What are Video Social Stories?

Social story is an interesting new technique to me that was added today to my set of assistive technologies. A social story is a description of certain circumstances, skills, or attitudes and ideal reactions to them. They aim at developing positive skills and attitudes in a simplified and straightforward way that is easy for children to pick it up and learn, especially those with disabilities. I found that the gray center that was introduced to us in class is a good place for familiarizing oneself with the approach of social story, though the very useful materials are offered for purchase only.

The tool of social stories could be developed not only for kids with disabilities, but also with any other troublesome kids to positively foster social norms. Because the language of a social story is designed to be friendly, clear, and very accessible for children, they are extremely effective.

Additionally, we learned and practiced today how to design, plan, and write the script of a social story given a scenario for a particular student. We also learned and practiced today how to film a social story and to convert the clips by using Prism video converter in order to be able to work with it in Windows movie maker. We practiced how to edit, crop some unwanted clips, add texts, and add narrations to the video. Finally, we reviewed and played the resulted social story. It was fun, informative, and a useful learning experience today, especially because it was hands on and we got to actually practice implementing the social stories approach.

Overall, it was a stunning experience for me to practice writing the scenarios, filming the social story, and editing it in Windows movie maker. I believe social stories are very effective in discipline practice issues at schools not only for children with disability but also for every one.