Emily Ward

LIS 409: Storytelling

Storytelling in LIS and Beyond

14 February 2012

Digital Storytelling with Students with Disabilities

For educators working with students with disabilities, accommodations and adaptations

are very familiar concepts. In order to make general curricula activities accessible to students

with diverse needs, accommodations (changes made to the input or output method used by the

teacher or student) and adaptations (changes made to the conceptual level of the particular

learning standard) are used frequently. Computer technologies have opened up significant

possibilities in terms of adaptations and accommodations for students. Recently, some special

educators have been exploring the use of digital storytelling in the classroom to increase their

students’ success. Both by accessing digital stories and creating their own digital stories,

students with disabilities have been able to overcome previous barriers in the curriculum and

exceed even their teachers’ expectations.

One challenging area faced by many students with disabilities such as autism, cognitive

delays, and emotional disturbance is social skill development. For many years, special educators

have been employing social stories – very short, simple stories that impart social instruction –

with their students to assist in areas such as engaging with peers, working independently, and

decreasing disruptive behaviors (More 170). These stories are tailored to the student’s needs

and abilities and written from the student’s point of view, with the idea that by reading or

listening to these stories, the student will be able to understand how to behave in a certain

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situation. In recent years, teachers have taken this one step further by creating social stories

digitally and having students access them on the computer. This allows for teachers to

compose, edit, and update the stories more efficiently, while also increasing student

involvement in the creation of the stories. Students can participate in gathering and taking

photos to be included, as well as record their own voice reading the story. For students unable

to read, digital stories allow the story to be read to them without taking the teacher away from

the larger classroom. Additionally, once they learn how to access the stories on their own,

students can control the speed of their learning. With this involvement, students take

ownership over their own learning, which is critical for students with disabilities to foster

independence (More 175).

Digital storytelling can also be used to access and develop the language arts skills that

are often trapped by frustrations with writing. With digital storytelling, students can express

their thoughts orally and visually, while still cultivating the necessary skills of editing and

revision. Paige Michalski worked with 7th and 8th grade students labeled as having cognitive

delays to create digital stories. Before the project many of her students were unable to create a

complete sentence. For the project, each student compiled photos of their friends, families,

homes, and activities to accompany oral narrations of their daily life. They worked with their

peers to practice their narrations, edit, and revise their work. By the end, each student had

accomplished a polished digital story. By incorporating digital storytelling into her classroom,

Michalski was able to adapt a traditional language arts activity to fit the needs and abilities of

her students in a way that was challenging and motivating for them (Michalski, Hodges, and

Banister).

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Similarly, digital storytelling can be used to expose student abilities that may otherwise

be hidden. Many studies have shown that using digital media can be highly motivational for

students (More 171), especially students on the autism spectrum (Dillon and Underwood 169).

A study conducted by Dillon and Underwood, using the digital storytelling application Bubble

Dialogue, revealed that high functioning children with autism displayed no significant

differences in imaginative narration skills from their peers without autism, contradicting their

initial hypothesis. Where previous research indicated that children with autism have difficulty

with creative and imaginative thought, Dillon and Underwood’s study suggests that it is perhaps

not the function of imaginative thought, but the method used to express it that often hinders

children with autism spectrum disorder (177). Perhaps when using digital media, the children

with autism felt more capable of expressing their creativity.

As the varied uses of digital storytelling in the cases cited above indicate, there is no one

way that digital storytelling can be used effectively with students with disabilities. As in More’s

example, digital stories can be used to facilitate social situations and invoke a sense of

ownership in one’s learning. Michalski, Hodges, and Banister show that digital storytelling can

foster traditional language arts skills of creation and revision by offering a different approach.

Dillon and Underwood found that digital storytelling can encourage creativity and be used as an

evaluation to see how students understand narrative concepts.

Digital storytelling, in all its varieties, seems to play on the strengths of these students

while simultaneously eliminating or bridging some of the hurdles they confront. All three

articles note that digital media and computer technologies appeal to the students, motivating

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them to engage in their projects in ways that traditional paper and pencil language arts

activities have not (Dillon and Underwood 169; Michalski, Hodges and Banister; More 171).

Similarly, digital storytelling increases the confidence of the students. By working in an

environment that is familiar and comforting to them, they have the power and control to

express themselves and make connections in ways that they may feel unable to do otherwise.

Digital storytelling also appears to lend itself to easy adaptation in order to meet the students

at their capability level. As Michalski noted in her work with the 7th and 8th graders, orally

describing the images associated with the stories allowed the students to build sentences in

more creative ways than they were able to initially write about them. Using the images as a

prompt and each other as a soundboard, both of which are natural parts of digital storytelling,

encouraged more highly developed thinking and editing.

Looking to the future, one can imagine the possibilities afforded to special educators

and their students with the explosion of digital storytelling apps being developed for tablets

such as the iPad. With a single application, students can take photos or create drawings, record

themselves or other audio tracks, and compile digital stories. Although this would be an

expensive investment initially, the flexibility and ease of use of some of these apps and devices

are well worth it. More and more educators and parents are finding the numerous benefits

tablets offer for students with disabilities (in areas other than digital storytelling), and making

the argument for their purchase in the school budget or through grant money is well-supported

in the literature (Shah; Price).

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By incorporating digital storytelling into the special education classroom or inclusive

classroom environment, teachers will be able to support the independence of their students

while concurrently challenging them to delve into higher-level and creative thinking.

Particularly in special education, it is critical to use all the tools available to increase student

success and encourage self-determination, and digital storytelling can be an ideal way to do just

that.

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Works Cited

Dillon, Gayle, and Jean Underwood. “Computer Mediated Imaginative Storytelling in Children

with Autism.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 70 (2012): 169-178.

Print.

Michalski, Paige, Dodi Hodges, and Savilla Banister. “Digital Storytelling in the Middle Childhood

Special Education Classroom: A Teacher’s Story of Adaptations.” Teaching Exceptional

Children Plus 1.4 (2005): n. pag. Web. 11 Feb. 2012.

More, Cori. “Digital Stories Targeting Social Skills for Children with Disabilities.” Intervention in

School and Clinic 43.3 (2008): 168-177. Print.

Price, Amy. “Making a Difference with Smart Tablets.” Teacher Librarian 39.1 (2011): 31-34. Print.

Shah, Nirvi. “Special Ed. Pupils Find Learning Tools in iPad Applications.” Education Week 30.22 (2011): 1-17. Print.

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