Meeting Minutes May 2014

Physical and Health Disabilities (OI) Consortium Meeting

Judy Bytheway, Renee Dawson and Eva Parks

May 15, 2014

Topics discussed:

The group is considering teleconferencing, skyping, satellite meetings, webinars for increased participation

Judy is exploring more advanced web page access

On site meetings can be alternating districts hosting

PLUs can be provided with descriptions and agendas given to the State Dept. 3 weeks ahead of time, etc.

The same Consortium in California does a bi-annual conference with speakers

They pay dues (around $25/annually)

Tour – Tools for Life

June 2 – 5 = IDEAS and Tools for Life Conference

Lots of Resources and PLUs

Tools for Life has Webinars the last Wednesday of every month (see website) –

Sign up to have notices sent to your email

Tools for Life has a loaning library, which gives people a chance to try out solutions for AT, seating, positioning, etc.

Demonstrations given:

Laser keyboard – is a like regular keyboard (runs a little below $200 around $179 on Brookstone)

Good to use with mobile tablets, Iphone, laptop, whatever has Bluetooth capability

Google Glass (costs $1500) – Phone compatible device

Pair of glasses with a display in front of your eyes

Built in voice recognition

With the Command “OK Glass”:

It brings up a list of commands you can scroll through by tipping your head up and down

When you wink it will take a picture

Anything you can do on your phone you can do with Google Glass – make calls, texts, etc.

It also has a swipe pad on the side you can use if voice recognition is not identifying, or can use

If you have low vision in your right eye, this would not be a useful tool

 AMAC is a membership program

For 8-12 individuals no fee, but if you need services there is a fee for services

Tools for Life does the AT evals for AMAC

You get a written comprehensive report (eval is $450 plus travel)

No fee for demonstration or loan for equipment, or calls to brainstorm (can also answer through Skype)

AMAC – has school memberships

Online systems, Apps for accessible textbooks (free 4 students)

And Wiki automated emails and can do support calls

Captioning Dept. – provides remote captioning mostly for college classrooms

Books over internet wherever the lecture is (have done in Guam!)

Students can use laptop, IPAD, phones and provide notes to the student

This dept. has captioned some videos and movies

Audio Descriptions  – which describes actions in a movie for the Blind, and can read subtitles as well.

AMAC = postsecondary primarily – corporate and nonprofit

Serves colleges all over the US

Contacts disability services and the colleges as needed – paid and unpaid memberships, which include lots of access to technology

Individual services are available through Tools for Life

AMAC website= menu at right – frequently asked questions – WIKI – teachers can go through with students

All colleges in Georgia and many around the country are members (see list on website)

Paul – Access Text which is under the AMAC umbrella

Electronic access portals for most textbook publishers

Telepresence Robotics:   Students can come to the site to try

–       VGO $5,000 uses Cloud technology and can move around a room like a person, has a camera

–       KUBI  $499 – which is a tabletop robotic (can be used with Skype)

–       Nano Robot – new and coming to TFL

Electronic Accessibility – uses optimal characteristic software – makes electronic files that are accessible

–       Similar to what Bookshare and GIMC offer

Follow Up from May 2014 Meeting

Hello Everyone!

Firstly, I just wanted to give a big THANK YOU to everyone for attending and hosting the meetings. I felt that we had a great year, and next year will be even better. I am hoping that our consortium grows immensely over the next year so that we can support more teachers around the State.

I also wanted to pass this information along…The Kyle Pease Foundation is hosting a camp for children and adults (ages 3-30) who have cerebral palsy. Please forward this information to your students’ parents. I have attached the event flyer.

Kyle Pease will be presenting at our May 14^th, 2015 consortium meeting which will be held at Georgia State. He will share information about his foundation whose primary goal is to provide adaptive sports equipment to persons with disabilities. You don’t want to miss meeting Kyle, he is an amazing person! Dr. Paul Alberto, who is now the Dean of the College of Education, helped reserve a room for us at Georgia State. We are lucky to have his support in this way. I will give more information in the fall about all of the meetings and locations.

Here is the link to his foundation website:

http://www.kylepeasefoundation.org/

***I have also attached the meeting minutes from our last meeting at Tools for Life. The tour was incredibly interesting and beneficial. Thank you to the staff of Tools for Life for opening your doors to us! We are looking forward to working with you in the future. The meeting minutes are posted in the blog post above. Thanks to Mary Wright for taking such thorough notes!

I will be updating the blog next week, so don’t forget to follow it…There is a tab that says “Follow” at the very bottom of the page, you just need to scroll all the way down to find it. If you are following the blog, then you will be able to receive e-mail updates regarding new information, events, etc. You may want to receive updates to your personal e-mail address so that you can stay up to date over the summer.

The link to our blog is:

https://georgiaoiteachers.wordpress.com/

Lastly, I am working on planning our meetings in advance over the summer, in hopes that I can submit our plans to the State Department of Education for approval to receive PLU credits for our meetings. If you are able to attend all of the meetings, then you will be able to gain 12 contact hours which would hopefully provide one PLU for the year plus 2 additional contact hours. It is my understanding that we will need to begin accumulating PLU’s again in 2015. This is still in the works, so I will keep everyone updated. If you have any recommendations for meeting topics please let me know. Next year is going to be a great year!

Have a great summer.

Judy