Category: Learning Project

What a blur these last few weeks have been! It feels like I just started this EDTC300 class, but now we are in the final stretch.

I greatly enjoyed being able to have the opportunity in this class to be able to take on a new skill and be somewhat forced (in a good way) to practice it consistently. I had wanted to learn ASL for awhile, so it was a great opportunity to be able take it on as a challenge for this class.

Over the last few weeks I learned the ASL (American Sign Language) signs for the alphabet, numbers 1-99, colors, animals, family names, and food. It required a lot of practice and memorization, but I feel like if I can keep practicing the signs every once in awhile, it will hopefully stick.

For my last learning project post, I made a second food part video that contains 26 different food types. Here it is below:

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During the last few weeks of our EDTC300 classes, I had been watching a show called Sue Thomas: FB Eye. It is a TV series about the true-life story of an FBI agent who is deaf and uses her ability to lip read to help her bring criminals to justice.

I hadn’t even considered the connection of watching this show with the ASL I had been learning. It was really interesting to get even just a slight bit of an understanding of what life can be like for someone who is deaf. Watching this show gave me some opportunities to try and learn some signs for new words and phrases. It was difficult to understand with how fast the signing took place, but I was able to catch a few words that I had already learned the signs to. I definitely recommend watching this show for anyone who is interested in seeing ASL and lip reading put into action, as well as if you enjoy crime shows.

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Rundown of my ASL Learning Experience

Week One:

Blog: ASL: My Process of Learning How to Speak Without Sound

• Shared about my previous ASL experience
• Current plan for learning ASL
• Tool: The ASL App
• Tool: Stack Social

Week Two:

Blog: Intro to Learning ASL – ABC’s

• Learned the Alphabet
• Tool: The ASL App
• Video Progress: Intro to Learning ASL – ABC’s

Week Three:

Blog: ASL: Numbers – Brainpower and Hand Strength Unite!

• Practiced handshape exercises
• Learned numbers 1-30
• Tool: The ASL App
• Tool: Stack Social
• Video Progress: ASL: Numbers 1-30

Week Four:

Blog: ASL: Colors & Animals – My First Digital Book

• Learned signs for colors
• Learned signs for animals
• Tool: Stack Skills 
• Tool: Book Creator – ASL: Colors & Animals
• Resource: SAMR 
• Video Progress: ASL: COLORS!
• Video Progress: ASL: Animals!

Week Five:

Blog: ASL: Family Names (and hopefully some food for later)

• Learned family names
• Tool: Stack Skills 
• Video Progress: ASL: Family Names

Week Six:

Blog: ASL: Food, Sales, and Video Editors

• Learned food names
• Resource: Does it matter which hand I sign with? Using Your Dominant Hand When Signing
• Resource: Right-or left-handedness affects sign language comprehension
• Resource: Left vs. Right Hand – Using Your Dominant hand | ASL – American Sign Language
• Tool: Wondershare Filmora X
• Video Progress: ASL: Food – Part 1

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Progress Before and After

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Goals Moving Forward:

• Go over words that I have already learned on a consistent basis (once or twice a month at a minimum)
• Practice using words I have learned and sign them in sentence form

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Resources used throughout my process of learning ASL:

• The ASL App

• Stack Skills

• Book Creator

• Wondershare Filmora X

• Right-or left-handedness affects sign language comprehension

• Does it matter which hand I sign with? Using Your Dominant Hand When Signing

• Left vs. Right Hand – Using Your Dominant hand | ASL – American Sign Language

• YouTube

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Overall, I found blogging about my learning experience to be a little overwhelming and vulnerable, but I found it to be a simple process to be able to present my learnings in a digital way. I don’t think I would make a blog for myself if weren’t an assignment expectation, but I have enjoyed the process when I am one of many in a class doing the same thing. I also really appreciated the class environment where we could all support and encourage each other.

This week I focused on learning ASL (American Sign Language) signs for different types of food. In the same way that I have been learning and sharing in my other blog posts, I have been using the online ASL Stack Skills course. It is easy to follow and I have found it simple to learn new signs. Speaking of which, the ASL Stack Skills course is currently on sale! I have only done about 3/4 of one of the courses and I have already learned so much.

There are a lot of signs for different types of food, so I decided to work on about half of the signs for this weeks blog post so as to not get too overwhelmed. Here is a video of 24 ASL food signs.

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Something that I was asked about in one of my prior blog posts, and something that I was also curious about was how to choose which hand you sign with and why. I found a few different resources that share a bit about which hand to use when doing sign language.

