Digital Storytelling: Enabling an autistic child to communicate

Lynne Gibb reported this story in the discussion
on digital storytelling in the EdNA eLearning
Network forum. Understandably, Lynne is happy to share
her story about the power of digital storytelling:

"I used DST last School Holiday Program with children
ranging from Grades 1 - 6. It was a knockout success!
The greatest success story was an autistic boy (11 years)
who had been at the program for 4 years and hardly ever
said a word. He spent hours looking through pctures of
himself from all his previous programs and put them
together into a sequence of his own choosing then proceeded
to astound everyone as he started to talk about all the
things he had done in the pictures, starting in a quiet
tiny voice and eventually getting right into it and
putting on funny voices, raising his voice and shouting
even laughing would you believe!

It was amazing. he even put pictures of other children
in there and said they were his friends - and the amazing
thing was, they came and looked over his shoulder as he
worked and he let them. He even started communicating
with them, laughing and giggling. It was astounding.
When his story was shown to his mother she couldn't
believe her eyes. It was the biggest breakthrough he
had ever had! There is definite power in storytelling
and Photostory 3 is an easy and quickly rewarding program
for children of all ages. Even the grade ones managed it
quite successfully."

You can experience the power of digital storytelling
by viewing and participating in the EdNA group discussion.

Also check out Carole McCulloch's reflective digital story
on YouTube about the Bonegilla migrant camp from the 50's;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hrpNorgKao

Carole tells her story about its development in the network
discussion about the use of YouTube for sharing digital stories.
(see the following post).