure. Click on the (+) text to open the standard and (-) text to close the standard.
- You can add or remove any standards, goals, or competencies to your Standards Viewer.
- You can add standards to any website you create using the Universal Builder if you added standards to your Standards Viewer. When you edit a page, go to the bottom and you will see an icon to add standards. Click on that to choose the standard by going to the level that has a checkbox with it. Click the check box and click Save.
- If there is a magnifying glass in the viewer, then there are projects or resources aligned to that standard within My eCoach.
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13. How do I match standards to my projects?
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- While you are creating a project in edit mode, click Add Standards to bring up the standards alignment tool.
- Click the checkbox next to the standard and then click Align to Project to add it to your project. From there, you can continue adding more standards.
- After you add standards, you can use the standards added area to view, add more, or remove standard sets.
If you have more questions, please view the Standards Tutorial accessible from the top bar on each page once you are logged in.
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14. Why wouldn’t I add many standards if I believe they are matched to my project?
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There are many discussions on this topic. Does “align” or “match” mean the project meets or addresses the standard? We suggest you discuss this with your team to determine the expectations for standards alignment.
For example, if a project is a collection of websites about a topic, e.g., earthquakes, then it is best to select an earth science standard on earth structure and plate tectonics. Even though students will be reading the website content, align the project on earthquakes to science standards only unless you put in specific instructions on reading and note-taking strategies. If you add writing standards, you may put in directions for students on what and how you want them to write. It is a good idea to ask someone to review your project to see if the standards, goals, or competencies you chose are appropriately aligned.
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15. Can I use the images and the other files from the My eCoach eLibrary?
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The My eCoach eLibrary is open to everyone and contains thousands of royalty-free resources that My eCoach members and partners have contributed for your use. These resources include photos, clipart, original art, lessons, video clips, audio files, templates, documents, handouts, presentations, and links to websites and books. We also have a group of specialists adding summaries, keywords, standards, questions, vocabulary words, and extension activities. You can use the directory to browse the categories or the search box to find a resource. When using these free resources, please credit the author, photographer, or artist using MLA or APA styles (our Citation Builder will help you cite and save your sources).
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16. How can my project or resource be added to the eLibrary?
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Anyone can submit a project or resource to the eLibrary.
To submit a project:
- First, create a project and make sure it is complete.
- In Edit mode, go to Customize to submit.
- Ask your eCoach or a colleague to review your project before you submit it.
- When your eCoach or colleague approves your project, click the check mark to submit it. By doing so, you will be asked to submit your project to the eLibrary for the eCoach staff to review and make accessible in the eLibrary.
To submit a resource:
- Click on eLibrary from the Left hand navigation menu.
- Click on Submit a Resource to the eLibrary from the top
- Follow the instructions to submit either an image or website.
All eLibrary submissions are subject to the terms of the My eCoach User Agreement. My eCoach Staff reviews all submissions prior to publication in the eLibrary. Approved submissions will appear in the eLibrary within two weeks.
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17. What do I use to create a website?
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The Universal Builder is the builder for you because you have so many options, flexibility, and can control who can access your website. The Universal Builder includes our text editor so you can upload any type of file and embed interactive activities. You can even ask for your own domain name for a small fee. This builder is available to Individual Lifetime Members and eCoaches.
To learn more, log in and choose tutorials from the top navigation bar. For more information, review the Universal Builder Tutorial.
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18. What is the difference between the My eCoach forums and blogs?
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Forums are online discussions for groups of people with a moderator(s) who provides general guidelines. They are used for threaded conversations. Forums are set up by eCoaches as team forums for private conversations that only members of the team can access. Forums provide threaded discussions. Each member has the ability to edit or delete their comments.
Blogs are more like a journal, regular entries, and commentaris by individual members who can keep them personal or publish to the community or the world. Teams can have team blogs that are accessible to only members of that team. Team blogs are a great place to share proprietary materials, videos of students, and discuss best practices using resources and links. Blogs offer ability for others to comment. Blog owners can manage the comments.
Both the forum and blogs use the same text editor.
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19. What is the difference between My Locker and Toolkit?
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Your Toolkit is where you can find all of your tools to build certain projects. My Locker is where you store and access all of your projects and resources.
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20. Why do I need to use the My eCoach Message Center when I have an effective email program?
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Using the My eCoach internal Message Center will make all of your My eCoach tasks quicker and easier. When you use the Message Center:
- Messages, file, and links are sent and received immediately to other members because members are accessing our server.
- All messages are archived in your Message Center and can be saved in folders.
- You can easily connect with other members and your team.
- You can create a Contact List that can work with the calendar and many other My eCoach tools.
- If you are on a team or group, you can send one message to everyone in that team or group.
- You can set up groups in your Contact List from your Friends list.
- You can set your settings to notify you in another email program when someone sends you a message in the Message Center.
- You can use the text editor to add text, links, and most types of files, including podcasts.
- Our Message Center is safe and secure.
- There is no spam or advertisements.