Does it matter which hand I sign with? Using Your Dominant Hand When Signing

Right-or left-handedness affects sign language comprehension

Briefly explained, it is encouraged that you use your dominant hand (the hand you use primarily to throw or write) and only your dominant hand. It can be confusing for someone trying to understand your signs if you switch which hand you use for signing in the middle of trying to sign something. For single hand signs, if you are right handed, you will only use your right hand. In the same way, if you are left handed, you will sign with your only your left hand. For doing signs that require both hands, your non-dominant hand will typically hold the stationary position while your dominant hand performs the movement.

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Another question that I was asked in a prior blog post was what software was I using to make my ASL videos. I thought this would be a good opportunity to briefly share about the software I used which is called Wondershare Filmora X

I will be honest that I am not sure I can easily try and explain Wondershare Filmora X well enough for someone to go away reading this post and know how to create a video. For that reason, I included a tutorial video below that gives a quick rundown of some of the basic features of Filmora X.

Generally speaking, you are able to combine and add pictures, videos, audio, music, effects, etc. to be able to make an overall awesome video. There are a ton of effects that I myself haven’t even looked at, so if you are interested in making videos and the time to do it, I feel that this could be a great tool for you to use! It has a free version, which from what I can remember includes a decent amount of features. I have the full version which cost me around $55 USD. I have personally found it to be worth it as I have used it in a lot of university classes as well as some other side projects.

Goals:

• Learn and memorize the rest of the food signs in the ASL course
• Go over prior learned signs to keep them fresh in my mind
• Try and practice signing sentences using the words I now know

This week, my goal for my ASL learning project was to practice learning the signs of family names and different types of food.

I am going to admit that I found this week a bit harder to have the same kind of time and motivation to learn new ASL signs than the last few weeks. I learned different family names, however, I am struggling a bit more to remember food signs. I was unable to learn the food signs to a point in which I felt I could make a video of them, but I plan to move towards learning food next week.

Once again, I used the ASL Stack Skills course to learn the family names. I went through the video at least 4-5 times while learning the new signs. For some reason, I found family names difficult to differentiate between each other. Many of the signs are very similar to one another with slight changes or with extra signs added on. For example, girl and daughter are very similar. They both have the same first sign, but then daughter has a different second sign. Girl and wife are also very similar with both having the same first sign, but then wife adds the sign for “marry” as a second sign.

Here is a video of the family names I learned:

I feel like my brain is having a hard time trying to remember all of the prior signs that I already know as well as trying to learn new ones. One trick I have been trying to use to combat this is that whenever I see or hear the name of the object I know the sign for, I will practice doing the sign in that moment. I have asked my husband a few times to say a name of an animal or color so that I can practice recalling the proper ASL sign. I also try to practice different signs when I am driving by myself. There are a lot of moments where I can practice signs I already know, but I find it hard to put aside time to learn new signs. However, I plan to keep trying!

Goal:

• I am going to try and go over each sign that I have learned so far at least twice this week to keep them fresh in my memory
• I am going to slowly work through learning different types of food
• I will keep on doing hand exercises to keep my hands strong and flexible

This week, I focused on progressing in my ASL Stack Skills course by learning the signs for different colors and animals. After four weeks of using the course, I can attest to the fact that the video tutorials that are provided are easy to understand and I have learned a lot of different signs through using the course.

Our task for this week in EDTC300 was to learn about and use a new type of tool or app to document the progress of our learning project. I had been quite organized and efficient last week so I was able to get a head start on making videos of my progress for this week. Once I saw the expectation for this weeks blog post, I realized that this was the one time I should not have been as productive.

I did not want to redo my videos with a new tool, so I kept the videos that I had already created, however, I was still able to practice using a new tool to display my videos in an e-book form with the tool Book Creator.

Book Creator is a very simple tool that can be used to display different topics, subjects, images, and the like, in a digital book form that you as a teacher can share with your students. You could display the book for your whole class using your own computer and a projector, or you could send a link of the book to your students individually. There is a lot of freedom for how to make it work for you as an educator, but there is also some flexibility in being able to allow your students to use it in their own learning or as a presentation tool for a particular subject or assignment.

In trying to identify where this tool would fit on the SAMR model, I feel like it is hard to specifically identify where it would fit as it is a unique tool. I would guess that it would either be substitution or augmentation as it is a basic tool to display information such as PowerPoint or another presentation, but it also able to allow students more room for creativity in how they present or share information.

