ASL Online?!

This week, I was not feeling much motivation to do my ASL. Not that I don’t love learning it, but I have been so busy so sitting down to watch videos/look at pictures was no in the cards this week. I was stumped for a moment. What am I supposed to do this week? Then, it dawned on me! Online ASL games are a great way to learn and practice my ASL, in a new and exciting way.

While researching for online ASL games, I found a game called the ASL Fingerspelling Challenge.

When I click onto the link, this is the main page that comes up. To begin, I entered my name into the bottom spot where it says “enter your name”. After reading the instructions and controls, I was ready to go!

Once I click go, a variety of signings come up. Right away, I caught on that these signings were from letters in the ASL alphabet. Watching the signs go by so fast, I was unable to follow along very well. However, I used the feature at the top of the screen to slow down the speed. As well, I pulled up the ASL alphabet in another tab to look at for reference.

After making these two adjustments, I found it much easier to follow along! As the signs switched, I would think in my head which letter it must be.

Once the time runs out and all signs have been shown, I can click repeat OR type in my answer. After submitting an answer, I will get a score based on if it’s correct or incorrect.

My only complaint about this game is that there are no categories. I feel like it would be useful to have games in several categories such as food, sports, jobs, greetings, and more. This would make each game more specific and help me strengthen one category if I wanted to.

Overall, this game was SO fun to play and such a nice change with learning ASL. I felt like I really needed a week to just practice spelling out the words and playing a fun game to do this. The ASL Fingerspelling Challenge is definitely an online game that I recommend to anyone learning or wanting to learn ASL.

Now that I think about it, this game also could be easily used in the classroom while learning ASL. On one of the boards, I could hang an image of the ASL alphabet up. Then, another board would have the projector screen/SMARTboard. As a class, we could watch the signings and then guess based on the ASL alphabet what the word might be. This could even become a weekly thing where each week, the class has a goal to beat their highest score!

I had so much fun this week playing online ASL games. I highly recommended you to check it. Thank you for reading and tune in next week for another blog post exploring ASL!