Autism Conference and iPads

The Morgan Autism Center is very excited to be hosting our 9th Annual Autism Conference on Saturday, September 25. Once again, our co-hosts will be Santa Clara University and Children's Health Council. We have a terrific line up of speakers. In addition to a very illustrious group of presenters, we are particularly excited by our very own Danielle Samson, our long time Speech and Language therapist, who will be doing one of several presentations on using the iPad with students with autism. Since it was launched back in April, the iPad has been proving to be a very intriguing and compelling tool with our students with autism. Seeing the many apps that were almost immediately coming out and related to autism, we applied for and received a very generous grant from the Escher Family Foundation, which has allowed us to purchase iPads for every classroom. We are very excited as we are all learning about ways to use the iPads with our students.

Also presenting at our conference will be Dr. Martha Herbert from Harvard, speaking about her research which views autism as a systemic disorder affecting multiple organs, including the brain. Focusing on nutrition with people with autism, will be Elizabeth Strickland, who spoke in the bay area several years ago to great acclaim. Locally, we have Dr. Cheryl Klaiman, from the Children's Health Council talking about how to overcome "face blindness". From UCSF, we have Dr. Barbara Kalmanson presenting "Floortime". Dr. Kalmanson is undoubtably the bay area's most esteemed expert on this technique. Stephanie Madrigal from the Social Thinking Clinic in San Jose (with Michelle Garcia Winner) will be speaking on Social Learning. So, many topics of interest to people who work with or live with persons with autism. You can register by going to our website www.morgancenter.org.