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When you are adding text or an image, you always start by pressing the yellow plus (+) sign on the top right. You can add a multitude of things or items. However, there is a limit to what options you can use with the free version. There is still a wide variety of items that you can still use.

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To display my ASL: Colors and my ASL: Animals videos, I made individual pages showing each video along with a brief explanation of the signs that I learned.

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Here is a link to my book: ASL: Colors & Animals

I will also include my videos below for easy access, and in case the book option does not open properly for other viewers.

ASL: COLORS!

(I have tried doing a few different steps to try and embed a YouTube short video, but I still have issues with it. If anyone has figured out a solution, please let me know!)

Goal:

My plan for this upcoming week (as long as no big curveballs are thrown at us) is to start learning about the names of family members and practice the signs for different foods.

This is now my third week of learning ASL (American Sign Language), and I am really enjoying it! I focused on practicing the “Universal Gestures” video provided by The ASL App, as well as the “Handshape Exercises.” Below is a video that shows some quick hand warmups that are good at strengthening your hands and helping you practice some of the more commonly used ASL hand signs.

ASL: Hand Warmups

I started getting more invested in learning new ASL signs after starting the Stack Skills ASL course that I had previously purchased. I have only used the first course that came in the package deal and it has a TON of videos! They are easy to listen to, thorough in the explanations provided for each sign, and it also provides some history behind the creation of ASL which is super interesting.

This week, I specifically focused on learning the “Numbers” portion part of the course that looked at teaching the signs for numbers 1 and up to 99.

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It was a bit of a learning curve to remember how to do 20-29 which have a different set of rules compared to 30 and up. However, after taking time to go over the hand signs repeatedly (even when I was in bed trying to fall asleep), I eventually was able to memorize most of them. With more consistent practice, I anticipate being able to recall the number signs faster and more easily.

This video shows the ASL signs for numbers 1 to 30.

ASL: Numbers 1-30

*It is important to note that certain signs can look slightly different depending on if it originated in Europe or in America, as well as if it is a more formal or simplified version of the sign.

Goal:

My goal for this upcoming week is to work more on the alphabet and numbers to try and remember them more easily, and to start to learn the signs for colors and animals.

This past week, I took the opportunity to focus on learning the ASL (American Sign Language) alphabet. I used an app called The ASL App which provides little video tutorials of different ASL signs. They are easy to understand and the setup of the app is aesthetic and simple. I don’t have full access to everything on the app at this time, but depending on my progress using my other resources, I might potentially buy and work on the additional videos through the app.

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I spent my time playing the “Know your ABC’s” video repeatedly while doing the hand signs until I was able to remember each of the letter signs. I also worked on practicing the signs without the video a few times. My goal is to go through each of the alphabet signs enough so that I could do the signs in my sleep.

Here is a video of my progress with doing the alphabet.

Intro to Learning ASL – ABC’s

Goal:

Along with my goal to keep practicing the alphabet, I plan to move on to practicing the signs provided through The ASL App by doing the “Universal Gestures” video. I also plan to do the “Handshape Exercises” video to keep my fingers and hands flexible.

For my EDTC 300 learning project, I am excited to try and take on the task of learning American Sign Language. I have endeavoured to try and learn different languages before, such as French, German, and Norwegian, but I struggled with memorizing all of the different grammar rules as well as with trying to speak with the proper pronunciation. A few months ago, I had come across a big Master class sale that was offering ASL courses at a hugely discounted price. I took the plunge and bought it; however, I have not yet taken the time to start using it. This project is a great opportunity for me to try and learn language in a more hands on (no pun intended) way.

My own previous experience with ASL is quite limited. As a child, I had two books that provided very simple signs for basic words such as “apple” or “boy.” I can only remember a few of the signs now. More recently, I had briefly practiced learning the alphabet, but I need to do it more consistently to remember it. My hope is to learn basic phrases so that I could communicate if I had the opportunity to talk to someone who was deaf or hard of hearing that knows ASL.

My plan for learning ASL is to start with using the resources that I already have in my possession. I am going to first focus on using The ASL App. I do not have the full version of this app, but the lessons it provides for free will be a good start to get into the practice of moving my fingers and learning the basics of ASL. Alongside using The ASL App, I plan to use the courses I received through the Master class that I purchased through Stack Social. It includes 13 different courses that focus on different elements of ASL such as fingerspelling, emotions, animal & number sentences, and everyday phrases. Once I start working on learning ASL through the use of these two resources, I will potentially look into using different types of avenues depending on my progress. My goal is to remain consistent with what I learn so that I can hopefully finally know how to communicate using a different language.