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Collaborative Experience Conference Committee Announces Keynote Speakers

Conference dates are November 2-4, 2017 #CollaborativeExperience

5/25/2017 3:46:45 PM

The 2017 Collaborative Experience Conference committee members are delighted to announce the selection of the two keynote speakers. They are Dr. Laurene Simms, a professor at Gallaudet University, and Dr. Elizabeth Walker, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.

The conference committee members who serve on the presenter selection committee are: Mary Cashman-Bakken, Jay Fehrman, Laura Godfrey, Deb Golos, Michele Isham, Elise Knopf, and Chelsea Paulson.

Both keynote speakers have prepared a video introduction. Watch and enjoy!

Dr. Laurene Simms (Video is in ASL with captions)

Transcript

Hi! My name is Laurene Simms and I have some exciting news to share with all of you. This coming November 2017, I will be traveling to Minnesota. On Friday, November 3rd, I will be giving a keynote titled, “A Journey of Transformative Teaching,” where I will present on teaching students with diverse backgrounds and what it takes to have successful learning. On Saturday, November 4th, I will be giving a workshop discussing visual communication and sign language, which is abbreviated as VCSL. I will provide a VCSL checklist to help participants assess children’s sign language fluency from ages 0-5. I look forward to seeing all of you in Minnesota, or how you all would sign it in Minnesota with this handshape! I will see you on November 3rd and 4th!

Dr. Elizabeth Walker (Video is in spoken English with captions)

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dr. Elizabeth Walker and I'm one of keynote speakers for the Collaborative Experience Conference. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you and let you know how excited I am to attend this conference and meet all of you. I am an assistant professor at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and by training, I'm a speech-language pathologist and audiologist with a focus in pediatric oral rehabilitation. I'm really looking forward to sharing my research with you. For the past eight years, I've been a part of a longitudinal multi-center research study which is funded by the National Institute of Health. This study is called the Outcomes of Children with Hearing Loss Study and it's a collaborative effort by three different centers. University of Iowa, Boys Town National Research Hospital, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The goal of our study is to learn more about children with mild to severe hearing loss which have traditionally been a under-researched and underserved population. We're trying to learn more about whether these children who are hard of hearing are at risk for language or academic difficulties and what we can do as service providers to try to maximize outcomes for these children. I'm excited to share these results with you so that we can work better, work towards collaboration between teachers, parents, and service providers for our children with hearing loss. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in November.

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