So we have made it to the end of my network learning project… and I can confidently say that I have a wonderful base knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL)! At the start of this project I listed 3 goals that I had for myself:
I have to admit that I thought sign language would be a lot easier to learn online than it proved to be. I found myself wanting to turn to paper resources many times, but relied on social media, affinity spaces, help forums, and other digital sources instead. Once I became comfortable with these sources and figured out which worked best for my specific needs, learning became a lot easier. One of the most helpful resources that I found was handspeak.com. I became very comfortable with this site and found it was the easiest to navigate and find what I was looking for. I plan to continue using this site, learning at least 10 words per week. By the end of September I would love to have a list of 100-200 words in my vocabulary.
While learning how to sign more words is a short term goal of mine, in the long term I would really like to be close to fluent in sign language. Through reading discussion threads I found that the deaf community struggles in professional settings, not having the accommodations they need, therefore limiting their professional network. I would love to be able to provide assistance to this community in whatever way I could, and being able to have strong ASL communication would be key. In order to reach this goal I will need to keep up with learning and practicing ASL in my everyday life. Through this project I have expanded my professional learning network and will be able to lean on it to help me reach this goal. I found a FaceBook group that links ASL learners together for practice not only signing but also reading signs. I plan to pursue this opportunity and hopefully expand my skill set! One thing that really surprised me through this project was the limited online communities for ASL learners. I found that when I had a question about a sign or needed help, the online ASL learning community was very limited. This is surprising to me, considering how much the deaf community relies on technology. I have found that the education system has made great improvements in accommodating deaf learners in the past few years. These students now are able to participate in “Smarter assessments” where they “have access to videos of humans using ASL to interpret all text on the screen” (Stone and Cook, 2018). With this new advance in technology, I would assume that there are more ASL learners and there would be a greater online presence of them. Besides the few roadblocks I had to overcome, learning ASL completely online was a wonderful experience. I now feel more confident in making myself a part of affinity spaces and finding information through the help of others learning online. This project taught me a lot about technology as education and gave me hands-on experience to back the claim that “technology has become an important instrument in education” (Bransford et al. 2000). I am excited to continue this technological learning journey and hopefully be fluent in ASL one day! Resources: Abb, M. (2022, June 23). NLP Final Update [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Lil533L4dJ4 Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. National Academy Press. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368. Stone E. A., & Cook L. L. (2018). Fair testing and the role of accessibility. In: Elliott S., Kettler R., Beddow P., Kurz A. (Eds.) Handbook of Accessible Instruction and Testing Practices. Springer International. https://link-springer-com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71126-3_4
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The past few weeks I have spent some time with ASL (American Sign Language). I can proudly say that I have mastered the alphabet and numbers 1-10. While this doesn’t seem like a huge accomplishment, I wanted to spend a lot of time making sure I mastered the basics because “without an adequate level of initial learning, transfer cannot be expected” (Bransford et al. 2000). I want to have a really strong transfer ability because one of my final goals is to be able to sign a sentence using finger spelling and hopefully a few words I learn. My next goal is to sign at least 25 most common words to help me with this final goal. One challenge that I have encountered this week was not being able to understand what others are signing. While I know this will take a LOT of time and practice, I had trouble finding resources to help me understand what others sign. It is easy to look up how to sign something but not as simple to find out what someone signed without much context. The most helpful resource I found was a “reverse dictionary” where I can find words by how they looked when signed. I ran into this issue when I shared a video of my learning with my Aunt. She sent me a video responding in ASL, but I was not sure what she said. After a lot of investigation, I found it translated to “good work”. You can see in these short videos that I have mastered the alphabet and I am excited to start signing more words! If you want to follow along, I have documented a vlog of my learning journey on my YouTube here!
