Accessing Higher Ground is Almost Here!

Less than a week to go until the 9th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Conference in beautiful Boulder, Colorado! Can you tell I'm excited!

At CSUN earlier this year the membership of ATHEN elected to make AHG the home of our annual business meeting and to officially sponsor the conference. ATHEN member Howard Kramer of the University of Colorado at Boulder has performed Herculean efforts each year in putting this conference together and we are proud to be associated with him and with the conference he lovingly tends.

Join ATHEN for Our Annual Business Meeting
Thursday, November 9th @ 6:00 PM in room 231 of the Millennial Hotel

Everyone is welcome but only ATHEN members can vote.

ATHEN members will be presenting on a variety of topics during the conference and many of these are included in a special ATHEN track.

Accessing Higher Ground 2006: ATHEN Presentations

• Pre-conference Workshop: AHEAD Institute on E-Text Production (2 Full Days!) This is [partially] a hands-on lab session
  o Ron Stewart, ATHEN President
  o Gaeir Dietrich, High Tech Center Training Unit of the California Community Colleges
  
• Creating Accessible PDF Forms using Adobe Acrobat Professional [ATHEN Track] This is a hands-on double-length lab session
  o Sean Keegan, High Tech Center Training Unit of the California Community Colleges
  
• Computer Access on Campus: Separate, Equal or Hybrid? [ATHEN Track] o Alice Anderson & Henry Huang, University of Wisconsin – Madison
  
• Geeklopedia: From Blog to Wiki – A Primer on Tech Terminology (v 2.0)
  o Daniel Berkowitz, Boston University
  
• Update on Automated Tactile Graphics [ATHEN Track]
  o Dan Comden, University of Washington
  
• Accessibility of Remote Access to Computing- Virtual Computing Labs at NC State
  o Saroj Primlani, North Carolina State University
  
• E-Text and DAISY Production @ Boston University [ATHEN Track]
  o Daniel Berkowitz, Boston University
  
• Messing With Math and Sleeping With Science: the Road to Higher Education Access [ATHEN Track]
  o Pratik Patel, ATHEN Vice-President

If you would like to know more about ATHEN, come to the business meeting and/or ask any member you happen to see at the conference. You'll know us by the ribbons we are wearing made out of computer wiring [truly geeky to be sure, but unforgettable!]

Blackboard Hitches to Google’s Wagon (Campus Technology.com)

From Campus Technology.com

Blackboard Inc. said last week it would integrate Google Inc.’s search technology into its campus management systems. Blackboard joined Google’s Enterprise Professional Program. The move will provide “a tremendous value to people across a campus community, allowing them to develop greater search literacy to find information within academic departments, across disciplines, and even on campuses in other locations,” said Blackboard president Michael Chasen.

A first priority of the deal will be to integrate the Blackboard Learning System and Google Scholar, the firms said. Google Scholar provides a way to search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers and articles, from academic publishers and universities. The integration through the Blackboard Building Block for Google Scholar will provide access to these scholarly references from courses within the Blackboard environment.

Blackboard will also offer a set of Google OneBox for Enterprise modules through a Blackboard Building Block for Google OneBox. The integration will enable targeted searches of an institution’s course catalogue, organization catalogue, and learning objects repository. Google OneBox for Enterprise is a feature of the Google Search Appliance which allows users to retrieve real-time content from various data sources across their institution.

More from the ...

Washington Business Journal - October 10, 2006
Blackboard teams up with Google by Neil Adler
Staff Reporter

Blackboard, a provider of software and related services to the education industry, is partnering with online search giant Google. The D.C.-based company will launch a series of efforts to enhance search capabilities for students and faculty at thousands of academic institutions worldwide. Blackboard says it will integrate various services with Google's enterprise search technology to help facilitate deeper, more meaningful search capabilities for members of the academic community.

Blackboard is joining the Google Enterprise Professional program, becoming the first member of the program to focus on educational institutions. As part of the partnership, Blackboard's learning system will be integrated with Google Scholar, providing quick access to millions of scholarly references directly from courses within the Blackboard system. As a Google partner, Blackboard will also offer consulting services to assist academic institutions looking to leverage search capabilities across their organization.

One of our own makes the news (in a good way)

Amazin' what you will find on the web. This came up on my Googleized Newsfeed. October is 'Disabilities Awareness Month' here in the U.S.A. and colleges and universities across the nation are putting together some sort of Disability Awareness Week of some sort. Let's see if we can find some more:

• Tennessean.com - Disability Mentoring Day
• digitalburg.com - UCM Hosts Disability Awareness Month
• Arkansas State - this one took place out of the cycle (in March)
• Premier's Council on the Status of Disabled Persons
• Let's give a big hand for California Lutheran University
• All they got in the UK was a single day!
• Hope College breaks barriers
• Grinnell puts is best foot forward with a showing of My Left Foot
• Ohlone College hosts a BBQ and follows it up with a showing of F.A.T. City
• Western Illinois shows a real mans movie - Murderball!

AT Wiki (I just like the sound of it ..ATWiki...ATWiki...ATWiki...)

The Georgia Tech Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA) - caretakers of the National Public website of Assistive Technology has put up a Wiki devoted to all things Adaptive, Assistive and otherwise having to do with Access Technology!

Early in the history of this blog I encourged the membership of ATHEN to take on such an endeavor. That was when Wiki's were in their infancy (y'know - about a year ago) and since then I have developed a greater appreciation for what goes into them. They are a lot of hard work!

So now I encourage all members of ATHEN to join the AT Wiki as an Author.

Ken Sawicki Video on Demand

Alt-Media listserv member Ken Sawicki of Antelope Valley Community College (by all means one of the coolest college names around) guest lectures in an Intro to Computer class and was captured on video this year. True to his AT roots - here are his comments:

Since October is disabilities awareness month, I thought I'd post this... It needs to be captioned, and perhaps have some descriptive video, but it's a good start.

'Tis a pity the technology upstages him I could make some comment about how only a blind guy would wear white to be filmed in front of a projector screen - but that might come off as insensitive. And insensitive is something I am never accused of being