News
Florida DOE Administrators’ Management Meeting
I was honored to present at an Apple pre-conference workshop for the Florida Department of Education Administrators’ Management Meeting. The Florida Department of Education, Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services holds this annual event for district-level Exceptional Student Education directors and managers in Florida to discuss issues, policies, and procedures affecting Florida’s schools. The pre-conference workshop focused on the iPad and its accessibility features. My part of the presentation focused on apps for special needs, including apps for communication and visual impairments.
2011 STAND-Pinellas Accessing Resources Conference
SPARC is a regional conference for parents and service providers that is held in Pinellas County, FL each year. This was my first time attending, and my presentation focused on the resources available on the Tech Ease 4 All website I developed at the University of South Florida. Along with sharing some of the lessons I learned in developing the content for the site while trying to stay true to the philosophy of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), I was able to also demo some of the assistive technologies featured on the site.
2011 State Convention of the Arc of North Carolina
I was one of the speakers at the state convention of the Arc of North Carolina. I believe my presentation was the only one that focused on technology, and I had a full house. My presentation focused on the whole range of Apple accessibility solutions, ranging from Apple computers to mobile devices. I did a demo of VoiceOver as well as at least one feature from each tab in the Universal Access section of System Preferences. Along the way, I also showed off a few apps on the iPad along with the built-in accessibility features. The Arc was great to bring me to Concord, NC, the site of the conference, and I enjoyed meeting people from another area of the disability field (my focus is primarily on visual disabilities).
iPad Training at Florida International University
I was invited by Apple to do a full day of training for the special education department at Florida International University in Miami. It was great to work with an enthusiastic group of educators in my own field. The teachers had each received their own iPads, so they were pretty excited to learn how to use it. We started the day with an overview of the iPad’s key features (multi-tasking, folders, etc.) and some essential apps, followed by a review of apps for different curriculum areas. In the afternoon, I focused on the accessibility features of the iPad and demos of different apps for special needs.
PEPSA Summer Institute on Autism
I joined Apple staff for a full day of training that was part of the Summer Institute on Autism hosted by the Partnership for Effective Programs for Students with Autism (PEPSA). The training focused on the use of iPads to meet the needs of students with disabilities, and it included teachers from Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties (FL). We did the training in four sessions, each with about 30 teachers. It was a lot of fun because there were iPads on hand for all the teachers, and they really had a good opportunity to try out a number of apps that would benefit their students during the school year.
Apple Distinguished Educators Summer Institute 2011
Photo by ADE Les Simpson
For the third year in a row, I was chosen to attend the ADE Summer Institute. This time it was held in Phoenix, AZ rather than in Orlando at Full Sail University. Boy, was it hot! I was part of a team focused on inclusive design and accessibility. I loved my team and over the last few months we have been working on a collection of resources for the new ADEs on iTunes U site that is going to rock! I love that our assets are closed captioned, showing that we are willing to walk the walk and not just talk the talk when it comes to accessibility. I will update this page when the collection is publicly available.
Summer Technology Training at Gulfside Elementary in Pasco County, FL
I was invited to present at an in-service day for teachers at Gulfside Elementary in Pasco County. I did two presentations on Apple products, one in the morning on Keynote, and one in the afternoon on iMovie. Both were hands on workshops and I think the teachers were really happy that they actually ended up with a decent product at the end of each workshop. I do most of my work with pre-service teachers at USF, so it was great to get a chance to spend a day out in the schools. Gulfside Elementary has a great technology specialist in our iTeach mentor Jennifer Hart, and I was also happy to see that their principal attended the training and was really involved with what is going on at the school with technology. Jennifer did a great job of organizing the day, and I liked how she set up a number of rotations to allow the teachers to learn about a number of technologies, including iPads and iPod nanos.
Pasco County Media Services put together this brief video about the day.
Apple Accessibility Webinar
I had the pleasure of visiting Apple’s Cupertino headquarters to record a webcast on the accessibility of Apple products. I had a lot of fun recording the webcast, which had about 600 people logged in at one point. My segment was about 15 minutes in length and focused on the need for accessibility, our efforts to include accessibility at USF, and the accessibility features built into Apple’s devices that have made such a difference in my life. A recording of the webcast is now available.
CSUN 2011
I had a very busy CSUN 2011 this year. To start things off, I co-presented a pre-conference workshop entitled The iPad in the Special Needs Classroom with my two favorite ADEs, Mark Dohn and Mark Coppin (pictured). This was a fast paced presentation where we made a case for the use of the iPad with students who have special needs, demoed the buiilt-in accessibility features in IOS, and shared a number of apps.
