NECC

[KarenJanowski]

Are any members of the assistivetech ning going to or presenting at NECC? Please consider live streaming or live blogging when possible and share the links with us via Twitter or our Ning.

I won't be there this year but would love to hear from others. Check out the edublogger activities if you go. (They are the "unconference" activities that connect you with other educators using social networking and new media tools.)
Thank you!

[Christi Fant]

My friends,
This is the largest conference I have been to, to date. On Sunday when we arrived, I received my guest badge as my husband and I could not convince either of the districts we work for to send us, we had registered at the presenter and guest rates. I was unsure of what privileges I would be allowed as a guest and so volunteered in order to stay busy. My first assignment was to greet at the international social. I was hopeful that I would meet our colleague who was coming from Macedonia. I had spoken with her on Skype but we had never met. She tells me later that she was in fact there but we did not connect then.
How does one find colleagues at a conference of this size when you have worked together but never met? My husband had suggested that we all meet at the Voicethread booth. Little did we know that the vendors would not be accesible on Sunday. We had brought my cell phone but not Robert's and of course the numbers were in his phone. We ended up sitting in the second life booth and we were found. Robert knew that Linda would show up there eventually.
Collen was not able to make the conference and so the team would be Tim, Linda and Robert. Once we found Linda we found Tim as well.
I learned that my guest status would allow me to attend sessions and so I looked through the program to select. 29 sessions! All sounding quite interesting. How was I to choose? Then how was I to find my way once I had made the choice? It was all very overwhelming. I heard that! Don't laugh you were new once too.
I soon got the rhythm and I was off and running (literally) I seemed to always be interested in the sessions furthest from each other.
I had received an invitation to attend the Cambian session thanks to Joy's posting to the QIAT listserve. They were very informative as I was unfamiliar with Kurzweil 3000 and had limited exposure to Classroom Suite. They were very informative and fed me a wonderful lunch during which I met some wonderful folks from right here in San Antonio.
This is the last day of the conference but I am on one of the provided computers and will need to surrender it now.
I will try to post again soon. With pictures perhaps.

[Christi Fant]

I just read what I wrote to you all the other day and want to apologize. I didn’t mean to write as though you were interested in my personal life.
We were told that we were among 13,000 attendees, out of approximately 50 countries. Some registered for the online version. There were over 500 venders.
I soon started attending sessions if I could get in. Due to the numbers of us in attendance the sessions were being filled and closed very quickly. In fact one of the often heard jokes was if you want to close a session 30 minutes before it’s start time put Moodle in the title.
It was fun to stroll the River Walk and see conference goers strolling either with their lanyards or toting their laptop computers, looking like the collection of techys we were.

[KarenJanowski]

Thanks for posting Christi. Did you see any new tools or software that would beneficial for struggling learners? Were any AT tools highlighted? Seems to me, with so many educators in attendance, this would be a great conference to highlight UDL.

[Christi Fant]

There were displays in the playground on Wednesday entitled AT for IT. There was a Junior High student displaying Web 2.0 programs that he had found or been led to. He was doing a very good job of explaining many of them. Another group of young men were doing a podcast in a language I was not familiar with. There was a large display highlighting Second Life and then demonstrations of reading, writing, math and social studies programs. Not exactly the level of assistive tech that I would have expected.
In fact now that you ask I realize that the only time I heard anyone mention switch was during the Cambian demonstration.
My friend had a light scribe along and so I got to play with it. Nice tool. Serious possibilities there.
During one of the Voicethread demonstrations I saw where a class had made their comments all in Sign Language. I was awestruck. The video option really worked well for them.
The most interesting session I got into was about electronic portfolios. It was a birds of a feather session and so we all had opportunity to talk about the very basics such as why do e-folios to the more intense programing questions.
I did get introduced to Scratch at one of the sessions. I saw great potential in the program.
I would have to say that much of what I saw was beneficial for UDL but very little mention was made of those capabilities.
Perhaps I was never in the right place to hear the discussions that dealt with these issues. Like I said much of my time was spent in the hall after being shut out of the session. Sometimes I would try to find another session but a few times that was not possible as my second and third choices would be closed by the time I got to them. Next time I go to a conference of this magnitude I will have a better idea of how to generate a game plan.