Presentation for November, 2010 Georgia Educational Technology Conference (GaETC) describing a collaborative project of Key Elementary School Deaf/Hard of Hearing Program: a sign language dictionary tied to Georgia Performance Standards.
7. I need to know
common words
that are used in
daily life.
It helps to have
someone
visually do the
sign for the
word.
I need to know
“how to
communicate
with my child.”
I need
more than a
Website to
help me.
I don’t have
transportation
to attend a
sign language
class.
13. Georgia Performance Standards
ForVocabulary
• MCSD
Podcast Site
SigningVideo
Collaboration
• Windows
Movie
Maker
Video
Definitions
• Wiki
Web
Repository
• Teacher
Tube
Video
Streaming
But don’t
forget to
K.I.S.S.
19. Cell phone Dave on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49392213@N00/5094020069/sizes/z/
Jump In Abnel Gonzalez
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abnelgonzalez/2058764760/
Road Block Mark Robinson
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66176388@N00/4203093585/sizes/z/in/photostream/
Road Map WoodleyWonderWorks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2942950081/sizes/z/in/photostream/
Aha! FarleyJ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/farleyj/2768941171/sizes/z/in/photostream/
Questions? Merlijn Hoek
http://www.flickr.com/photos/merlijnhoek/2841785343/sizes/z/
Notes de l'éditeur
Welcome!
I’m Laurie Grant - Teacher of Deaf/Hard of Hearing and Special Ed Lead Teacher @ Key Elementary.
And I’m Emily Whiteside – Speech/Language Pathologist (SLP). Laurie and I have worked together for about 15 years.
We’re going to share our Low-Cost/ No-Cost Web Video project – a technology solution to an instructional problem at our school.
You will notice a title change from what we advertised – Web Video is a better description of our product.
We invite you to jump in with your own ideas, thoughts, comments about common problems and solutions unique to your setting at any point along the way. We will also answer questions at the end of the presentation.
We will
Describe the learning problem facing us;
Present our proposed solution and the process used to create it;
Demonstrate the product; and
Provide some tips to help you create your own product
School Profile
Key Elementary is a small, high poverty K-5 Title 1 school (350 students) in a big school district (Muscogee County).
We have a high percentage of transient students (About 25%) and English Language Learners ( 8%).
We are also a Cornerstone Literacy school with high expectations for students. We consistently make Adequate Yearly Progress.
But, most significantly, we are home to the Deaf/Hard of Hearing program in MCSD.
Who are we? Program
Full-time Staff includes:
4 Deaf Education Teachers
1 Speech/Language Pathologist
1 Sign Language Interpreter
1 Sign Language Technician
1 Substitute Sign Language Interpreter
Also have an audiologist, OT, and PT
Classroom Arrangements
5 Co-taught classes – teachers are spread out on two hall-ways
1 Full-time Pull-out class
Because of co-teaching, schedules are rigid – no time for coordination during the day.
Special Equipment to enhance Communication
Carpet or rugs over tile
Tennis balls on chair/table legs
Sound Treated HVAC systems
Sound Field Systems
And
Personal FM systems for students
WHO are our Students?
13 Deaf/Hard of Hearing Students – KDG – 5th
HETEROGENOUS GROUP
degree of loss -- range from mild (1) to Profound. Most in the severe to profound group
types of loss – sensory neural, conductive, mixed, and auditory neuropathy
Coexisting conditions: Treacher Collins, Smith Magenis Syndrome, Autism, Cognitive Impairments, Cerebral Palsy
Amplification Type (personal hearing aid, FM system, cochlear implants)
Communication Type - 75% rely on sign language; others use speech
Needs
Language Proficiency and Literacy
18 months language age in kindergarten – a very rough average.
Continue with a language deficit throughout their time with us – all areas of language (grammar, vocabulary, phonology)
Vocabulary skill is a particularly critical area for success in school.
The average reading grade level for deaf adults is 4th grade.
Interaction and Instruction in their primary language
75 % of our students depend upon a visual language -- sign language-- to communicate adequately.
Those who do not use sign language as a primary language, use it for clarification.
90% live with families who are not proficient in sign language
Summary – Our students:
Can’t communicate well with parents, peers, faculty;
Can’t understand the language of the curriculum;
Sign language is visual, not alphabetic. Cannot be written. Requires communicators to be face-face or to use video.
.
10%
Have functional signing skills
50%
Report that they have a sign language Dictionary at home, but that they have difficulty finding academic vocabulary signs in it.
90% report that they
High-speed Internet
Need help learning ASL
Would use a Website for academic vocabulary several times a week if they had it available to them.
WHAT WOULD YOUR FAMILIES TELL YOU? HAVE YOU ASKED?
Read comments ? OR let audience read it.
Parents
Can’t communicate adequately with their children for activities of daily living or for supporting academics.
Because they don’t know sign language.
THINK OF YOUR AUDIENCE,
THEIR CHARACTERISTICS,
THEIR INTERESTS,
THEIR NEEDS.
Students
Can’t communicate well with parents, peers, faculty
Can’t understand the language of the curriculum
Most of our students need sign language to learn.
Our students need to know basic vocabulary and academic vocabulary.
Parents
Most of our parents don’t know sign language.
Can’t communicate adequately with their children for activities of daily living or for supporting academics.
Our parents need to have access to signs for the vocabulary of the school and help for supporting their students with homework.
Faculty
Even with online sign dictionaries, there is little out there for finding signs for academic vocabulary. Most of it must be fingerspelled or invented.
Faculty members do not always use the same signs for words, especially for academic signs.
As with spoken languages, signs have regional variations (similar to dialects).
Unlike other languages, because sign language is visual, not alphabetic, when one of us needs to know a sign, we require face-face or video communication.
