More review of how much I love SignSchool, and a video to show my learning.
Here’s a video to summarize everything I’ve learned thus far.
I have to say, I’m still not very good at ASL. I don’t think I could carry on a conversation. But hey, it’s a whole different language. You can’t expect me to learn a whole language over the course of a few months. And, to be fair to myself, I retained most of what I learned. So there.
But, in all seriousness, overall, I enjoyed the ride. ASL is fun, and I might keep cracking at it every once in a while, just for fun.
This week for my ASL learning, I again spent time on the SignSchool website.
The next module to complete was “Friends.”
Anyone else find it worth noting that SignSchool puts friends before family?
Anyway.
The more time I spend on SignSchool, the more I enjoy it. It’s such a good learning tool – and it’s free! Who couldn’t love it?
I made a video to record what my learning looks like on SignSchool and a review of what I learned this time. Here it is:
This week, SignSchool told me a story about a boy and a girl meeting each other. It was a video, and they signed phrases to each other that I had just learned. I then had to answer questions like, “What was the girl’s name?” “What did he ask her, and what did she answer?” It was so much fun and super practical.
If I ever have a student wanting to learn ASL, I will direct them to this site. Who knows, I may even keep learning ASL after this class just for fun!
This week, I went back to the same website as I did last week to continue some of my learning there since I enjoyed it last time.
The next part of SignSchool taught numbers, which I already know (see my posts Numbers, numbers, numbers and Numbers 11-20), and the phrase “How well do you sign?”
I added pictures of me doing the signs for the phrase since a video I would have added here would have been too short, but keep in mind that the signs include movement, and I couldn’t add that in pictures.
I really appreciate SignSchool for the way it teaches conversational ASL.
The next lesson on SignSchool.
When I finished learning these words and phrases, the website took me back to the lessons I’d learned. I’ve officially finished the basics of “About Me,” according to SignSchool.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. Do you have any suggestions for any different ASL tools? Is there anything you’d like to see me try to learn next?
On last week’s post, I had people recommend for me to check my learning of the alphabet and numbers out of order. I wanted to do this by going on the website that Zachary Hirshmiller recommended: “SignSchool.”
What you first see on the SignSchool website
Once I had signed up, I didn’t find a function right away to check my learning of the alphabet and numbers out of order, but I did find a very user-friendly interface that allowed me to choose out of various basic skills to learn.
Once I signed up and logged in
I selected the “beginner” difficulty and went right ahead learning “The Basics.”
This website is a great tool. It started me off with a super fun introductory video that caught my attention and explained left and right-handed ASL and the importance of facial expressions before teaching me any signs.
Then we went through some basic signs:
“What,” “your,” and “name.”
“What is your name?”
Since I already know the alphabet, signing my name was easy.
Me signing the first letter of my name
The website has a feature that accesses your camera so you can see yourself practicing the letters. I don’t really know how I feel about this. Normally I wouldn’t give a website access to my webcam, but I decided to try it, since I’m already trying new things. There is a little info button that says that SignSchool does not have access to my webcam and it is solely for my practicing purposes, so I chose to trust that it’s not lying to me. However, when I tried to click the option to disable the webcam, just to see, it wouldn’t let me. Strange.
The next thing was to learn the alphabet through a sentence. “The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Honestly, I find this approach much more fun (and more helpful) than just memorizing the alphabet in order. (I’m really liking this website so far.)
I used the sentence to check my knowledge of the alphabet out of order, and honestly, it was pretty good. I’m positively surprised at myself.
This week, I worked on the numbers 11-20 in ASL. I also did a little check in to see how much ASL I can remember off the top of my head so far. I have to admit that I surprised myself. I retained a lot more of it than I thought.
I found the numbers 11-20 to be really easy. It built off the other numbers a lot. (You’ll see what I mean in the video below.)
Let me recap some of my learning (alphabet, numbers 1-20, and certain words I know) so far in a video.
Anyway, this is the end of my numbers for a while. (Maybe – I’m really enjoying them, so I might continue learning them anyway. It’s really satisfying to learn these things.) After this, look forward to my next post, where I will solidify some of my knowledge of greeting words!
Last time, I solidified my knowledge of the ASL alphabet. This week, I worked on learning how to sign numbers, and I started with just the numbers 1-10.
The numbers 1-10 weren’t that difficult to learn. Numbers 1-5 are really straightforward. Just start with your pointer finger and add fingers as the numbers get bigger. So for 1, hold up your pointer finger, for 2, hold up your pointer and middle finger, etc. The only exception is number 3, for which you hold up your pointer finger, middle finger, and thumb.
Numbers 6-10 are also pretty straightforward once you see the pattern. You start at number 6 by holding down your pinky with your thumb. For number 7, you hold down your ring finger with your thumb, for number 8, you hold down your middle finger with your thumb, and for number 9 you hold down your pointer finger with your thumb.
The only different one is number 10, where you make a thumbs up and shake it.
I think I can work on numbers 11-20 next time, and maybe throw in a few words. I’m really enjoying this website, they have a lot of free stuff on there.
