As 2018 comes to a close, we’re taking a moment to reflect upon the progress Cognitopia has made this year. We credit much of this momentum and success to you, our many wonderful students, teachers, clients, and organizations using the Cognitopia Platform for Self-Determination on a daily basis to facilitate person-centered planning, goal setting, and self-managed independent living and work. Continue reading
In many ways, Cognitopia got its start when our CEO and founder Tom Keating became the primary caregiver for his brother James who experienced autism. James moved from their parents’ home in New York to live with Tom and their other brother, Francis, in Eugene, Oregon in 1981. Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE
EUGENE, OR: OCT 25, 2018: Assistech Systems, LLC, a small business focused on research and development of technology to support employment, education, and community living for youth and adults with cognitive disabilities, together with its commercialization partner, Cognitopia, announce two new grant projects that have been funded through the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), which is housed in the Administration on Community Living within the Department of Health and Human Services. The new funding will support the development of digital technology that augments the company’s existing platform of web apps designed for individuals with intellectual disabilities and autism. Continue reading
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). Endorsed by the US Department of Labor (DOL), the purpose of NDEAM is to help educate individuals about disability employment issues and to celebrate the many and varied contributions of America’s workers with disabilities.
This premise falls in line with the tools we are developing at Cognitopia. Continue reading
Earlier this week Cognitopia released a major upgrade to the MyLife ePortfolio application for IEP Self-Direction and Person-Centered Planning.
MyLife is being successfully used in elementary, middle, and high schools as well as in college programs and adult customized employment and supported living services across the United States. The new MyLife is more intuitive, customizable and user-friendly, strengthening the focus on self-determination—a core value of the Cognitopia Platform. The new design reflects the incredible feedback and suggestions we’ve received from all of these user groups. Continue reading
Measuring student progress is essential to understanding areas of student need. For individuals with intellectual barriers or unique learning styles, activities like standardized testing or even quiz scores and letter grades over time can be demeaning and seem pointless. Perhaps more valuable for students’ overall educational experience is being able to understand for themselves how they are doing on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis through meaningful data visualization. Continue reading
Nate’s Emerson’s interest in voice acting, theater, and comedy began when he was in high school. Using a WordPress blog to capture his strengths, interests, goals, and preferences, Nate was one of the first individuals to transition his electronic portfolio into the MyLife application. Continue reading
Individual education planning (IEP) meetings can often be stressful for everyone involved and not feel particularly good for parents and teachers alike. But IEP meetings can be even more painful for students when they are not included and not prepared for what the meeting will involve.
Like many educators, I am a firm believer in having the student involved and engaged in their own IEP meeting and I often get asked about how to best involve students in the meeting planning process. Continue reading
As the name implies, Custom Categories in Routines allows you to group a collection of routines that are specific to, say, an organization, a school, or a community living facility.
The benefit of the Custom Categories feature is that many people can be added to the category during the time it is created. For example, a teacher may create a custom category called Community Living Skills and add all of his currently-enrolled students with an existing Cognitopia account. Continue reading
One of the original apps available within the Cognitopia platform, ScanDo! hasn’t had many design updates in recent months. And, until now, ScanDo! has primarily been a stand-alone app.
Using a relatively simple interface, ScanDo! is intended to provide on-demand support for task completion via images, video modeling, or text-based documents by browsing a curated library of media that are paired with a unique QR code. When you scan the QR code with the ScanDo! app, you see the document or video that is linked to that code. Continue reading
Last month we had our first webinar “Do it, Track it, Show it,” where Tom Keating spent the better part of an hour introducing attendees to the fundamentals of the Cognitopia Platform. He began with a general discussion on how the Cognitopia apps support self-determination, transition, and independent living and then moved into some of the core design features that facilitate both independent and shared/team use. Continue reading
More and more, technology enables our lives in ways that facilitate independence and connectivity and it seems like there’s an app for just about everything. For individuals aging in place, apps can help them stay organized, accomplish daily goals, or remotely link them to their adult children, a team of caregivers, or the support services they need in order to continue to live in their homes and thrive within their communities. Continue reading
The Traumatic Brain Injury Positive Strategies project (TIPS) is a collaborative effort among Assistech Systems LLC, the Center on Brain Injury Research and Training (CBIRT) at the University of Oregon, and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Continue reading
The Routines app provides a way to show the steps needed to complete a task using text, images, or video. Use Routines when you want to support task accomplishment without needing to track progress data. You can create your own collection of routines or you can browse from a library of routines submitted by other Cognitopia users. And you can share your own routines to that same community library.
The Support Hub appears in your Dashboard when you’re connected to an individual with whom you have a supporting relationship, such as teacher-student, parent-child, caregiver-client, or supporter-supported person. The Support Hub serves as your toolbox for helping anyone you support on the Cognitopia Platform. Continue reading
Goals progress can be tracked and measured in a number of different ways within Goal Guide. Here are some options and examples of how to do it:
Basic completion measures whether a goal was or was not met in yes or no format. For example, remembering to take medication every day. Did I remember to take my pills? Yes or no. Continue reading
When checked, Enable Assistance Rating activates an Independence Scoring Scale system* that tracks assistance at the task level. The data and type of assistance is tracked over time and can be used to monitor changes in levels of individual assistance. Continue reading
After graduating from high school, Michael Montgomery spent three years learning independent living skills through the 4J School District’s Community Living Program (CLP) in Eugene, Oregon. Diagnosed with autism at 18 months, Michael’s situation is typical among families receiving lifelong support services for their now-adult children. Continue reading
Raising three boys in rural Oregon in the late 1980s and 1990s, Trina began to first notice unique developmental behavior in her three-year-old son Clinton as he was just learning to read. “Clinton had learned all of the sounds, but phonetically he couldn’t put them together. Even today, Clinton is more typical in that he can read the dictionary and learn the definitions of words or small things, but he cannot read a novel.” Continue reading
Every word is part of living. So what if you are unable to talk? “What do you do to communicate?” People have been asking me that question since I was little. I tell them I use sign language for communicating with people. Then people ask me how do they understand you without an interpreter? Well, I have an iPad. That has a program called TouchChat. Continue reading