When I began this course, I had been wanting to learn ASL for a long time and had tried many times, but really never got past the alphabet (or even fully learned the alphabet if I'm being honest). I thought this was such a great opportunity and push for me to start learning ASL again, in hopes that I could at least get to know some conversational ASL.
I think this was such a great opportunity to have and I really learned a lot from this experience.
Here's a recap of all the things I've done in my learning journey!
In my first week, I developed a plan with how I would carry out this project. You'll see didn't last very long (which I'm actually okay with). My plan from my first week was:
learn the alphabet
learn numbers
basic questions such as "how are you?", "do you need help?", "what is your name?" etc. - things that I could start using right away for conversation
more words/vocabulary and grammar rules associated with ASL
In this first week, I downloaded two apps - SignSchool and The ASL App. From these two apps, I worked really hard on understanding the ASL alphabet, and the timing was perfect because I had a 12 hour drive that same week where I got to practice the alphabet a lot (don't worry, I wasn't driving and signing).
After this week, I felt quite confident about my alphabet signing ability and decided to move on to something new in week 2.
This week I already went off script from my plan in week one. I saw an ad online for another app called ASL Bloom, which was described as Duolingo for ASL. At this point, I had already tried 2 apps but there were a few features that I did not love about them so I wanted to see if this one did better.
I used this app for a week and I loved it. If you've ever used Duolingo, it's basically exactly that. You would be shown new words, then asked questions (like matching), then shown other new words, then back to the start. It felt like it was a lot easier to learn the words because you were constantly refreshing your memory about the signs for them.
This week I started to learn a lot more conversational pieces to use, like "how are you", "hi, my name is...", "what is your name", etc. I also really felt like I solidified my alphabet signing this week after doing more alphabet lessons on ASL Bloom.
This week I also created my first video to document my learning!
In the 3rd week, I decided to stray from using solely apps to learn sign language and tried my first YouTube video in my learning journey. I used "LearnHowtoSign.org" with their video "First 25 Signs".
Although YouTube videos gave me less freedom for when I could work on my learning project, I really learned a lot from this video. The explanations for different signs started helping me to move away from just memorization of hand motions to actually being able to start making sense of why signs are the way they are and learning them a lot quicker.
For example, the sign for "no" is just a mixture of the signs of "n" and "o"
This was a really great resource for anyone who is curious about learning ASL!
For this week I was learning 2 new skills - how to edit a video and continuing with my ASL journey. The tool I used in this week was a video editor called "Splice" in which I did end up using the free trial for 7 days to see whether it was worth it - you can find out whether I thought so by reading my blog for this week!
At this point, I had been working really hard to get to a point where I knew some conversational ASL so I decided to compile some of my knowledge so far into one video with captioning.
One thing that I will say as I write this wrap-up is that I'm still so focused on my hand motions that I often forget to talk while I sign, but I think that will definitely come with more practice!
The video I created using Splice is posted on week 4's blog!
This week I tried a new video resource which came up on my TikTok. I used Bill Vicars' Youtube channel, starting with a video called "Learn Sign Language: Lesson 1".
Like I mentioned in my blog post this week, it threw me off a bit as there was no sound to the video. As I continued to watch though, I realized it was really helping me to stay focused and pay attention to what was going on. I also liked that - like ASL Bloom - they would teach new signs, then come back to those signs later in the video to continue practicing them. He also showed that there were different signs for certain words that people in different areas may use. Lastly, I really liked that he showed how some words (like who, what, why, questions) have facial expressions that go with the sign - in the case of asking someone a question, it's your eyebrows going down almost in a frown movement.
This is a resource I would definitely continue to use when learning sign language since it is laid out in a more comprehensive and ordered way.
During this entire week I was preparing to move, so my actual learning of new signs fell slightly behind. However, during my past weeks I noticed that I was finding I had a lot of questions ABOUT ASL and figured this would be the perfect time to learn a little more about the background of ASL.
For this week, I did more research on:
The history of sign language - specifically the start of "formal" sign language, and creation of ASL
Sign names - I was so curious why some people have sign names (one or two signs to represent their name) and others spelt their full name out. I learned that every sign name is given out or chosen by someone in the deaf community and it is a tremendous honor to receive one!
The 5 Parameters of Signs - this is important because each sign has its own 5 parameters, and some signs differ by only one parameter which means you have to be aware of each of them.
