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. Julie HenningJulie Henning has been with … Read More
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 … Read More
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. While going to high school, Nate had an educational eligibility for autism spectrum disorder and subsequently … Read More
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 … Read More
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 … Read More
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 … Read More
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
Managing the Routines of Daily Living Goal Guide helps individuals with cognitive disabilities set goals, track progress, and share their accomplishments with others. In the course of developing Goal Guide we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between goals and routines of daily living. Field, Martin, Miller, Ward, and Wehmeyer (1998) suggested that to become self-determined, students … Read More
