Released earlier this year, the Second Edition of “Teaching Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities,” by Diane M. Browder, Fred Spooner, Ginevra R. Courtade, and Contributors is a commonly used textbook in special education teacher preparation  programs around the world.

Tools from the Cognitopia Platform for Self-Determination are featured in Chapter 16: Teaching Personal and Daily

Living Skills authored by Dr. Josh Baker. Baker is an Associate Professor specializing in Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education at the University of Las Vegas. 

In his chapter, Baker stresses the importance of enabling students to become more-active participants in their daily lives–by promoting self-determination and self-management using the Goal Guide and Routines tools to “take charge” of their personal routines.

Baker notes, “One way to encourage self-management of personal and daily living skills is through web-based applications. One example of a web-based application is Cognitopia (www.cognitopia.com). Cognitopia (and other web-based applications) provides a natural outlet that allows individuals to navigate daily life as independently as possible; however, it allows teachers, parents, and other professionals to provide collaborative support.” Page 346.

Later in the chapter, Baker shows an example of how embedding videos into a routine can be used to easily adapt instruction to make it more personalized and individualized for a person’s unique needs. He also notes this advancement in modern technology allows the information to be more readily accessed by other individuals as it is shared across a variety of networks. 

For more information on Cognitopia’s innovative tools for self-management and IEP self-direction, go to https://www.cognitopia.com.

Julie Henning

Julie Henning has been with Cognitopia since 2015. In that time, she has been involved in customer support, training, marketing, documentation, social media, and data collection. Some of her favorite projects have been mentoring our videographer intern, Nate, and weekly classroom testing and curriculum development for the many students in the 4J Connections Transition program. She works closely with Eugene-based SLLEA (Smart Living, Learning & Earning with Autism) to integrate Cognitopia’s self-management tools into the organization and structure design input and support platform implementation. Professionally, Julie has over twenty years’ experience working in engineering, technology, software development, and journalism; a path made possible with two degrees in Technical Communication: a BS from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and a MS from Colorado State University. A single mom of three high schoolers (grades 9, 10, and 11), Julie has introduced Cognitopia to terms such as “sick” and “yeet,” while overseeing the office coffee consumption. In her free time, she enjoys playing recreational soccer, improv comedy, and traveling.