Using Goal Guide as a Therapeutic Support to Facilitate Patient Engagement Between Clinical Sessions

At Cognitopia, our goal is to develop a suite of essential web-based applications for students and adults with cognitive disabilities such as autism, intellectual disabilities, TBI, or learning disabilities, and for older individuals with cognitive decline due to normal aging, dementia, or stroke. Our overall emphasis is on self-management applications that help people navigate daily life, school, or work as … Read More

My Life App Helps Transition Teacher Easily Get to Know and Support Students

When Morgan Flynn accepted a position as a long-term substitute teacher with Connections, a secondary transition program in Eugene, Oregon, he used the My Life e-portfolio app as a way to rapidly learn the strengths, accommodations, and interests of his students before his first day on the job. “I made a profile for myself and, while I knew I would … Read More

Making Connections and Using the Impersonation Feature to Support Cognitopia Users

One of the key features of Cognitopia is that it is designed for maximum access by users with cognitive disabilities while also providing tools for teachers or parents to assist as necessary. Tom KeatingTom Keating, Ph.D. is founder and CEO of Cognitopia, home of the Cognitopia Platform for Self-Determination, emphasizing tools for IEP self-direction, goal management, task analysis, and team … Read More

Using Goal Guide to Manage Routines at Home and in Middle School

Our work on cognitively accessible self-management applications has always relied on a participatory research approach that grounds development in the real-world life experience of individuals with disabilities and those who support them. We are fortunate to have a rich network of students and adults with disabilities, parents, and teachers who drive our iterative development approach by providing design input, using … Read More

MyLife: IEP Self-Direction and Digital Storytelling

When we started the MyLife project, our focus was on the development of a cognitively accessible, multimedia ePortfolio that would function as a kind of online résumé with a person-centered planning style. The end goal was to provide an intuitive, digital tool for students as end users that would let them document and share their educational, work, and personal experiences, … Read More

How MyLife Can be Used as a Student-Directed Assessment Tool

In a student’s mind, assessment is synonymous with “testing,” and nothing causes anxiety like the prospect of having to take a test. Most educators realize, however, that effective formative assessment of progress, learning, and educational experiences go way beyond test taking. Measuring student progress over time should include formal and informal assessment procedures and it requires tools that capture the … Read More

Cognitopia 2.0

Tom Keating and I both grew up with younger brothers on the autism spectrum. We know that sometimes facing the seemingly “little things” is often more difficult than what other people will ever be able to understand. We also know how simple solutions to everyday problems can have a large impact on a person’s quality of life. We founded Cognitopia … Read More