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Across Space and Time

2002 Interactive Lecture Series in AAC The Kornreich Assistive Technology Center, the AAC-RERC and USSAAC.

Augmentative Communication News Vol 14, #2 and 3, December, 2001

The technological advances of the 21st century already are changing how we do things. As the first “virtual” RERC, the AAC-RERC is now using a variety of new technologies to facilitate collaborations among its partners who live and work from coast to coast. The seven partners of the AAC-RERC [Duke University, Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, University at Buffalo, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill and Augmentative Communication, Inc.] conduct research and develop projects, provide training and disseminate pertinent information to AAC stakeholders.

The Kornreich Assistive Technology Center is a Division of the National Center for Disability Services and is located in Albertson, NY. It is committed to bringing new educational and training opportunities to professionals and consumers, particularly in the area of AAC. Within the Kornreich Center is a state-of-the-art technology center equipped with the latest technology in web casting, video conferencing and more. These technical and human resources at the Kornreich Assistive Technology Center will support AAC educational web casts by experts.

Collaboration

In what promises to be a positive collaboration, the AAC-RERC, the Kornreich Assistive Technology Center and the United States Society of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (USSAAC) will offer AAC professionals, augmented communicators and their families training opportunities they can easily access from their home or office. Each of the collaborators has a unique contribution to bring to the table. The Kornreich Technology Center plays the lead role by hosting and providing financial and technical support for each web cast. The AAC-RERC assists by developing content for the lecture series and working to expand the diversity of the audience. USSAAC will offer ASHA CEUs to participants who wish to pay for them.

Working together, the collaborators share a common goal: to provide information in the area of AAC that is high quality, up-to-date, relevant, useful and accessible. A shared vision of the collaborators is that the web casts be an innovative way to involve augmented communicators and family members in the training, research, development and treatment discussions that tend to occur among professionals during conferences and workshops.

Iris Fishman, Director of the Kornreich AT Center, will host the web casts and serve as moderator during the live question and answer period following each presentation. The AAC-RERC partners [David Beukelman, Sarah Blackstone, Diane Bryen, Kevin Caves, Frank DeRuyter, Jeff Higginbotham, Janice Light, David McNaughton, Janet Sturm, Michael B. Williams and David Yoder] will be among those to provide the lectures. A total of 1.5 hours is allotted for each session in the lecture series. Questions to the presenters are e-mailed in.

Lecture Series

In December, the Kornriech AT Center hosted two lecturers: Lewis Golinker from the Assistive Technology Law Center who spoke on Medicare funding of AAC devices and Pat Ourand of Associated Speech and Language Services, Inc. who presented How to do assessments for augmentative communication. The January lecture will be presented by Drs. David Beukelman and Laura Ball on the topic of AAC techniques and people who have ALS: Clinical decision making.

It is simple to join a web cast. The required technologies are a computer and an Internet connection. The Real Player software is needed to view the web cast and Shock Wave software is needed to participate in the discussion with the speaker. Both Real Player and Shockwave are available free of charge.

Participation in each web cast is offered for free (at least for now). After each web cast, the lecture is archived and can be viewed later by anyone wishing to see the tape.

For questions about the web cast series, please e-mail Iris Fishman ifishman@ncds.org The Kornreich web site is http://www.kornreich.org

You can link to the Kornreich web site and the web cast archives from the AAC-RERC web page http://www.aac-rerc.com.

This article appears in Augmentative Communication News, Volume 14, #2 & #3.

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