Grant Funding Supports Self-Determination and Provides Paid Employment for Students with ASD
In November, SLLEA received over $45,000 in grant funding from The Gibney Family Foundation (https://tgff.org/), an Idaho-based nonprofit organization operating with a vision to empower individuals who are facing challenges in their lives, especially those who are blind and visually impaired.
Employing the talents of SLLEA students, TAP house managers, a student videographer with ASD and our colleagues at Cognitopia (https://www.cognitopia.com), grant funds will be used to produce ten videos for modeling and prompting, also known as digital media task analysis.
Video content will range from “how to clean your room” to “self care tips” and “how to resolve conflict” and will be published on YouTube/Vimeo and within the Cognitopia platform for self-determination already used by SLLEA students and staff for organization, data reporting, communication, goal setting, remote assistance, and task tracking with functional reminders, systematic instruction, and visual feedback (https://youtu.be/gN42fH2R1AA).
A paid work experience, this twelve-month grant-funded project gives individuals with ASD the opportunity to develop skills related to directing, set design, sound engineering, scripting and editing. Individuals involved with the video production will be documenting their real-world career exploration within MyLife, the ePortfolio application available within the Cognitopia platform. Nate, our student videographer documented his experience with the first video project in this post on his MyLife account: https://www.cognitopia.com/apps/MyLife/viewPost/KR6SXuHuV7HzBLXuneGHYm7Kh22bZR2ENhP-3vqA0Ly
A key part of our SLLEA model is the seamless use of technology throughout our program and this funding will help to significantly advance our ability to embed task analysis and systematic instruction for all our students. Further, a more comprehensive system to support task accomplishment through video modeling will allow us to better respond to the many service requests from families and county disability services managers.
This project will also support other populations living with disabilities, including the blind community (specifically individuals with access to assistive technology/smart homes that are connected to the internet). The Cognitopia platform of apps supports TTS and connects individuals to a larger support system, ultimately individuals living independently (such as an elderly population seeking to age in place). Because the Cognitopia platform includes innovative sharing features, the content can be made available to anyone else outside of SLLEA who is using the platform and would like to use the content without having to create it themselves.
Stay tuned for further details and video links as the project unfolds.
