Day 7 & 8 Tuesday, July 13 & Wednsday, July 14

Today was learning how to use technology to make Preperation stories.  Preperation stories are a very useful teaching device for students who need to be explicitly taught some social expectations.  They are a tool for teaching social skills to individuals with autism and other disabilities that inhibit people from interacting or noticing the world around them.  They help students who may have difficulty seeing how their actions affect the feelings of others, those students who may have difficulty in perspective taking. 

Preperation stories need to be in first person and model the desired behavior rather then focussing on the undesired actions.  They should have descriptive sentances (the who, What, Where and Why of the situation) and also have some perspective sentances showing how this action affects other people so the student can gain some understanding on the thoughts and emootions of others.  There may also be a Directive sentance that will suggest a response to a particular situation that may happen.

Preperation stories can be used to help ease anxiety in an unfamiliar setting, prepare the student for what may happen in a new situation. They can teach routines, how to do an activity, how to ask for help how to act in a certain situation.  The task you want them to do needs to be broken down by task analysis to make sure you know what the skills sets of the student are and what needs to be explained out.

Preperation stories areusually done in a book format with lots of pictures showing the desired response.  We took the technology a step futher and used video and windows movie maker to make a social story.  We practiced on Wednesday with a situation that was given to use by Barb.  We had fun trying to figure out how to use the program.  I enjoyed it.  It is a very visual program and very easy to use.  We just learned some basic things like how to create a project, incorporate/record audio and put titles and slides in our movie.  I can see now how people are making all the wonderful utube videos that I watch. I really have discovered or reaffirmed that I am a visual learner.  As long as I can see What I am working with (like on the timeline of windows movie maker) I can manipulate it very well.  I am going to introduce my daughtr to this program as she is always doing silly things on video she takes herself, or just walks around and talks about the things around her while recording.  I think she will love being able to do things on this program. I am sure she will teach me a lot more.

On Wednesday, we worked on creating our own preperation story.  We chose a student who had a habit of peaking under the stalls in the washroom.  The real student is a boy but we changed our profile student to a girl so we would not have to film in the boys washroom.  The language we used in the social story was where we spent the most of our time.  We wanted to always use the easy route and say 'don't do this" which is emphasizing the negative where a preperation story should focus on the behaviour you want to see.  Also how to show the perspective of others, to use mad, sad, or angry as the feeling word.  We were not sure how far to go.  When working with children with autism or who have difficulty with perspective taking it is very hard to know what language to use.

In the end we worked it out and finished our video.  It was a very useful experience. I really enjoyed the other preperation stories that were created by my classmates.