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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