Video Supports for Teaching Students With Developmental Disabilities and Autism: Twenty-Five Years of Research and Development
By Ayres, Kevin M.; Langone, John; Journal of Special Education Technology, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 1-8Publication Date: 2008
Article outlines the development of video for use in classroom instruction, especially as it relates to students with developmental disabilities and autism. The emergence in the 1980s of computer applications designed to teach life-enhancement skills to students with cognitive and physical disabilities is discussed, including the use of video captions to assist students in generalizing skills such as the location of items. The use of anchored instruction is described, an educational approach developed in the 1990s at the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University (CTGV) that uses “video anchors” to set up problem scenarios for students to solve, notably in the Adventures of Jasper Woodbury videodisc series. The problem of the high cost of video production and the resulting limits to available materials for students with developmental disabilities is discussed, and possible solutions are suggested, including user-generated video materials, produced by special education professionals themselves and subsequently shared via social network Internet tools such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, and MySpace. Another solution holding promise for students, teachers, and teacher educators discussed is Second Life, an Internet-based virtual reality site where users create avatars and then move around and interact with other avatars.
Published by: Exceptional Innovations (Website:http://www.exinn.net)
Technology and Media Division (TAM) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) (Web Site: http://www.tamcec.org )
This publication is included in the library of the National Rehabilitation Information Center (NARIC), accession number J55604
