The Living Schoolbook

This was an energetic group of educators from Massachusetts.  Here was what I wrote:

The take away message from this session was that dreams and expected outcomes of parents of students with severe disabilities (as determined by a survey on a listserv of those parents) have very little to do with national and state standards. To align the wants of parents and the standards, this group published a top ten list of tips to do it. They mapped each of these tips to Massachusetts standards.

This was a flood of ideas from this group who has been integrating high and low tech assistance to learners with disabilities since 1974. Step-by-step scripts for phone conversations, ways to use Boardmaker to create photo albums to help kids who can't understand the math behind money, and education of the public about issues for the mentally disabled were all covered and more. I really could not take it all in because I lack the background in elementary education. However, they listed a couple of resources that seemed worth sharing:

Assistive Technology Training Online Project (ATTO) - www.atto.buffalo.edu

The CATT group cited this site as a resource for the law surrounding AT. www.atto.buffalo.edu/registered/Resources/ATlaw.php I found the tutorial section of the site particularly interesting because it described some of the features of some of the big name AT products and gave a HOWTO for each one. There were also links to listservs and assistive technology associations.

Brain Connection - www.brainconnection.com

A site created by the Scientific Learning Corporation to disseminate to teachers new discoveries about the workings of the brain. There are forums, reviews on new products and interviews with experts.

Yahoo group Promoting Aug. Comm. Together
groups.yahoo.com/group/PACT

A very active online learning community that discusses various topics relating to AAC including technology issues.

RJ Cooper & Associates - rjcooper.com

This company sold and email program that the presenters successfully.

Do2Learn - do2learn.com

There was a free facial expression game for teaching emotions to kids available at this site. http://do2learn.com/games/facialexpressions/face.htm

Julie Maro & Caroline Musselwhite - aacintervention.com

This site was mentioned a lot at the sessions I went to. It looks like there is some great info about Boardmaker there as well as another forum.

Speak up project - www.aacsafeguarding.ca

Do2Learn - do2learn.com

Since the disabled population is more likely to be misunderstood by police or taken advantage of by the general public, the presenters ended making sure that everyone knew about these sites which have information and activities to get kids thinking about safety, what is ok and what is not...