I worked on the alphabet using the same link that Stephanie provided in her blog, a link to a free ASL lesson on the ABC’s. I also reviewed the ABC’s a few times with this handy ASL ABC YouTube video:
The thing that’s so great about this video is that there is no introduction, background sound, or anything of that sort. It’s just a guy doing the ABC’s, and he does them pretty slowly, so it’s easy to follow along.
Next week I hope to finish learning the numbers in ASL.
I am finding that videos are the easiest thing for me to follow along with. I enjoy learning from them. I’m having trouble thinking of other, new things I could use to learn ASL from. Do you have any ideas?
I then made my free account and started a new project.
Blank project in Animoto.
In Animoto, you can easily do things such as add media to the media library on the right-hand side,
Add audio,
And preview the video.
One nice thing about Animoto is that it provides you with a quick tutorial on how to use it when you first begin. This is super useful for non-techy people like me.
Behind the scenes of my project video.
I’ve never been very good at making videos. Even in seventh grade when our class would make presentations using Windows Movie Maker (the only video-making tool I ever knew how to use), I wasn’t the most creative kid in the computer lab. I like to stick to what I know (which is a problem in the ever-changing world of tech). However, I did my best to create something usable.
After all of this work, I got to the end of making my video and discovered that in order to download it, I had to pay for a subscription.
Not only would I have had to pay for a subscription, but it was going to be a yearly subscription – for $96.
Enter: Screencastify to the rescue. (Screencastify is a Chrome extension which lets you record your screen or a certain window and the audio coming from it.)
And, there I was, having had to use not one, but two new techy things. T’was not a good day.
(There is an icon in the corner of the video from Screencastify, but at this point, I no longer cared.)
The thing that was nice about Animoto was that everything was super easy. There didn’t appear to be a lot of free functions, but what was offered free was easy to use. The layout of the program itself was also nice, in that the most used buttons were all easily accessible and everything felt organized. But, in the end, it wasn’t too different from the Video Editor app which came with my laptop and which I have used before.
I think Animoto could be used as a great educational tool if the school system afforded a yearly subscription. However, I don’t think it’s necessary, as there are video editing apps that come with most Windows/Mac laptops/computers for free…
On the SAMR model, Animoto could be used in all of the four categories. It could be used to simply replace a face-to-face lecture, integrate pictures/videos in a lecture to become augmentation, become a tool that students use to create their own videos and share them with each other (modification), or to create something publishable and share it with the whole world (redefinition). In a classroom, I think the most likely level of Animoto on the SAMR model would be modification.
At the very least, I will now be equipped to use a video editing tool in the future. Is there any particular video editing tool that you prefer to use? Let me know in the comments.
(Also, if you know of any tricks to memorize the ASL alphabet, please tell me.)
This week, I started using the app Lingvano. I really liked how it was laid out, and the first lessons were very simple. However, pretty soon after I started learning with it, I found out that I had to pay to continue learning. And, although I’m pretty invested in learning ASL, I’m not that invested.
So, I moved on. The app InterSign ASL seemed like a good second choice. I started working on things there and learned the letters, A, B, D, E, F, J, K, L, O, P, S, T, N, X, and Y.
I can now finger-spell short words, like “ball,” “fox,” “box,” “plate,” or “stand.” I still have a very limited knowledge of ASL, and it takes me a while to think about the shape of each letter before I can successfully make it or identify it.
It’s been really interesting so far, having to relearn the alphabet. It’s a strange feeling to be struggling so much to spell. My hands are a bit slower than my head is.
The homepage of the InterSign ASL app.
I really enjoy the way the InterSign ASL app is laid out. The most fun thing for me so far has been that after I learn a new set of letters on InterSign ASL, it shows a video of someone spelling a word using those letters and I have to type out the word. Identifying the letters individually in order to spell a word just feels rewarding when I finally figure it out.
I think I will continue using this app alongside the other things I try. I’ll definitely be trying YouTube videos next, but after that, I’m not sure what to do. Do you have a suggestion?
For my learning project, I decided to try and learn some ASL (American Sign Language). I’ve never had a need for it, but I figure it’s a useful skill to have, and I think it’ll be (at least mostly) fun.
I have absolutely no prior knowledge of ASL, so it’ll be an entirely new thing for me to track my personal level of interest as this project continues and to see how much I will be able to retain starting from scratch.
I have a very rough idea of how I’d like to go about this, but this is subject to change:
I think I’ll start by trying out a couple of apps during the first two weeks. I already found two that I want to compare: Lingvano and InterSign ASL.
I think after that I’ll see if I can find a few YouTube videos and websites to try out.
After that, I’m not totally sure. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for some inspiration, but I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually.
I’m not interested in ASL for any particular reason, just because I think it would broaden my own potential as a person. I’ve never had to communicate with someone who was deaf, but I know a family who has a deaf son, and his two younger brothers were around my age. Sometimes, they would start signing at each other so that no one else knew what they were saying. I found that incredibly annoying, but thinking about it now, I think it’s very sad that just because someone is deaf, I can’t easily communicate with them.
