#ATIA2010 - Favorite Products

This will be a short post, just wanted to share some of my favorite products from the Vendor Hall.

Satalight - SMART Board on height & tilt adjustable stand.  You can access with any type of touch - fingertip, fist, and can take a hit (don't ask them to demonstrate, it's quite impressive!) It's downside is that it does use a projector and can create shadows.  Can include a switch interface, laptop arm, and speakers. - Satalight.

Tap-it - another SMART Board solution also on a height & tilt adjustable stand.  It is LCD screen, that accepts touch input.  It is able to distinguish between intended and unintended touch - so a student could lean on the board with one hand and still access the activity with another. One drawback is that you have to use an isolated finger to access. - Tap-it

News-2-You - a great weekly, current events newspaper modified with symbols.  Very accessible, text-to-speech version available online, with tons of extension activities - News-2-You

Aimee Solutions - amazing sets of curricular, theme based materials.  This year started selling sets of computer activites based on Life Skills adapted using SymbolStix. - Aimee Solutions

Conceptua Math - I'll be posting more about this website later, but it is my pick for the best product of ATIA.  Check out more here - Conceptua Math

Patrick


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#ATIA2010 - Friday

I got to start today off with another presentation - Help with Those Classrooms.  I had the opportunity to present with the ladies from Aimee Solutions, and special education professionals from several local districts.  We had to chance to share how we are using the Take and Teach Language kits in our classrooms.  I think some of the best parts of what we shared were how other professionals like SLP's and Social Workers use the kits on a regular basis.  Please take a moment and check all the offerings from Aimee Solutions.

9:20 - Sorting Through Portable Reading System - Kelly Fonner, Scott Marfilius, Donna McNear - This session focused on looking at all the options available on the many commercial and educational portable text readers.  It was extremely thorough and looked at options for both those with and without visual impairments.

During the vendor time today I came across the best product of ATIA - Conceptua Math - Developed by Arjan Kalsa, who also created Intellitools Classroom Suite.  It's a set of activities designed to teach about fractions, and so much more.  The first question I asked Arjan was "why fractions?" and the answer was surprising.  Basically, the understanding of fractions includes all the basic math skills that students need.  I was very impressed with the activities, software, data collection, and concept.  I'll be blogging more about this product soon.  It deserves more than a paragraph.  Until then, please check out the website - Conceptua Math.

During the afternoon I attended a great session by Lisa Lajoe-Smith - Math Strategies and Beyond.  A very engaging presenter, who informed us that in Kansas you cannot call them dice, they are random number generators (wouldn't want to promote gambling!).  She share very practical and easy ways to encourage and engage students in math lessons.  Lots of great ideas!  Make sure to check out my notes for some of the ideas.

Probably the best session so far was a very impromptu one, and AT Smackdown!  Karen Janowski of EdTech Solutions put together this very informal session.  It was an open mic, and anyone who had an idea or tool could get up and talk about it for 2 min.  There were a ton of great resources shared, too many to count.  We have audio from the session and I'll be posting it as soon as I get it transcribed.  Look forward to a post with lots of ideas!!!

Still a few more sessions tomorrow, so look for one more post.  Don't forget if you are interested in seeing notes from the sessions I've attended you can find them here - ATIA notes.

Patrick


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#ATIA2010 - Thursday

Day 1 of ATIA is done and it went very well.  I started by giving my presentation - Bridging the Literacy Gap.  I wasn't sure how well an 8:00 session would be attended, but I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout.  Since this was the first time I had given the presentation, I have a few things to fix, but overall I was please with how it went, and the questions that were asked.

9:20-Working with Video-This session was led by Dan Herlihy.  While I've heard Dan's name before, this was my first chance to see him talk, and I was impressed.  He did a great job of sharing how to work with video, use different codecs, and gave great tools for converting videos!  He encouraged everyone to keep trying until different formats until it works - just play! (such a great message for us and our kids)

10:30 - One of the nice features of this conference is uninterrupted vendor time, that being said, 2.5 hours is a bit much.  The next sessions did not start until 1:15, so it was quite a break in the middle of the day.

1:15-Visual Strategies-This was a great session led by 2 wonderful professionals from Barrington School District here in the Chicago Burbs.  They had a lot of great ideas for creating schedules, visual supports, using color, and many other things.  They did a great job and while much of the discussion I knew, I did get some great resources for things to try!