On Thursday, I began the day by doing a demo of MagniLink iMax, new screen magnification software for Mac low vision users developed by David Niemeijer of AssistiveWare (creators of Proloquo2Go) Next, I was honored to be invited by Apple to do a demo of VoiceOver at their presentation on Snow Leopard. To end the day, Mark Coppin and I did a session on the authoring of ePub documents for the iPad. We showed participants the step-by-step process for authoring their own ePub documents with Pages on the Mac, as well as how to make sure those documents are accessible with VoiceOver. Below are links to our slides from the pre-conference workshop and the ePub presentation. I had a great time at CSUN 2011 and I can’t wait for next year.
Gasparilla 5K
I have never been much of a runner, but I set a goal to complete my first 5K this spring. This goal was acommplished at the 2011 Gasparilla Distance Classic. I came in 2 minutes under my goal after only about a month or so of training. I hope to continue running and participating in 5K races in the future. It was a challenge running with so many people, but my guide did a great job of keeping me out of trouble. Here are a few pictures from that awesome day.
DARS of Texas Presentation
I was the Apple presenter at a train the trainer meeting of the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) on February 14th. I presented to about 100 trainers who work with people with visual disabilities who are clients of DARS around the state of Texas. My presentation focused on VoiceOver and other low vision aids built into Mac OS X and IOS. It was a great experience to present to this group, because I have been a client of the Division of Blind Services here in Florida and I know what a difference these trainers will make in the lives of people with disabilities.
FETC Presentations
I did two presentations at FETC 2011. The first one was a standing room only presentation on the iPad and iPod touch in the special needs classroom. With my co-presenter, Ezzard “BJ” Bryant, I showed off new accessibility features in IOS 4.2 for Apple mobile devices, along with several apps that can benefit students with special needs. I have posted a brief video from my demo on my YouTube channel. For my second presentation, I covered the process and lessons learned from developing an accessible technology training site, Tech Ease 4 All.
National Convention of the Arc
I co-presented a session entitled “Empowering People with Disabilities: Apple Accessibility Solutions” at the National Convention of the Arc in Orlando on November 4th. The Arc is the largest community-based organization advocating for and serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My presentation focused on the Universal Access features built into OS X as well as the accessibility features available on the iPad (VoiceOver, zoom, white on black, etc.). Even though the presentation was the first concurrent session of the convention, attendance was very good.
Apple Distinguished Educators, Summer Institute 2010
I was fortunate to be invited to the 2010 Apple Distinguished Educators Summer Institute held July 11-16 at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida. Throughout the week of this institute, I worked with a group of four talented educators who are dedicated to using Apple technologies to improve the lives of students with special needs. For our final project, we created a wiki where we hope to collect testimonials of the impact of Apple technologies on the lives of these students. I am proud to report that our videos were the only ones that were closed captioned, a testament to our commitment to accessibility. I captioned the videos using MovCaptioner, a program for captioning QuickTime movies on the Mac.. If you would like to contribute your own story, please visit our wiki.
CSUN 2010 Presentations
I did two presentations at the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN) held March 22-27th in San Diego California. My first presentation was a 3-hour workshop entitled “The iPod Touch in the Special Needs Classroom.” Along with fellow Apple Distinguished Educators Mark Coppin and Mark Dohn, I demonstrated the built-in accessibility features of the iPhone/iPod touch (the iPad had not been announced yet), as well as apps that can benefit students with disabilities. The second presentation was a 1-hr session on the accessibility features of Mac OS X.
Extension Webinars
This past winter, I presented two webinars for eXtension, a national initiative that provides online professional development for faculty and staff at land grant universities. On December 17th, 2009, I presented “An Introduction to Web Accessibility.” The goal of that session was to provide an overview of the benefits of web accessibility (the “why”). On January 12, 2010 I did a follow up session entitled “Web Accessibility Techniques” where I demonstrated several free tools for checking the accessibility of any website. The webinars are archived at the eXtension Professional Development wiki.
2009 Accessi-BULL
Accessi-BULL is a yearly event held at the University of South Florida to raise awareness about disability issues on campus. For Accessi-BULL 2009 I presented a 20 minute “Introduction to Web Accessibility” focusing on five easy tips for making a website accessible.
National Council for Geography Education
I did back to back presentations on podcasting for geography education at the 2009 conference of the National Council for Geography Education. In addition to the beautiful setting for the conference (San Juan, Puerto Rico), I enjoyed having an opportunity to present technical content in Spanish. My other presentation at this conference focused on GeoRSS and its application to the teaching of geography.
