Digital stories as a method for evidence-based practice and knowledge co-creation in technology-enhanced learning for children with autism

Storytelling is a powerful means of expression especially for voices that may be difficult to hear or represent in typical ways. This paper reports and reflects on our experiences of co-creating digital stories with school practitioners in a project focusing on embedding innovative technologies for children on the autism spectrum in classroom practice. The digital stories were short films or narrated sequences of slides and images that conveyed key views about experiences and practices with or around the technologies. The creation of the digital stories aimed to empower schools and individual teachers to construct and share their own authentic narratives and to build case examples of creative technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Through focusing on our experiences with one of the schools, we examine the use of digital stories as a method for enabling knowledge co-creation with practitioners and we discuss the evidential potential of digital stories. We argue that the co-creation of digital stories enabled teachers to find their voice in critiquing the usability, usefulness, efficacy and flexibility of the technologies. Furthermore, the stories, both the process of their creation and the final artefacts, provided a concrete grounding for knowledge co-creation about teaching practices and authentic technology-enhanced learning.