Digital Storytelling for the empowerment of people with intellectual disabilities* Maria Saridaki Faculty of Communication & Media Studies - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Greece msaridaki@media.uoa.gr Michalis Meimaris Faculty of Communication & Media Studies - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Greece mmeimaris@media.uoa.gr ABSTRACT Digital storytelling combines the tradition of storytelling with digital technology. Creating digital stories invites participants to utilize multiple forms of media in order to construct and share their story. Moreover, it can provide participants with the opportunity to cultivate their skills in creativity and narration, exploring innovative technology, and collaborating with peers to create and share their own story. In this paper we will present our rationale behind the importance of such a methodology when used with creators with intellectual disabilities, and some initial findings from a series of workshops. How do storytellers with intellectual disability construct their own story and what can be the benefits of such an experience? KEYWORDS digital storytelling, intellectual disability, empowerment, education ACM Reference format: M. Saridaki, M. Meimaris. 2018. Digital Storytelling for the empowerment of people with intellectual disabilities. In Proceedings of ACM Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion. June 20-22, 2018 - Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, 4 pages. 1 INTRODUCTION The progress made in recent years in the field of technology has not left the field of storytelling untouched. The evolution that has taken place has radically changed the way of building and organizing an abundance of information, which has implications both in social and scientific terms. Users of new media are not ____________________________________________________ Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). DSAI 2018, June 20–22, 2018, Thessaloniki, Greece © 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6467-6/18/06...$15.00 https://doi.org/ 10.1145/3218585.3218664 mere consumers of this available information but they have the ability to publish material and review the sources of this information. The narrative can contribute to the effectiveness of the educational process both as a useful tool for creating an appropriate, friendly and pleasant educational environment, as well as a means of transferring information, knowledge, values and behaviours [1]. Digital Storytelling is defined as the combination of traditional oral narration with 21st century multimedia tools [2]. It is a relatively new form of personal expression and art, evolved over the last decade, which uses video, music, picture and narration to create personal short video stories about people's lives, their work and their experiences, shared with peers and online. Digital Storytelling process has been created by StoryCenter (formerly known as Center for Digital Storytelling) at Berkeley California [13]. Since the 70s, StoryCenter has worked with nearly a thousand organizations around the world and trained more than fifteen thousand people in hundreds of workshops to share stories from their lives. In our approach we are using the methodology and digital narrative tools inspired by the work of the StoryCenter [4]. Digital stories are short videos, approximately 3-4 minutes, consisting of still images, music, voiceover and video. The stories are told by real people about real experiences. These stories are a refinement as they are able to move us from the narrative to the essential story. To the core of the storyteller's experience, which in our case is of paramount importance, considering that the storyteller is a person with intellectual disabilities, eager but not usually allowed to express this experience. 2 Benefits of Digital Storytelling 2.1 Educational Benefits Storytelling is a powerful educational tool recognized in the literature [1,2,5,6,7] and both in the educational and creative sector it is widely stated that "if you want someone to remember something important, tell them a story about it " [6] Kirk and Pitches, tell us that "storytelling can promote deep learning by prompting reflection on practice"[7] and as Dewey explained in his book, Experience and Education, "humans learn best by reflecting on their experiences" [8] and on others' experiences. Technology allows the design, documentation and 161