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21. Why do I need My eCoach if I use other tools like blogs, wikis and social networks?
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There are so many different tools that it becomes a timely task just organizing them all. Among the other great My eCoach features, My eCoach offers many of these tools PLUS allows you to use and organize these tools, projects and resources all in one place. No other tool does that. Additionally, My eCoach has helpful features unique only to My eCoach including:
- Cloning projects and lessons
- Co-authoring projects along with planning and reflection tools
- Surveys that easily allow the ability to disaggregate data
With My eCoach and your other online tools, you can also:
- Copy any collaborative text and paste it anywhere the text editor is used, including your blog or Universal Builder
- Have the ability to embed surveys, quizzes, videos, flash games, applets, and other tools such as Google docs, SlideShare, and YouTube or Vimeo videos.
- Set up a private space for your coursework in sites like Schoology and then link to your lessons, blogs, surveys created in My eCoach.
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22. Some of my projects look fine in the text editor and then show up beyond the template once I save it. How do I fix that?
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- Resources were added that are larger than the template. If the original size of the template was 800w, some tables or pictures can throw the text outside of the template. You can change the size of the template of your project to 1000w under the Customize tab. This problem can also be resolved by reducing the size of your resources, (i.e. images or tables) so that they are no larger than 1000 pixels wide.
- There are only a few word processing programs that work with WYSIWYG Web Editors. To avoid this problem, we recommend typing all of your text directly into the text editor instead of using a word processing program. You can also try using Google Docs or TextEdit as your word processing program and then cutting and pasting from there. Please note that if you copy text from Microsoft Word, you may bring over code that doesn’t work well with WYSIWYG Web Editors. You can fix this by first selecting the text and clicking Remove Format.
- You will notice that when you type in this editor, you will get a space when you hit enter or return. You may notice that the space doesn't appear when you view your page. Make sure you save and preview to see if you like the way it looks. For more information on how to use the text editor, go to Tutorial for Text Editor.
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23. What should I do if I am having problems with my browser working with My eCoach?
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My eCoach works best with Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Internet Explorer does not work well with My eCoach or most databases that use MySQL/PHP.
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24. How do I use the Universal Builder to make my website look clean and professional?
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Here are some design tips:
- Go to Customize to choose a template that is 1000 pixels wide.
- Limit your fonts and font colors. Choose one font style, one color and one font size for the body of your text. Limit how many colors and font sizes you use for your headings.
- Limit bold type and capitalization to headers only. You can use Heading styles under the Format pull-down menu.
- Aim to use a maximum of two photos per page, depending on what your site is about.
- Trim long pages and/or make another page under a tab. You can add multiple pages under a tab (called "categories" in the edit mode).
- If you only have one page under a tab, do not title the page.
- Be concise with headers and information with bullet points or use images to get your point across.
- Browse the Internet and mimic text styles and layout of sites that you like and are easy to read.
- Align smaller images to the left or right of text so text wraps. Center large pictures below or above the text.
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25. Where can I go to find help with using My eCoach?
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- For frequently asked questions, scroll through this page.
- To learn more about My eCoach features and tools, members can log in and review the Tutorials on the top navigation bar.
- If this is a technical support question, members can log in, click on Tech Support from the navigation bar on the top right, and submit a support ticket.
- If you are doing a workshop and have questions, members can list the workshop on their calendar and send us an invite.
- If you would like eCoaching or if this is an urgent request for the My eCoach staff, you can contact us via the Contact Form.
Non-urgent requests will be answered within 48 hours during regular business hours.
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26. How do I report bugs or technical issues?
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Members can click Tech Support on the bar at the top of every page. Your request is submitted to our technical team. You will receive a notice saying your report was received and we will do our best to fix the bug as soon as possible. If the issue is an urgent request, please contact us through our Contact Form.
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27. Why does My eCoach have to charge a fee for full memberships?
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For those who want free use of My eCoach, we offer a Free Membership. Our Free Membership has limited access to My eCoach, is free of advertising, and does not have a hidden monthly fee. Our Individual Lifetime Memberships also are free of advertising and hidden monthly fees, but have the upgrade of full access to the great tools and features of My eCoach.
The inexpensive, one-time fee of $35 for an Individual Lifetime Membership allows My eCoach to sustain and continue providing the wonderful features and tools that the My eCoach community has come to love. If you are concerned with your budget, we recommend that you consider the total cost of ownership (and hidden fees) when you adopt any program. My eCoach is very affordable for the quality and quantity of resources and content. Contact us today to see what My eCoach program can work within your budget.
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28. What can I do to help keep My eCoach affordable and advertisement-free?
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The power of My eCoach comes from contributions from our members and partners and by word of mouth. Tell your friends about the wonderful features of My eCoach or spread the word by friending us in Facebook and other social media platforms.
If you like a blog or a resource, take a moment to comment, share it with others, or add it as a favorite.
If you would like to donate, any amount will help keep My eCoach cost-effective and up-to-date.
If you would like to co-author grants, become an eCoach, or partner with us, please contact us through our Contact Form.
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