Aspergers Assistant
Daniel Share-Strom and Tom have been working on a web-based ‘assistant’, specifically for university students with Aspergers Syndrome.
A characteristic of students with Aspergers’ is poor ‘executive’ skills - they often have trouble with organization, and breaking tasks down. Our Assistant is a calendar with three distinctive features that address this issue:
- Instead of ‘Tasks’ and ‘Events’, there are only ‘Projects’ that may have Tasks, Events, Notes, etc attached to them. An assignment or upcoming exam are both examples of Projects, and may quickly collect a related set of tasks and timetable entries. This approach may be more useful to a student with poor executive skills.
- The Assistant allows ‘helpers’ (such as Mom or a Coach) to view, add, and update Projects and the associated Tasks and Events unobtrusively, and help out with organizing suggestions. Our expectation is that helpers will ‘help’ by populating the tasks and events for projects.
- Reminders and alarms are sent via text messaging (SMS), rather than pop-up windows. A student might not have his laptop on all the time, or may forget to check his calendar. But his phone will always be by his side.
We’d be delighted if you use this organizer. It’s free, just create an account for yourself. Here’s a link.
This is a ‘first version’. Be sure to let us know what you think of it, and we’d love to hear suggestions on how to make it better. If you find a bug, let us know.
Daniel Share-Strom (looking very sharp at Janine’s wedding). You can reach him at daniel.sharestrom@gmail.com.