Month: February 2025

Not Every App is Suitable for Everyone

February 21, 2025 / Carys Moffatt / 5 Comments

When it comes to educational apps I want them to be easy and fun. If you look at the Duolingo app, it is one of the most-used language apps in the world. If you look at the Duolingo Language Report, you’ll see that people all over the world turn to the app to learn a variety of languages, such as English, Spanish, or French. I love Duolingo, and even used it in high-school to learn French for class and some Ukrainian for my job. My only downside to the five star app; it does not offer ASL.

Although it seems normal for Duolingo to not offer ASL, as the app uses many audio aspects for their learning, it uses a lot of pictures and words, which many users can use for matching the word to the picture. In my opinion, it would be no issue for the app to create animations of hands performing the signs to teach the language.

An image of the SignSchool logo. Regardless of Duolingo not teaching ASL, I love the layout of the app and how intriguing it can be for any age group. This week, knowing Duolingo does not offer ASL lessons, I turned to another app; SignSchool. SignSchool is a free ASL teaching app that provides a variety of topics with lessons, games, a ‘sign of the day’ and a dictionary. When I first opened SignSchool it looked very professional. The app has a colour theme of green, which gave a school aesthetic, but other than that it seemed very plain.

An image of the lessons in SignSchool.

An image of the learning options offered in SignSchool.

I started with topics and went straight to the ‘Greetings’ since I already know the other two topics; numbers and colours. There were ten greetings that I was eager to learn. However, I came into a bit of trouble. The video was way too fast! Even with the option to slow down the video, it was still too quick and I had to repeat the video quite a few times to try to learn the new signs. Below the video, the app also shows a still-picture of what your hand is supposed to look like as you go about the sign. I found the pictures unnecessary because they showed the starting and ending position of the hand, but not the axis in which your hand should be. For some of the very fast signs, it only confused me more and it was very difficult for me to learn anything.

An image of the finger spelling game in SignSchool. One part of the app that I did love was the ‘Games’ section where you could do a fingerspelling game. What this would do is show a series of alphabetical signs in a certain order, with the option to slow it down, and then you would be able to type in your answer. I thought this was very beneficial for staying sharp on the alphabet and practicing fingerspelling and recognizing fingerspelling.

Despite my downsides to this app, I will be keeping it to practice my fingerspelling. Other than that, I would not recommend a beginner downloading the app to try to start their journey in sign language. It has potential to be great for a more experienced signer.

Thanks for joining me this week guys! See you all on my next update!

Our Changed World

February 18, 2025 / Carys Moffatt / 1 Comment

A picture of the TikTok and Musical.ly logos. Does anyone remember when TikTok was Musical.ly? I remember my friends and I being outraged that they were taking away our favourite app. But they didn’t, they only changed the name and aesthetic. Despite some influencers showing disdain on the change of our beloved app, everyone started to transition into the new norm, and today, TikTok is one of the top social media apps in the world.

This is only one small part in technological evolution. It goes back all the way to the lightbulb. In my childhood, I went from watching television with a big box on the back of it to a flat screen, having to use discs to having a Netflix subscription, and using a landline to my cellphone. With the evolution of technology, human behavior changes.

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

In Michael Wesch’s video, he talked about trends regarding human behaviors in participation involving the use of internet. At around the four-minute mark, Michael talks about the new cultural order. He describes how one person can do something – whether it’s big or small – and set off a chain reaction. In the video, he describes how one man did a dance and posted it. Shortly after, he gained attention and thousands of people saw his video and recreated it.

What does this mean for our future classroom? Well, it’s the same thing that’s happening in classrooms today. Think back to when we were in high-school; what was considered ‘cool?’ Everyone wanted to fit in in whatever way they could. In my school, TikTok was the top attractive trend, and everyone would learn all the dances, all the new sayings, and spend hours upon hours on the app. As teachers, when we go into classrooms, the up and coming generations pose more and more obstacles. Due to the grip technology has on all of us, children get more easily distracted, and tend to rely on technology more than we have in the past.

We must also think of some of the more severe consequences in letting children and young teens have technology. Bullying, especially cyberbullying, has been a struggle that many children face. It can be something as small as a rude comment on a post, to creating an anonymous account and sending terrible messages to someone. With technology, students need to be aware off all the negatives that come with it, and know that they can go to someone – a parent, teacher, friend – to help them sort out whatever situation they are going through.

A photo of a laptop vs paper and books. To balance all the challenges this poses for us, we must think about what we wanted when we were in school. Personally, I loved when teachers proposed assignments and projects that let us use our technology. For the future students, they will no doubt want to use technology in any way they can while in school. With phone bans it does halt many resources in elementary schools. However, children in elementary schools should have no use for project materials related to technology, unless they are nearing their middle school years and use a laptop for writing work. For middle school years and up, allowing the students to have the creative freedom to choose between using a cell phone or regular poster board will offer them more options and skills to put in their back pocket for adulthood.

Increasing my Vocab with Lingvano!

February 9, 2025 / Carys Moffatt / 10 Comments

A picture of the Lingvano app icon.

Hey everyone! This week I was a little stumped on what to learn. When I first thought about learning ASL I knew I wanted to start with the basics like numbers and letters; but now that those are done I was wondering what category to do next. Well, instead of a category, I decided to learn some basic signs to open up a conversation! I did this with Lingvano.

A picture of where to find your lessons in Lingvano.

Lingvano is a free ASL teaching app with in-app purchases. When you first open the app, it will ask you what dialect of sign language you want to learn (American, British, or Australian), then, it will ask why you want to learn and help you set a goal for how much you want to learn in a certain timeframe. So far, I’ve used it a couple times this week to broaden my vocabulary, and have been able to keep a dictionary of sorts through the app. It automatically keeps track of all the signs you learn and how accurately you’re able to learn them through the app’s lessons.

A picture of where to access your dictionary in the Lingvano app.

The lessons are quite fun and extremely easy. It will start you off with basic greetings and more frequently-used words. The lessons include a slow-down feature, so in the lessons or in the dictionary, if the video is signing a word too fast for your liking, there is a turtle icon in the corner that you can press to slow down the video. Another fun feature is that the app will show you variations of different world dialects, like British and Australian.

A picture of where to find your lessons in Lingvano.

One thing I found quite interesting is that you can do any sign with your left or right hand. I always assumed that there were certain signs for each hand and that specific hand had to sign them, which was quite silly to think as a lot of people try to learn ASL through TikTok or other sites that reverse the video view which would be very hard to replicate. The only thing that is a general rule is that once you pick which hand you prefer to sign with (usually your dominant, so for me it would be my right), you stick with it and not flip-flop between your two sides.

A picture of the Lingvano app explaining that you can use your left or right hand for signs.

I learned quite a few more things that are important to know when having a conversation in ASL. For starters, when asking a question, you should lower your eyebrows to indicate your question. Another thing I learned was how much more variation there is in sign language. For example, when signing the word ‘deaf,’ you can put your finger from your ear to your chin, or the reverse of your chin to your ear.

Overall, Lingvano is a fantastic app for learning conversational ASL, and will definitely stay downloaded on my phone after this project is over!

Thanks for joining me everyone!

1, 2, 3, All Eyes on Me!

February 1, 2025 / Carys Moffatt / 8 Comments

Anyone else absolutely obsessed with TikTok? If you are, you’re not alone. I spend quite a lot of time on the app, often opening it right when I turn off my alarm to help me wake up in the mornings. It was only natural for me to run to the app when contemplating what to document my journey on this week.

Using TikTok made documenting my progress quite easy and fun. Last week, I recorded a video on my phone and uploaded it to YouTube, which got the point across fairly well, but was quite boring. I found with TikTok, I was able to include my references in the video as screenshots instead of putting them separately in my post. Another great part about using TikTok was being able to cut in between takes rather than having to remake the whole video if I made a mistake.

This far into my learning journey, I’m able to do the alphabet, sign my name, and sign out the letters to words quite accurately. This week, I focused on learning numbers, specifically, 1-20. Using ASL Bloom, I was able to learn these easily and practice everyday. This is the knowledge I used in my TikTok recording.

These numbers were very easy to learn but they had me questioning if there were variations like their are in the alphabet. Again, ASL variations can happen for a multitude of reasons, such as ASL signs evolving over time, regional variation (like slang or the different ways to say ‘to’), and international influence from other sign languages. I went ahead and watched a few videos on ASL number counting and found quite a few variations.

An image of the sign for "3" on the ASL Bloom app. Through ASL Bloom, they show you how to use the numbers at a beginner level, making it obvious how your hand is supposed to look at every point. This was noticeable with the number ‘three.’ In the app, your palm faces away from you, but in the video your palm faces toward you. Another variation I noticed was with the numbers 16-19, where the way you move your hand went from a horizontal sweep in the app to a vertical turn in the video. The video also showed alternatives on how to do 16-19 by adding together the ‘ten’ followed by the remainder of your number. ex) to do 16, you would first do the sign for ‘ten,’ then follow it up by the sign for ‘six.’

Finding out about all the variations for counting numbers made some things easier for me. Such as how ASL Bloom had me switching the face of my palm every few numbers, which would make me forget what exact fingers to use for the sign, but the video specified the easier way to do it and had the palm switching directions less. Learning about the variations has definitely helped me find my own ASL language, as everyone who learns ASL uses it differently. I am having a lot of fun learning this language and am very excited to be able to apply it in a classroom setting in the future!

See you guys next week for the update on my journey!

Expanding my Journey Knowledge! ASL on TikTok!

February 1, 2025 / Carys Moffatt / 0 Comments

For my ASL journey, this week I decided to capture my progress through TikTok. TikTok has had an alarming rise in popularity, even during it’s less popular ‘Musical.ly’ days. TikTok has especially made its mark on younger and younger children. Even though there is an age restriction of twelve, children as young as five or six have been seen and made popular through the app.

TikTok is fairly easy to use and get absorbed in. No matter what educators do to try to drag children away from the app, they always find their way back to it and end up scrolling for hours. So how can we combat this issue? By using the app for education!

Preparing to Create a Video

An image of my TikTok showing where to click to create a new video.

I started by making a TikTok account specifically for my Learning Project journey, in case I wanted to use it regularly for posting. When you download the app you go about setting it up like any other social media app; creating a username and password, choosing preferences for your feed, and inputting personal information. Once all of that is done, you can scroll through the feed and make your own content!

I decided to make a 1 1/2 minute video for my project. I clicked on the ‘+’ at the bottom of the screen to start a recording, and chose the ’10m’ option so I could create a longer video than the shorter ’60s’ option. I pressed the red circle at the bottom center of the screen to start recording and then clicked off it when I was done my introduction.

Green Screening Photos

An image of the green screen setting in a TikTok video.

An image of a green-screened photo on TikTok.

I decided to take screenshots of all the references I wanted to make in my video. Mainly, I referenced the ASL Bloom app and the category I used to learn from this week. As I went about explaining the app I used to learn my ASL lesson, I used TikTok’s ‘Green Screen Photo’ option to show screen shots of the app and the category I was using. It’s fairly simple to do; you click on the square icon to the left of the recording button and apply the effect. After it’s applied, you can scroll through your photos and choose the one you want to show in your video before recording.

Captioning and Posting

An image of where to find the 'captioning' on TikTok.

An image on how to edit captioning on TikTok.

The rest of the video process is fairly simple. You record and cut depending on how long you want your clips to be before continuing to the next page. This will show you a preview of what your video looks like and you can edit what you put overtop your video, such as editing your clips further by adding text, stickers, effects, filters, and more, including captioning. I decided to add in captioning for the enhancement of audience viewing. Once you press captioning and add it onto your video, TikTok will automatically analyze and generate text for your video, and then you can go in and edit it to correct the words and put it on the proper time slots. After I finished the captions, I posted my video on private and saved it to my phone to share.

TikTok in the Classroom: Pro or Con?

I find TikTok to be quite an influential app. Yes, it does have a lot of negative aspects, sometimes people will post inappropriate content that won’t get taken down in a timely fashion and people get stuck doom-scrolling so much that their attention span in a real life setting decreases. However, it also has many great aspects. Many people use it to show how to do practical things, such as basic cleaning tasks, cooking, maintenance, etc. People also share history lessons, language lessons, and tips on everyday essential knowledge.

In a classroom setting, I think that having an account for learning that students could follow and use could be a great tool in the future. We cannot force children to get away from technology but we can influence them to use it smartly. We could even influence the children to use TikTok for a creative project, like a video on a book report with all the screen sharing tools and closed captions for audience enhancement and student feedback via the comment section.

With classroom usage, TikTok could be extremely beneficial for students. Not only would it redefine the app and allow for an educational use for children, it could alter the way students go about completing assignments for their projects and book reports. On the SAMR scale, students could do the following to showcase their learning:

Substitution: Creating a TikTok to do a presentation in place of presenting in-person in front of a class. This could benefit students with social anxiety.
Augmentation: Students could create a video with effects and voice-overs to do projects. ex) for ELA novel reenactments or drama club, this would make scene-work cuts much easier to do (rather than using iMovie and having to edit clips together) and students could use the many effects TikTok has to limit their personal spending for a given assignment.
Modification: Instead of written book reports, students could use TikTok to talk about the book and input a collection of screenshots, examples, and analysis’ to showcase their book reports without losing the creativity of a book through a few hundred-word written report.
Redefinition: students could redefine their learning through TikTok in many different ways. ex) if a teacher wanted their students to do a discussion forum type project, they could start by using a teacher account to make a TikTok asking a question or giving a prompt, then one students could stitch the video to expand on the prompt, followed by the other students. This could allow a tree-branch discussion where the students comment on each others videos and stitch multiple videos to get their views across.