We don’t have any planning time during the school day and have not been able to find a consistent, mutually agreeable time to collaborate after school. Furlough days have not helped.
Our faculty needed a method for determining mutually acceptable academic signs and an efficient way to remember and share those signs with students, teachers, parents.
We had identified the problem years ago, but had trouble executing a solution.
IDENTIFIED BARRIERS
Budget – no money for materials and little available for academic vocabulary. Can’t pay someone to develop specialized vocabulary resource
Language – No ASL signs for some academic words. Parents and reg. ed teachers don’t know signs. DHH faculty may use different signs.
Time – too many demands already. Not enough planning time for synchronous work.
Motivation – some have become complacent and have not sustained initial expressed interest.
Filtering Policy – district Net police shut us down
Access – poor language skills; lack of sign language instruction; academic words w/out signs
WHAT ARE YOUR ROADBLOCKS?
DESIGN
We knew that we needed:
To Collaborate to
Decide upon signs
Store signs
To Differentiate instruction
kid-friendly definitions,
conceptually accurate graphics
in child’s primary language
of carefully selected academic vocabulary words
To Communicate
Visually
Across time, space, and modality (asynchronous in two languages)
to share between faculty, students, families
Requirements
Quick
Easy
Free
Accessible on school Internet service
Allow us some control over editing
COULD A WIKI WORK FOR YOU? WOULD A WEBSITE OR BLOG BE A BETTER CHOICE?
Georgia Performance Standards guided our selection.
Our familiarity with the students’ language levels and the nature of normal language development has helped us to carefully select vocabulary to target.
Unlike other aspects of language which mature at around 8 years of age, semantics (vocabulary) develops over a lifetime. These students need to know everything. We knew that we had to be strategic about what words we selected.
Borrowing from the work of Beck, McKeown & Kucan (2002)
we looked for words that:
are important to the curriculum
have utility or versatility for other subjects or situations,
have instructional potential (usefulness), and
whose concepts can be adequately communicated (difficulty of some abstract concepts).
WHAT KNOWLEDGE BASE DO YOU NEED TO CONSULT? WHAT ARE YOUR AREAS OF STRENGTH THAT YOU CAN SHARE?
Systems Design – our plan of action
We thought that we would progress this way:
1- Use Video collaboration to work out uniform signs for academic vocabulary (raw video sharing using a private wiki and an in-house podcast site)
2- Create signed videos of vocabulary words and their definitions
3- Collaborate on an online repository for the vocabulary
(an online multimedia dictionary with GPS alignment)
4- Stream the video to the repository using Video Streaming site
5- Also hoped to Involve students in production
In practicality, the video collaboration to work out uniform signs was too cumbersome. A lot of work.
We decided to go “low-tech”: walk next door or across the room to get a sign. This is not as desirable as two people are deciding the sign.
BEFORE YOU DEVELOP HAVE A PLAN.
DEMONSTRATION OF PRODUCT
This is very much a “living dictionary” – a work in progress.
It is evolving as we work on it.
We’ve added GPS alignment, links to related games, videos, and other resources.
But its primary purpose remains constant:
share uniform signs for academic vocabulary with students, parents, and faculty
provide a kid-friendly definition with an image.
Go LIVE!!
HOME:
describe attributes
MENU (always available)
AROUND --
PENNY
CHASE
CLIMATE
CONCLUDE
COASTAL PLAIN
Describe menu
Dictionary pages A-Z – always accessible
I need a sign -- DHH faculty use -- intention: request a sign for a word.
Vocabulary to Add – DHH faculty use-- used as a que line for vocabulary to Pre-teach
To Do - Webmaster use – organizes what needs to be done
GPS – Reg. Ed/DHH faculty use – at-a-glance view of vocabulary by standard
Resources – website resources/ vocabulary resources
Contact Us – email link
TIME FOR SOME FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
DO YOU LIKE THE FORMAT?
ARRANGEMENT?
NAVIGATION?
COLORS?
WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE
Development of the product…
We’ll do a walk through of the basic components.
DEVELOPMENT – Technology Components
CONSULT YOUR BASE: KNOWLEDGE BASE
Georgia Performance Standards
Text Books and Sites
Peers
Create a knowledge database
WHO/WHAT IS YOUR BASE?
BORROW WHAT YOU NEED -- Photo Sharing
Flickr.com, Wikimedia Commons, USA.gov , friends, _____
Create a file for images within your master project file
Search by concept (“dark” – night) , word, or example (a specific kind of mammal).
Search by licensing – Creative Commons- Share and share alike; commercial use
Be sure to record sources and links for crediting.
CAN YOU THINK OF OTHER SOURCES.
CREATE Video
Windows Movie Maker (XP or Vista) or Windows Live Movie Maker (7) or iMovie
Create files within master project file for photo, audio, and video subfiles.
DON’T MOVE THEM.
Use Audacity to create and edit audio files –
Export them to the Movie Maker.
Use PowerPoint to create title screens and graphics. (Save as png, gif, or jpg)
Import audio, video, and image files to WMM.
Use subtitle overlays to add captioning.
SHARE THE LOAD with colleagues
PBWiki or Wikispaces
Request Content (I Need a Sign)
Store Content (Images, definitions, Standards, Resources, Links)
Request Help (To Do)
Organize Tasks (To Do)
Comment (Discussion Tabs)
Tag Pages
WHAT OTHER WAYS COULD YOU USE THE WIKI FOR
COLLABORATION, COMMUNICATION, DIFFERENTIATION
SHARE WITH THE WORLD – Stream Video to your wiki
Consider Pros/Cons of various services
Vimeo
YouTube
Teacher Tube
In-house
Open Account
Upload
Select Widget
Copy/Paste Embed Code
Pause!
Tap Dance. Tell about plans for disimination (WKEY, other MCSD schools)
