Friday, October 23, 2009

ASL study

I am currently taking part in a study to test a new way of teaching basic sign language vocabulary to adults. The study was developed by the American Sign Language Group within the Contextual Computing Group at Georgia Tech. Each day for a week I follow a link from a text message to a mobile website where I go through my ASL lessons for the day. I can complete up to 80 lessons in the week of the study. and each lesson takes about 4 minutes.

During the lesson I watch 4-5 short videos of this guy signing a word. Then I click on "continue" and am shown 4 choices for the meaning of that sign, along with a button for "Don't Know." Finally you are told whether or not you chose the correct meaning for the sign and you move on to the next movie. Over the course of several lessons you see words multiple times and reinforce your knowledge. A week after completing my week of lessons I go in to take a test and wee what I've learned.

Not only do I get to learn some basic sign language, I get Amazon dollars too ($0.625 per lesson, plus time in the lab). I'll end up with around $60. I am asking you, the reader to post interesting and unusual things from Amazon that I could buy with this money. Provide links in the comments section of this post. Nothing vulgar please. I may end up purchasing your suggestion.

No comments: