Reviewing ASL Study and My Hectic Weekend!

Can y’all believe there’s only three more weeks left of this posted journey? It’s crazy to think about. Reflecting on this journey, it seems that I’ve learned next to nothing at all but that’s the opposite. I’ve learned the alphabet, numbers, question indicators, sign variation, and more! As these weeks go on it’s getting harder and harder to find apps to help me learn ASL differently. Sometimes when I download an app, it is an almost exact copy of a previous app, with the only major difference being the need to pay for it. Other times, the app is only a dictionary, which is included in many other ASL apps, so is a bit redundant to keep. After scrolling and scrolling through the app store, I finally came across an app that was worth exploring.

ASL Study

ASL Study is a free ASL learning app. Much like many of the other apps I’ve reviewed, it has the basics (Alphabet and Numbers), a Search type of dictionary, and categories (Emotions, Sports, Food, Holidays, Education, Family, etc.) that you can go through to learn different signs. You are also able to ‘favourite’ signs so that you can go back and review them easily. With learning the signs, you are provided a video of a signer doing the sign, with the option to slow down or speed up the video.

The main feature of the app is the ‘ASL Study Pack.’ In the pack, it has a dictionary type collection of all the signs the app has provided. This is also where you can search for any words. This is one part of the app that you have to go into to get all the specific words you need. If you use the ‘search’ option outside of the study pack, not all of the options or plural forms of the words will show up. In the study pack, all the words will show up. This is seemingly the only negative aspect of the app, but it’s truly just a small mistake as you’re still able to access all the words.

Personally, I think the app is great. It can be really good for a quick reference and I love the option to favourite certain signs so that you don’t have to search them every time. However, the app seems very plain. There’s no more that I can do on ASL Sign than on some of the other apps I’ve used. In fact, there is less in this app than others. Regarding beginners learning ASL, the app makes a great dictionary and reference, and I would say the most useful features are the Study Pack (which is really just a  dictionary, which is included in most apps) and the favourite option, which I utilized myself for my weekly sign learning.

My Hectic-ish Weekend

I got you with the title didn’t I? Okay okay, it wasn’t that hectic. Mostly the usually running around and catching up on end-of-semester homework. However, on Friday, as I was writing up my Digital Literacy blog, I had to evacuate my building. I live on campus at the University of Regina’s Kisik tower. At around 10:00pm, an alarm rang through-out the building, followed by a recording telling us to evacuate because there was a fire. Now, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence at Kisik. Truthfully, the alarms go off all the time – my roommate has set our personal one off by burning popcorn.

It was my first evacuation I’ve had to do so far, so I closed my laptop, grabbed my keys, and headed to Campion to wait over an hour until we were cleared to go back. I’m being dramatic, it wasn’t that bad, but I’m a theater kid so let me live my moment.

Anyway! I decided to reflect on this by learning some signs to go along with our fire evacuation. So, here’s my video!

Thanks for joining me this week guys! We’re on the home stretch! Good luck with all your journeys!