The BEST Podcast: Building Educational Success Through Technology: November 2005

AT News
Upcoming Conferences

Top tips to get the most out of a conference:

Bring pre-made labels to supply to vendors
Share handouts
Find out if handouts are online – get them all
Talk with vendors about ‘special sessions’
Check with vendors for booth presentations
Check with vendors for free updates to software (MOBS)
Check with vendors on price, many offer significant reductions if you purchase at the conference, consider having prearranged to make some purchases
Have a backup session in mind for a given time slot, don’t be afraid to leave a session that isn’t meeting your needs
If the vendor area is open ahead of the conference, plan to attend, it is a good time to take a quick look
Network with other conference attendees, you can learn a lot from each other and share content from sessions

Product/Tech Review
New products introduced at CTG… courtesy of Jeannette Van Houten from QIAT Listserv

Able Net. Inc.: has improved their slim armstrong. If you have not checked out the following items, they are worth a look: MEville to WEville and Star Reporter. The MEville to WEville and Star Reporter are complete units that teachers have created. Able net also has a new switch Jelly Beamer™ wireless switch. http://www.ablenetinc.com
Widget the company that has brought you writing with symbols has 3 new products on the market. The one that really WOW’d me was the first symbol-supported web browser. It turns any web page into symbol based text. You can check it out at the http://www.widgit.com/products/index.htm .
Intellitools is now offering a few upgrade to Intellipics Studio which now contains the old Intellipics. They also have some new overlays that work with many other programs, such as Kurzweil, SOLO, AOL, Kidspiration/Inspriration, Itunes, and others. http://www.intellitools.com/

Other Up and Coming Products