Initial Thoughts About NECC 2007 in Atlanta

First, Wow! I've spent the last two days feeling overwhelmed and humbled by all the technology innovation I've seen going on here at NECC in Atlanta. I thought CUE was great, but this conference has blown me away. I started late and missed the first big day of the conference, so I needed a day to get oriented. I went to the keynote on Tuesday, which was great (most of the highlights you can get by going to the NECC website). A lot of the conference handouts are available online, and many of the sessions were podcast.
The rest of Tuesday, I spent wandering around the exhibits and the conference center. An interesting thing happened while wandering. I had been disappointed searching the conference website initially for sessions related to special education. Well, while wandering, I happened upon an area tucked away, called "The Playground", that had several tables set up with information on accessibility. Through discussion with one very enthusiastic young tech person from Florida, I found out that I had been using the wrong term for searching. I should have been looking under Universal Design. In my next post, I'll be writing more on the fascinating information I learned about Universal Design, which actually focuses on diverse learners of every kind. I have a lot of links to share, but today, I'll just give this one: Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. This is a book that you can purchase, but is available online to read, as well.
One more link I want to share today, for anyone who'd like to get started learning more about Web 2.0 with an emphasis on Universal Design. It's called 90 Days of Summer, and is a calendar of links, one a day, to start exploring. Get started on this, and I'll have more links later!

I've Only Just Begun!

I've learned so much from the Read/Write Web class these past few weeks. But, this is only the beginning. I'm teaching summer school this summer, and plan to use one of my blogs with my students. First, as a way to for my students to think and then respond to questions I may post. Second, as a way to learn and then practice how to use JAWS and Zoomtext (the screenreader, screen magnifier) to access those pages through keyboard shortcuts I'm teaching to the students.
In addition, I want to complete a thought I had had with my students this year: making a podcast with my students related to visual impairments. One idea was to talk about things that are 'pet peeves' for my students. One of my students said that he hates when kids and adults call his (mobility) cane a 'stick'. So, stay tuned and take a look at my webpage during the summer to hopefully listen to our podcast. Room B1

Podcasting Accessibility

I've had to experiment with posting podcasts to make sure that my students who are blind are able to listen to the shows. I've used GarageBand on a Mac, and then converted the files to iTunes files (with an m4a extension), then posted them at my webpage: Room B1
Since the speech software, JAWS, that my students use only works on PCs, I found that they were having difficulty accessing the files. So, using an online file conversion site called Zamzar (www.zamzar.com), I converted the files to mp3, which can then be played using Windows Media Player or Real Audio. My student who is blind and in 4th grade is now able to listen to the files at home. He is more tech savvy than many of his general education peers!
I find that it's a constant challenge making sure that projects we do are accessible to my students. I know that accessibility is also an issue for people who have hearing impairments. A suggestion for teachers who podcast is to post the text document along with the podcast. I learned this through an online class I took about accessibility and the web. I'd be interested in hearing other suggestions to help make the Web 2.0 as open as possible to all who surf it.