References: Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. National Academy Press. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368. https://www.handspeak.com/ Abb, M. (2022). A-F Gif [Digital Image]. EZGif. https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif/ezgif-2-8c866002d4.mov Abb, M. (2022). F-L Gif [Digital Image]. EZGif. https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif/ezgif-2-8c866002d4.mov Abb, M. (2022). M-R Gif [Digital Image]. EZGif. https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif/ezgif-2-8c866002d4.mov Abb, M. (2022). S-Z Gif [Digital Image]. EZGif. https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif/ezgif-2-8c866002d4.mov Abb, M. (2022, June 14). NLP Update 2 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Hp21z8KbmzM Last week I blogged about 21st century learning and all of the research I found supporting my definition of 21st century learning. This week I took what I learned and put it into action, creating my own 21st century lesson plan. The highlights of last week’s blog post looked at 21st century learning as collaborative, technological, and student-centered. These three components drove the creation of my 2nd grade coins lesson. In this lesson, students are introduced to pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters for the first time in a classroom setting. While this may seem like one of the most basic lessons, and probably could be “learned” in a 15 minute conversation, my lesson takes this content and teaches it with the support of interactive technologies and in a collaborative space, making the lesson relevant and fun for students. One of the largest aspects of 21st century learning seen in my lesson is the collaboration focus. Throughout the lesson, students are working in small groups as team members. They are encouraged to communicate with one another and work together to find solutions to the problem at hand. They also communicate and collaborate at the beginning and end of the lesson, sharing what they know about coins, and then sharing their findings with the class. Another 21st century learning driving factor in this lesson is that it is student-centered and focused on what the students know and what they learned. The whole launch of the lesson focuses on students sharing what they already know about coins. In this way, students not only get their minds focused on the subject, but they also get to learn from one another, connect classroom learning to their real world experiences, and take authority in their own learning. The last aspect of 21st century learning, as discussed in my last blog post, is the integration of technology. I found this to be not only one of the most challenging aspects to incorporate, but also one of the most important. In today’s society, accessing money electronically is becoming increasingly popular. Chances are that students know about cash and coins, but rarely see their parents use it- I know I never use cash anymore! That is why I wanted to make sure that students formed the relationship between physical and digital coins in this lesson. By introducing the concept early, students will have a fuller understanding and base for learning about digital money later on.
An issue that I had to grapple with in creating this lesson for 21st century learners was how to make sure students were able to correctly identify and use real coins. Because I wanted to incorporate technology in this lesson for more contextualization, flexibility, and creativity, I had to find a resource that did not take away from anything students learned about physical coins earlier in the lesson. One topic we touch on in the launch of the lesson is differentiating coins based on size. In many online coin simulations that I found, the size of the coins was not relative enough to the real size of coins. This could create confusion for students who are just learning about characteristics of different coins. The largest issue is that “technology use in the classroom is context bound and is, or at least needs to be, dependent on subject matter, grade level, student background, and the kinds of computers and software programs available” (Mishra & Koheler 2006). Because the students are just learning about coins, they don’t have the expanded background needed to transfer their understanding. Because of this, they need a program that will be as similar as possible to the knowledge they have. The online tool that I settled on, roomrecess.com showed a very accurate image of each coin, which will hopefully mitigate my concerns. One way that I also solved this issue was by incorporating physical manipulatives (real coins) in this lesson as well. While this somewhat takes away from the technological aspect of 21st century learning, it contextualizes the concepts in a physical way for students, which I find equally as important. Resources: https://www.roomrecess.com/Tools/OnlineCoins/use.html Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054. Abb, M. (2022). Lesson Plan Unit 5. [lesson plan]. (n.d.). Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jt1XRVQDos-zFKAvX3plZaEzczONawVYnYhKMEFjeO4/edit?usp=sharing Abb, M. (2022, June 11). 21st Century Learning. Morgan Abb MAET Blog. https://morganabbmaet.weebly.com/blog/june-11th-2022 Image Credits: 0Four (2012). Coins [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/44456430@N04/6940415113/in/photolist-bzirBx-bJkmW-9CtboB-rLhQYS-7cXgwa-4tkUA8-6vSGmT-DzKbz1-3mqJWA-dMtSTa-Q1BLN6-wVnKKe-7JosGM-8Ra4C-g479W-oBFbjF-anjGBj-fNPhjo-7NTD2j-aEDuc4-hoBLa-3mqKxJ-2phyWU-y92tz-hoCoV-4sLxMF-hoCcL-6bwevX-a48sYp-5WRy-dCB2E-6YaU7f-6iw63V-6YaRZ5-9AnWNH-6Y6Rg6-6Y6Qzr-9XoLG-a3TxWM-qsxKa-NBQi2-22YTM8L-2j9UF9u-9W9upp-9W9y8c-2mJZXRD-2mJZXRi-4nvTEf-rW7dL7-2mJWvMh Wessman, Petra (2022). Digital_Money [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/138067900@N08/52036192577/in/photolist-2nhg696-2mGfwj2-9EXUmr-2RREPo-7rEfKy-PcqHRY-6zbaEG-2izTTat-9Fa1B7-4z9NVY-4z5AY2-4z9NjU-2kC2Q1c-mccMon-brjdyQ-PX7PDy-GbVqr1-geqQex-2gVK3PF-4z5xaM-4z9Q9d-4z5wrn-4z9LTQ-4z9LEf-8rfCL3-ekCrP-2kos4Jw-QyFjG-wp2TLy-2nbJ3mq-2kWekFk-21f6MeU-4mmhzH-2neeoxq-KGfDt9-4M3Rft-24yMcCc-DXvDYn-9t8WyF-E58rFU-vqgFVw-27JZeDN-4oGVFT-7dRJyK-2ky48tG-2gtKL8P-7DYMN-d3QFC-2mUYNgW-LLJCd6 This week I took time to research 21st century learning. I came across challenges in my research, but came to the conclusion that most people agree learning in a 21st century classroom revolves around collaboration, technology, and student centered learning. I dive into each aspect here. This research was interesting for me specifically, because I don’t know any different than 21st century classrooms. I have grown up in an age where all I know is how to learn and teach with these three components, so finding out that not all teachers have the same experience was interesting. Something that I found difficult within this project was trying to think about areas that I could improve my teaching/ move towards teaching in a 21st century environment. Because I know no different and all of my education instruction has been centered around aspects of 21st century learning, I found it difficult to pick out an area that I was largely lacking in. While I am by no means a perfect teacher - very far from, actually - I feel as though I have always centered my teaching around students, technology, and collaboration. When I think about all the information I found, one thing that sticks out to me is student-centered teaching. Student-centered teaching is one of the biggest components of learning, but it also seems to be highly controversial. In a 2003 study, authors Pedersen and Liu even found that “a difficulty [they] anticipated in examining teachers’ beliefs about student-centered learning was the lack of a common definition for this term” (Pedersen and Liu, 2003), showing that teachers don’t even know what student-centered learning is. In a perfect world, all lessons are differentiated for every learner and each student is presented information in their learning style… but is this realistically possible for teachers?? References: Abb, M. (2022, June 11). 21st Century Learning [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/KuNQuTivTjA Pedersen, S., & Liu, M. (2003). Teachers’ beliefs about issues in the implementation of a student-centered learning environment. Educational Technology Research and Development, 51(2), 57-76. I have taken on the challenge of learning ASL (American Sign Language) (or at least the basics) in the next four weeks! You can see in this video where I'm starting and my goal is that by the end of these four weeks I will be able to sign the alphabet fluently and know a list of the most common words listed in the video below. In the text, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, the authors state that “a “metacognitive” approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them” (Bransford et. al. 2000). This approach is what I am aiming to accomplish while in my four-week (and hopefully beyond) learning period. A few goals of mine are:
So far, I have come across a few sources that I believe will help me learn effectively and efficiently. The first is the NAD (National Association of the Deaf). This website, while it does not teach ASL, it references many resources to assist in my learning. The next few references I came across were pictures of common ASL words. These pictures were not very helpful as they drew arrows of how to move your hands to sign, but they were not able to show me the movement. I have a feeling that this is going to be the biggest struggle I face in this learning process, and my greatest resources are going to be videos rather than images. References: Abb, M. (2022, June 3). NLP Starting Point. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PggdXljBqdg Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. National Academy Press. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368. Learn How to Sign (2021, March 3). 25 ASL Signs You Need to Know. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FcwzMq4iWg National Association of the Deaf (2022). Learning American Sign Language. National Association of the Deaf https://www.nad.org/resources/american-sign-language/learning-american-sign-language/ This week, I reflected on my Professional Learning Network. After mapping out my network, I realized that it feels small, but is actually larger than I realize. My PLN is made up of the people, places, and tools I use as resources to enhance my work (academic and professional). If you take a look at my map, you can see that due to my age/ life experience, my network looks different from someone in their 20th year of their professional career. This may seem like a disadvantage, but I look at it as an opportunity for growth. One advantage of me being at the beginning of my professional career is I have a lot of chances to network and avoid “socially narrowing” as described by Tanya Menon (2017). Menon describes social narrowing as not taking the daily chances to expand your network. For example, I have a daily routine, as do most people, and I seldom stray from it out of convenience. As Menon suggested, by going to a different coffee shop I could avoid social narrowing. Reflecting on this early in my career, I can take the opportunity to expand my network daily. One disadvantage I notice when I look at my map is that it is very limited to the resources my peers and professors have introduced me to. James Paul Gee (2004) discussed “affinity spaces” and the advantages of expanding them. He defines affinity spaces as “a space in which people interact”. My affinity spaces have felt limited to my professors and peers up until this point. Acknowledging my limitations/ knowing the constraints that this places on my learning, I have recognized that by expanding my affinity spaces to different online learning communities, I could not only grow my network but also enhance and deepen my learning. Resources: Abb, M. (2022). My Professional Learning Network [Photograph]. Padlet. https://padlet.com/abbmorga/n6l8dbvd8dx335zq Gee, J.P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/lib/michstate-ebooks/reader.action?docID=200413&query= Menon, T. (2017, March). The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven't met yet [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/tanya_menon_the_secret_to_great_opportunities_the_person_you_haven_t_met_yet/transcript |
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