NAVIGATING DIGITAL ACCESS IN AN UNDER-RESOURCED EFL CLASSROOM: STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF TECHNOLOGY USE IN DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Digital storytelling (DST) is widely recommended as a technology-mediated approach to speaking practice in EFL classrooms, yet its technological demands are rarely examined in settings where device access, storage, and connectivity cannot be assumed. This qualitative case study investigated Indonesian senior high school students' perceptions of the technological knowledge (TK) dimension of DST in an under-resourced public classroom in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi. Fifteen Grade XI students participated in an eight-session DST project integrated into narrative-text instruction, after which they completed a seven-item open-ended questionnaire analyzed thematically within the Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) framework. Three themes emerged: accessibility, tools and platforms, and digital literacy. Findings show that technological obstacles clustered at three predictable points in the production workflow, namely device performance during editing, storage capacity during application installation, and network stability during upload, rather than occurring as generalized or unpredictable failures. Despite these constraints, students reported predominantly positive perceptions, describing adaptive strategies such as device-sharing and resourceful use of online platforms (CapCut, Canva, PowerPoint, Padlet, Cake) to sustain their production process. These findings indicate that DST remains pedagogically viable under infrastructural constraintss, provided that its predictable technological bottlenecks are anticipated and scaffolded. The study contributes context-specific evidence on DST implementation from a Southeast Sulawesian classroom, a setting underrepresented in existing Indonesian DST research. It offers practical guidance for educators working under comparable resource conditions.