ATIA 2013 Orlando- More PrAACtical Information

February 11, 2013 by Robin Parker - Leave your thoughts

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In a previous post, PrAACtical Pictures, we hopefully illustrated that we had an amazing time at the ATIA 2013 Orlando conference. We laughed, learned, and loved meeting so many ‘on-line’ friends. So, of course there is a little more to share…

It was great stopping by the Attainment booth and learning about a soon to be released iPad app- Community Success. Community Success has learning tools to teach about community activities (i.e., riding the bus, shopping, movie theater, etc). Learning is made accessible through video modeling, photo-based directions, talking stories, and illustrations of social behaviors. Can’t wait to get this. Everyone at the booth was great but we missed seeing John Sajdak.

Also, we got to learn more about My Talk Tools. There is so much to this AAC application. Try it out with My TalkTools Mobile Lite (free), and Workspace (free 30 day trial). We watched some app demos through the My Talk Upgrades. It was great having My TalkTools as the home page on the iPad. The general iPad apps were accessible through a ‘launch apps’ tab. We also got to see how ‘face time’ integrated with My TalkTools and how it could be used for communicating a visual message (i.e., arrived home).

Lauren Enders took the time to talk and share the very cool app WorkDay Dentist (also reviewed by her daughter). Lauren showed us her organized bag of iPad accessories. We have not stopped ordering new prAACtical gadgets since.

Carol was one of the Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC) Strand Advisors. Strand advisors help select and review AAC educational sessions for the conference. Carole had a variety of related activities.

I had a great experience doing my first ATIA presentation. ATIA really went out of their way to make it easy for first time presenters. There was a ‘first time’ webinar, clear instructions, and extremely quick responses to any emails. The room set up was awesome and the ATIA tech guy was extremely helpful and knowledgeable (yes, I did need him before my session started). The tech company is in the process of a name change. It was Tech Express but is now Audio Visual Production Solutions (I only wish I had the name of the man who helped me but he did not have any cards because of the name change).

My presentation was actually inspired through a blog post I did back in January, 2012. From that post, the ATIA presentation was developed, submitted, and given. Here are the handouts/links.