Journal Article Review

    In Using the Smart Board in Teaching Social Stories to Students With Autism, Joy Xin and Frank Sutman examine the benefits a growing technology that is being used to improve the social abilities of students with autism. The authors argue that Smart Boards can assist educators in creating an engaging method of helping students with autism learn how to manage themselves in specific social situations. The article analyzes how two teachers were able to use this technology to help two different students who were on varying degrees of the autistic spectrum utilize social stories to modify their behaviors.  By integrating the three primary methods of teaching social stories (reading the story, presenting the story using audio equipment, and presenting the story through a computer program or video), the Smart Board method showed a decrease in the targeted behavior (making noises when needing attention) and an increased learning of appropriate behavior (raising hand) for the boy studied. Similarly, the girl participating in the study was able to significantly improve her ability to initiate an interaction with peers and ask if she could play with her peers at recess using this method.
     Initially, I was intrigued by the findings of this article and felt that utilizing the Smart Board to help students with autism learn through the use of social stories was an innovative idea. I appreciated the ways in which the students were able to become more directly involved with the social story because of the tactile dimension to the Smart Board. I am curious as to how long-lasting the behavioral changes are in the students tested as well as whether students who are taught social stories in more traditional manners have comparable results or not. It would be interesting to both develop a more longitudinal study to the what the long-term effects of using this technology is as well as a study that compares this method and more traditional methods in order to determine if there is a significant different in results achieved in terms of behavioral modification. While this article solely examines the behavioral changes made by two children, it would also be beneficial to expand this study and see if the results are replicable to a greater number and variety of children who span the autistic spectrum. Overall I think that this novel approach to an integral aspect of teaching students with autism how to improve their social skills could have very positive benefits if the study results can be replicated and expanded.

References

Xin, J., & Sutman, F. (2011). Using the Smart board in Teaching Social Stories to Students With           Autism. Teaching Exceptional Children, 43, 18-24.