Stimming+and+Youtube

by Molly Perry
 * Stimming and Youtube**

Teaching tips for working with students who stim to videos

Many people consider autistic students more high functioning when it comes to the technology world. However, there are many obstacles autistic students must overcome to successfully use the web. One large obstacle comes from autistic students need to stim. Stimming is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or repetitive movement of common objects (Wikipedia). Stimming can be used to calm an autistic student down, but they can also stim when they are excited. Sometimes stimming can cause an autistic child to watch something over and over again. Youtube-it doesn’t need much explaining. If you need to find a video, it’s almost always the number one place people go. However, there are so many videos to click on, it can become overwhelming. Imagine being autistic! The problem is, stimming can cause an autistic student to get stuck on one video. The video may excite their brain and all they can do is hit repeat on the video. So they watch a video over and over again, no big deal right? Wrong! As a teacher, how will you get them to move on and take their focus off the video? There needs to be a plan. Teachers need to be aware of stimming with autistic students, because they may request the same video to be played over and over again. Teachers need to have a strategy for helping autistic students successfully navigate through Youtube. Here are a few suggestions! Have a separate website for that student with links to Youtube and similar videos to the one they like and stim to! Offer their favorite video as a reward for a day of hard work-maybe work in smaller increments if needed! Know how to respond if they get upset because you make them get off of Youtube. If you have other ideas, feel free to add them to this Wiki! At the end of the day, we want autistic students to enjoy the benefits of Youtube in the classroom setting. We just have to find ways to make them the most successful that they can be!

@https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimming