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ASL:
It Can't Be Done on the Web . . . And How We Did It!
Thomas Bell and Paula Willig
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American
Sign Language (ASL) is a 3 dimensional language. It is difficult
to teach something that is 3 dimensional in a 2 dimensional format.
Because the movements are often subtle, we were concerned that the students
would not be able to be able to produce what they had learned on a flat
monitor. We decided to target specific features of the language for
our first project, the use of streaming
media for fingerspelling (fingerspelling is spelling out individual
words with the manual alphabet) and classifiers (handshapes that represent
an object, vehicle, person, etc. that show spatial relationships). |
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We
chose to use streamed media rather than downloadable files because what
we wanted to accomplish required large files. With the fingerspelling
site, the idea was to show several fingerspelled words with the same pattern
so that students could begin to identify the pattern as linguistic and
learn to read the shape of the word rather than individual letters.
For the classifier site, we wanted to show several classifier stories to
demonstrate how classifiers are used in ASL. The majority of the
students had access to a high speed connection on campus and found the
sites to be helpful and clear. The site addresses are: http://www.jal.cc.il.us/ipp/fingspell
and http://www.jal.cc.il.us/ipp/Classifiers. |
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Having
experienced some success with streaming media, Paula decided to add an
online component to Field Experience, the practicum course. For this
course, students are in the field interpreting for 10 hours a week and
meet in the classroom only one hour a week. The students posted questions
to an online forum, including questions about specific interpretations.
They were told to post full sentences, rather than one word questions.
Paula then responded with some possible interpretations and also animations
of new vocabulary. This proved to be very helpful for the students.
For a discussion of this process and the development of the fingerspelling
and classifier site see: http://illinois.online.uillinois.edu/casestudies/vol1num1/willig/index.html |
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During
the summer and fall semesters of 2000, John A. Logan College's Interpreter
Preparation Program offered two fully online courses. During the
summer, Educational Interpreting was offered. This was predominantly
a discussion course with students posting to bulletin boards, reflecting
on the material that they were reading. The course offered this semester
is Interpreting in the Religious Setting. This course is a skills
course and requires students to videotape their performance on the various
homework assignments and mail in their work for feedback. The course
materials are online and in a video course package that the students purchase.
The two online courses are aimed at current practitioners, rather than
student interpreters. People have enrolled in these courses from
across the United States, from north to south and east to west. Student
feedback has been enthusiastically positive.
To
read this handout online go to: http://www.jal.cc.il.us/ipp/ASLonline. |
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