It was fun being in Orlando, even with sort of crappy (cold, then rainy) weather. I rented a Yaris just like mine at home! Well, newer and nicer, but...
Overall I applaud ASHA for a great event. My hotel was easy to obtain and nice, the shuttles ran without a hitch, and the convention center was pretty easy to navigate! Along the way, I learned a lot:
At Carol Westby and Kristine Noel's session on Social Cognition and Emotional-Behavioral issues, they presented recent work on Theory of Mind (summarized in Topics in Language Disorders) and their framework for Narrative Intervention and Problem Solving, honed with incarcerated youth with language issues and also summarized in their article in that issue of TLD.
The mother and daughter team of SLP Henriette Langdon and Counselor Maxine Starr presented a helpful session on self-care and balance in our work as SLPs. They sited eight areas of balance to consider in living a healthier life.
The folks at Sunshine Cottage School for Deaf Children (Dorman, Lee, Gloria and Ritter), folks who have presented many informative sessions analyzing board games for speech and language aspects (repurposing!), applied their "language lens" to a number of apps and presented video on how they use them. I was happy to learn about Vocab Scenes ($1.99), which reminds me of the very useful but defunct Kerpoof website.
The Social Thinking® Team of Nancy Tarshis, Kari Palmer and Ryan Hendrix presented important new information on building resilience in our students with Social Cognition challenges. I can't wait to make some "potions" (colored oil/water jars with little objects inside emphasizing positive tools) and also to use the marshmallow test video to discuss self-talk.
Tara Roehl presented great ideas on integrating apps with contextual activities building language and executive functioning. Be sure to check out her resources on her blog and Pinterest.
I always love to see the "Divas Plus One" (this year including Whitmire, Singer, Appel--the plus one--, Wallach, and Malini) and their session celebrated the work of Barbara Ehren on curriculum-relevant therapy. This year Dr. Ehren was a recipient of ASHA Honors of the Association. You can view much of her work and influences on ASHAWire.
Many of the authors of a recent issue of Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools (Kahmi, Appel, Wallach, Gillam, Hadley) presented findings, reflections and best practices around clinical practices in language disorders. I will be studying this issue for some time.
It was great as always to see Michelle Garcia Winner, in this case discussing the important role of social attention and executive functioning in social cognition. You can read more of her and Pamela Crooke's ideas on this in a recent article.
I attended a terrific session on the overlappings and collaborative potential between cognitive behavioral therapy and speech and language pathology by Lynne Hewitt. You can see her work in a recent issue of Perspectives and view my tweets from this session, in a compilation of items shared by other attendees.
In addition to Barbara Ehren, several people I admire were honored at the ASHA Awards Ceremony, including language maven (and SpeechTechie supporter) Rhea Paul and my BU Professor Elizabeth Gavett, whom I am happy to see semesterly to give a talk in her class. All these folks have been critical in shaping my thinking over the years! Wonderful also to see John and Annie Glenn present the Glenn Award to Bill and Willie Geist. I have to admit that this was my first time attending the awards ceremony and it was an impressive production!
Saturday afternoon I attended a terrific presentation by Mindwing Concepts' Maryellen Rooney Moreau and Linda LaFontaine of the Curtis Blake Day School with awesome contextual tie-ins and many language activities conducted around the book Letting Swift River Go, which describes the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir outside of Boston.
I was proud to see my friend Beth Harmon present an extremely practical and fun session on pairing topic boards with the iPad to encourage use of core and fringe vocabulary along with word combinations. See some of her ideas at Sync Up Autism.
And my session- I was happy to have a really good crowd (despite the Saturday afternoon timeslot) show up to learn about contextual pairings of picture books and apps. Thanks for the tweets, Brittany and Angela:
Awesome tip from @SpeechTechie look for blogs on the best books of the year now that we're approaching 2015 #ASHA14
— Brittany Lehane (@Britt_Lehane) November 22, 2014
Woot! Sittin' with @SlpSummer in @SpeechTechie's awesome session for pairing books and apps for language objectives! #asha14 #a1718
— Angela Saus (@CrissXAppleSaus) November 22, 2014
PHEW! That was a lot to learn. Hopefully some of the links are helpful to you!
As I can see you had a great time there in Orlando. Is it possible to find some of these presentations online?
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