Learning ASL Through a Game!

In continuation with my exploration last week, I decided to see what other applications there were that combine artificial intelligence and American Sign Language. I found an article in Forbes written by Steven Aquino that discusses a competition held by Google. The purpose of the competition was to help increase the available supports for hearing parents of children that are a part of the deaf or hard of hearing community. It was also meant to help increase the accessibility of technology for people that are deaf or hard of hearing. One project that they were working on was developing a sign to text application using fingerspelling. Often times it is much faster to talk than text; the same can be said for signing versus texting. This will also make texting or typing more accessible for people who use ASL as their first language because it a language totally separate from English.

In this article they mention an app called PopSign. The app was designed to help fight the level of young children that are deaf or hard of hearing experiencing Language Deprivation Syndrome. Of course, I had to download it and try it out! I have to say it has become the most engaging ASL learning app that I have tried so far! The app is built like a game. Each batch of signs comes with four levels of a game to practice what you have just learned. After every four levels of the game, you are introduced to five new signs. There are video clips of each word being signed that play repeatedly until you feel confident enough to move on to the next word. After going through the words, you get to play the game. It’s one of those games where you have to fling the coloured bubbles in to the air to match it with the other bubbles and make them pop. You win the level once you have popped all of the bubbles. The catch in this game is that you are matching words instead of colours. However, in order to know what word is on the bubble you are about to fling you have to look at the word being signed in the corner. This allows you to practice the words that you have just learned in a fun way. I enjoyed playing for a while! Although, I will say that I have found that the apps that only teach a few words at a time make it difficult to learn to put the words together to be used in conversation. Personally, I have found this to not be the most helpful on my journey to reaching my goal. In the future, as I continue to learn ASL I could see this app being beneficial in helping me to keep up my motivation to learn. On the days when I am not feeling like sitting down for a lesson, I can definitely see myself playing this game for a while instead!