I think it was important for me to spend a week doing this because learning about all these different aspects of ASL helped me feel a bit more appreciative and connected to it, whereas before I was feeling disconnected and confused about certain things making it harder for me to learn.
After 5 weeks of learning ASL, I decided finally that I needed to learn numbers - which was supposed to be a week 2 task (whoops). The reason I put it off was because I didn't really think I would need numbers all that much and also thought they would be pretty easy because I assumed that it would just be the same as how we show numbers on our hands already. However, as I learned more signs, I realized that some signs looked really similar to how we would typically show numbers on our hands so I thought there must be different signs for numbers.
I used two resources this week:
What I learned is that for numbers 1-5, your palm should be facing outwards, just as you typically would show them, however for numbers 6-10, the palm must be facing toward you - and all number signs are one-handed.
What I also found interesting is that numbers 1-30 have their own signs, but number after that is just the two base numbers shown quickly one after the other.
As my major and minor are both in the sciences, I wanted to start learning how I could apply my sign language learning to teaching those classes specifically. The sciences can be a tricky concept because there are a lot of new words that most people aren't familiar with, and if a student is deaf or hard of hearing, it may become even more difficult.
I used a youtube channel called "Atomic Hands" to start my signing in science journey.
I learned a lot of different words such as, meiosis, mitosis, cell division, DNA, RNA, and many more - which can be found in video form in this week's blog.
What I really liked about these signs is that they really help to describe what is going on in each process which I think would even help students who aren't deaf or hard of hearing to understand and remember each of these words.
During this busy week, I ended up falling slightly behind in my learning project with little energy to dedicate meaningfully to the project. So instead of learning more signs, I decided to start looking into ways that I could continue my journey offline after this class.
Since I moved to Edmonton, I wanted to find resources here that I could potentially use in the future. What I found is that there are a lot of resources to continue this learning such as:
Canadian Hearing Services - this is an online course that uses a "no voice" method and deaf instructors to help people learn ASL more authentically and flexibly. They also offer 3 different levels of ASL learning - beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
Canadian Hard of Hearing Association - Edmonton Branch - this is an in-person delivered course that has 2 levels of learning - Level A (for people with no previous knowledge of ASL) and Level B (for people with some basic knowledge of ASL or people who have taken Level A).
University of Alberta - The U of A offers a couple ASL courses, where they only hire deaf instructors to teach. The only downside with this one is that it is offered through the university so it may be less accessible for people than the other courses.
Because I will be finishing my degree at the end of this semester, I decided to start looking into how I could actually apply some of my knowledge - specifically for classroom management purposes. I used the "Learn How to Sign" channel again with the video, "ASL Signs for Teachers to Use in the Classroom".
With this video I learned a lot that I feel I can take with me into the classroom:
Classroom management signs - wait, sit, be quiet, pay attention, line up, etc.
Instructional commands - help, focus, work, read, etc.
Subject signs - math, science, history, English
This video was a great ending point for the semester because I feel like I could definitely use these when I start teaching. I think it's so important to be able to communicate with all students, even if it's only a few words to start with. It makes the classroom feel so much more inclusive to the students who may need it, as well as helps me be able to help them more effectively.
My Overall Takeaways:
I do use online resources a lot within my life to learn new things, but I never realized the potential online resources can have to teach us so many skills. I feel like I learned so much throughout this project which I truly didn't think I'd be able to do since I've tried so many times to learn ASL online and never got this far.
There really is an app for everything. Throughout the course of this learning journey I used 3 different apps to learn ASL, and found so many more that I didn't end up using. Almost anything you want to learn can probably be found in an app.
While you can learn things online, it is quite difficult. What I found the most challenging throughout my learning journey was that there seemed to be no template for what steps to take to learn in the most effective way. I think if I had done some more planning beforehand, it may have been easier, but I'm typically someone who liked to have direction which is where I struggled in this project.
Blogging can definitely be beneficial! Some of my other peers were also learning ASL during this learning journey which was so helpful as I was able to gain a lot of insight into other apps or resources to use throughout my own journey.
Overall I really enjoyed this project and it was the perfect push for me to get back into learning ASL, since it's been something I've wanted to do for a while. While it did take a lot of time and effort, I think it was definitely a worthwhile task to show just how much you can learn using solely online resources. I think this could be a really cool task to do with students in our own classrooms as well.
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