[Athen] AHG Conference thoughts

[Robert Beach]

Hello all,

I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts about this year's AHG Conference for those who were not able to be there.  Hopefully others will share their thoughts as well.

Firstly, let me say that it was a good conference.  I hope those who were not able to attend can access some of the session materials.  There was a lot of good info.  Thanks Howard and crew for making the materials available for all of us, even after the fact.

I attended several sessions and enjoyed them all.  Here are a couple that really caught my attention though.

The Stanford session on captioning videos was great (Saturday morning at 9:45).  Sean and John presented a truly fascinating model.  We are looking at setting up a system here and their presentation gave me an idea or two.  I would definitely class this one as a "must review" for those who have any interest in captioning videos.

Jayme Johnson presented two good sessions, but the one that I got the most from was "Accessible Math with DAISY" (Saturday morning at 8:00).  It was my first experience using Math Type and DAISY Pipeline.  Even though I can tell the technology has a ways to go, it was still an impressive session.  I certainly intend to play with these toys some more.

There were several sessions on the Dolphin Converter software.  I attended the session presented by Julie Balassa.  Again, it was my first time to see the product in action.  She did a great job explaining the components of the program and the process.  I like the concept.  However, I still like Publisher better. <grin>

I have been having some discussions with other colleges in our area bout sharing resources for both altermate formatted texts and assistive technologies.  Thus, I found the session, "Assistive Technology & Higher Education: A Collaboration for Provision of E-Text," by Deanna Arbuckle to be interesting.  It just shows that sharing across boundries can be done.

I won't review all of the sessions I attended, but these are some that I would recommend for review by those who could not be at the conference.  Of course, if you have time, I recommend reviewing all of the sessions.  I know I enjoyed all of the sessions I attended.  I wish I could have cloned myself so I could have attended a few more, like Gaeir's "DAISY 101" session.  I guess I'll just have to wait for the DVD and review that one.

Okay, just my two cents worth.  Maybe others will have recommendations on some of the sessions as well.


Robert Lee Beach
Assistive Technology Specialist
Kansas City Kansas Community College
7250 State Avenue
Kansas City, KS  66112
Phone: 913-288-7671
Fax: 913-288-7678
E-Mail: rbeach at kckcc.edu

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