Cognitopia Platform Optimizes Support Provided By Individualized Education Plan Team Members

During this unprecedented time, Technology Association of Oregon will be featuring the benefits and value that TAO member companies can provide to our greater community in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Julie Henning, Marketing Manager of Cognitopia, shares how the company's web-based platform supports students on individualized education plans (IEPs) using virtual meetings and collaboration, and remote progress tracking.

TAO Member Company: Cognitopia

Give us a short intro to your business:
Cognitopia is web-based accessible software that promotes self-determination for people with cognitive disabilities while optimizing the support provided by educators, parents, employers, therapists, and others.

During the current COVID-19 Pandemic, Cognitopia has massively helped individualized education plan (IEP) team members.

Developed with federal grant funding, it supports the conduct of IEP self-direction, virtual IEP meetings facilitated by students, remote assignment of routines and goals, remote tracking of goal progress, executive functioning, and virtual team collaboration.

Teachers can benefit from Cognitopia in many ways, including: its use of evidence-based methods such as task analysis, video modeling, and universal design; the way it simplifies the creation of multimedia goals and routines; and how it gives them the "one-to-many" ability to easily assign content and track progress for multiple students. And by providing the MyLife e-portfolio tool for IEP self-direction, it actually turns the IEP into a positive, student-driven process instead of a tense, adversarial negotiation, with all team members expressing high satisfaction, including students, teachers, parents, school psychologists, therapists, and administrators.

What resources can your business offer the community during the COVID pandemic?:
Right now, to help educators and students, Cognitopia has created some free resources to share with students and colleagues, using custom Cognitopia MyLife ePortfolios.

Please feel free to share these with others.

1. Staying Healthy During the Coronavirus: Staying Healthy
2. Easy Zoom Skills: How to Easily Use Zoom

Perhaps most importantly, Cognitopia can help schools meet their IEP mandates in an innovative way through remote collaboration on IEP development and enabling students to self-direct their virtual IEP meetings.

What is the best way for the community to get in touch?:
Follow us on social media, send us an email to contact@cognitopia.com, or call us at 866-573-3658. Or create a free account at www.cognitopia.com/signup.

What's your favorite way to pass the time during self-quarantine?:
Many of us are navigating remote school with our kids or catching up on yard work or projects around the home. Some responses from our team: online card games, PBS documentaries, home gym workouts, trips to the dog park, Zoom music jam sessions, and jumping on the sourdough bread bandwagon.

What's one thing that helps you stay positive or gives you hope during difficult times?:
Discovering new ways to laugh and double down on the important hard work that needs to be done now to help advance life experiences for a better future for people with cognitive disabilities and all who support them.