I had to do it… TikTok was my last and final resource to check out for this learning project. I decided to look at this through

pure coincidence and really it was always right there. When I am avoiding homework or housework… work work.. I end up scrolling through the many quick rips online. It is a dark worm hole as we (most) all know. Instant satisfaction. Then , possibly due to everything I have been searching for in my browser, ASL videos started showing up on my FYP. So, naturally I started exploring! Nothing better than turning your procrastination into research!! Low and behold… I really liked this as a resource because you get to see a lot of different styles of people speaking ASL. Then they give real-time tips and tricks and it definitely feels more like talking to someone that the other apps have. The search engine on this app is simple (especially since most people already use it and know how to search) and everything you would be interested to learn is easily accessible.

 

This creator Yourstruly_rebecca spoke about how she came to be an ASL speaker and it was super inspiring and had come at the perfect time as I was just thinking about how all this vocabulary practice has been well and good but I learned core French in school from k-12 and the one thing I think I had missed and why I am not a fluent speaker after 13 years of conjugating verbs… is I have never been able to be immersed in the French community. Yourtruly_rebecca highly suggests finding activities in your community where you can converse with ASL speakers in order to understand the language as well as the community. One thing I have learned this semester is that the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community are a very proud people (as they should be!) and their language is so much more than just simply talking with your hands. I am very excited to continue my journey with ASL after this semester as I feel it is something I am very passionate about and I cannot wait to see how my daycare kiddos as well as my “DAUGHTER” (I learned to sign that today from TikTok) will benefit from my rekindled interest in learning ASL.

 

The downside I could see from using TikTok is that people would just be passively watching instead of signing with the creators (guilty). Another being that as I learned earlier in this journey, words in ASL can be different from region to region so you might learn different signs for different regions. This isn’t the biggest downside as this can happen with any of the apps and resources I have currently found. As Michael from the skillsharing site said, even if you learn the wrong word for your region, you’ve still learned a word and it will be easy to fix once speaking with native ASL speakers. As well, he told us to embrace the mistakes, so we must at all times keep in mind that we will look silly at some point in our learning journey so just to stay humble and be open to criticism and learning the whole way through the experience!