Come On, Let's T21Con!

  Today I had the privilege of attending the T21Con Conference at Illinois State University.  It was an all day conference full of different sessions relating to Assistive Technology.  In the main ballroom, vendors from different companies had stations where they could showcase their products.  At the conference, I tweeted my thoughts and experiences during the sessions that I attended.
  The first session I attended was called, "Reaching All Learners: Apple Tools for Special Needs".  This session looked mainly at a Mac computer and showed all the wonderful features that Apple provides for individuals with disabilities.  If a student has visual impairments, you could customize your computer to have a voice over, zoom, or adjust the contrast of the display.  When you turn on voice over, whatever you run your cursor over, the computer will speak.  Zoom is a feature that allows you to magnify the page you're looking at, and by adjusting the contrast of the display, you can change the colors to something best suited for your student vision.
  Did you know that you can save text from your computer onto your itunes and it will play it back to you in an audio file?  Cool, huh?  This is a wonderful feature for students that may have visual impairments and need to have things read to them.  It takes no time at all and you can even upload it onto an mp3 device or a CD.
 Apple has many different apps that students with special needs can access.  To access them, all you have to do is pull up the itunes store and type in "Special Education".  Tons of different apps will appear and what's even cooler about this is that you can search apps by topic or domain.  This makes it easier to find exactly what apps you want.  After the conference, I downloaded Dragon Dictation and a Sign Language app onto my ipod.  Dragon Dictation converts what it hears into text and the Sign Language app teaches different signs that are very common.  I had so much fun messing around with these 2 apps!

  The second session that I attended was entitled, "Power of Podcasting".  I have never seen or made a podcast before, so this session was extremely interesting to me.  In fact, the whole session was done via webcam.  During this session we learned many amazing things that people can do with podcasts.
  One way to find podcasts is by going to the itunes store.  At the top there is a podcast tab that lets people access podcasts on an array of subjects.  Not only that but by using itunes U, students can access podcasts, lectures, demo videos, and more that their teacher may put out!  Young children can even listen to podcasts too!  The itunes store has many different podcasts tailored to children of every age.
  Many times, people will say that they cannot access a podcast because they do not have an ipod.  This is so false!  Even though podcasts came out around the same time that ipods did, podcasts have no real relation to ipods.  You do not need to own an ipod to listen or view a podcast.  Many times, individuals without an mp3 will burn podcasts onto CDs to listen to in the car!  Easy enough, right?
  A big tip that was given during this presentation was that if you are going to make a podcast, it will be most successful if you drop episodes on a frequent and regular basis.  Some individuals will do weekly podcasts, while others will do monthly ones. The more frequent and regular the podcast, the more successful it will be!

 Going to T21Con was fascinating to me!  The two sessions that I attended were very interesting and informative.  I suggest that anyone who wants to learn more about AT should attend a conference like this.  If you are interested in seeing what I tweeted live at T21Con, please check out my Twitter @jreriks, or search #T21Con to see what myself and others thought of the conference!