2:35-Breaking all Barriers-Ira Socol, SpeEd Change, led a great session about changing our attitudes and eliminating barriers that keep kids from achieving.  He shared some great resources for Firefox Add-Ons that allow it to be more accessible to more students.  He share some great ideas and you can find it all here - ATIA 2010

I'm looking forward to more great sessions today, I'll presenting in just a few minutes with the lovely ladies from Aimee Solutions - Help for those Classrooms.   I'll keep posting my notes here.


Patrick

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Bridging the Literacy Gap

I had the opportunity to speak today at ATIA in Chicago. My presentation was titled "Bridging the Literacy Gap". I have posted the prezi (one of my favorite tools!) for anyone to view - http://bit.ly/bridgingtheliteracygap. Please feel free to view and share!

Patrick

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Facebook Groups

Recently Facebook has added a great feature called groups. Since many people are on Facebook already, it made sense to start some groups to support assistive technology. Check out these groups:

Assistive Technology

Boardmaker Sharing

Intellitools Classroom Suite

iTeach Special Education - iDevices in SpEd


Patrick


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ATIA Chicago 2010-Notes

For anyone who is interested, I will be sharing my notes from sessions I am attending at ATIA this week.  The notes are via a Google Docs Folder here:  ATIA Notes 2010.  I will also do my best to blog about what I've seen at the conference, cool tools, etc...  Look for new posts Thursday & Friday!

Patrick

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ATIA 2010

The Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) will be holding a conference in Schaumburg, IL.  The conference will be next week October 27-30.  They are again offering a deal for parents of children of disabilities, you can attend the entire conference for only $200 (full registration is $475)-registration form.  Alternately you can get a free pass to the exhibit hall here - Free Exhibit Hall Pass.

If you get a chance to attend, please feel free to look me up!  I'll be presenting Thursday at 8:00, a session called Bridging the Literacy Gap in Utopia D and Friday at 9:00 - Help for those classrooms in Utopia C.  If you are on twitter follow the hashtag #atia2010 for updates from the conference!

Patrick


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Blio eReader

Way back in January, when the iPad was still a twinkle in Steve Jobs eye, I talked about a piece of software called Blio.  After many months, Blio is available for download.  Blio is an eReader that allows for natural formatting of the text.  In fact, Blio looks exactly like a book, even a picture book!  I was very pleased by the look and feel of the books that I got as part of the free download.

Blio is also meant to allow text-to-speech so books can be read.  This is probably one of the features I was most excited about.  The text-to-speech is a decent voice, has highlighting, and is not difficult to listen too. Unfortunately, Blio is hampered.  Text from my computer was read fine, but the free children's book did not allow text-to-speech, my guess is that the publisher would not allow it.  This is very similar to the text-to-speech issues with the Kindle.  Just frustrating to see that publishers are still limiting the ability for all persons to access eText.

Blio also features a bookstore to purchase books directly through it.  Many of them best sellers.  You can also print documents from your Windows computer, using the XPS printer installed on most Windows machines, and it can read PDF, Doc, and  As of right now Blio is only available for Windows, but is soon to be released for iOS, Android, and Blackberry.  You can sync your Blio books between up to 5 devices.

While I am still excited for this program, I hope they get out all the versions very soon, and fix the text-to-speech.

Patrick


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Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

• Microcontroller Fabric Tone Generator in C-code

  tags: microcontroller fabric tone generator music education make

• App Hall of Fame | An archive of the best mobile apps | sponsored by Flurry

  tags: app halloffame ios iphone ipad ipodtouch education bestof apps

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

• Stupeflix Studio - Video creation made easy

  tags: web2.0 stupeflix remix create share apps tools education video

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

100 Blogs that will make you a better teacher

This blog, Teaching All Students, has been included in a list of 100 blogs about education.  I took a quick list and saw some other good ones on the list like Freetech4teachers, Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs and SMD Teacher.  Check out all the blogs here - 100 blogs that will make you a better teacher

Patrick


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Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

• Cool Cat Teacher Blog: iHave Wise Eyes in my Classroom: WIN A FREE iPad contest!

  tags: cat blog contest cool teacher free education

• Progressive Phonics - Progressive Phonics

  tags: phonics progressive reading free education literacy teaching phonemicawareness tools

• Home - DaveBanesAccess

  tags: assistive technology AT assistivetechnology education home

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.