ASL Webinar on Mango Languages for OLS Members
Troy's Academy Award and Sign Language Theater
00:00:00
Sign Language Interpreting in Canada
00:00:58
The Impact of Simple Sign Language Phrases
00:01:33
Communication Preferences in the Deaf Community
00:05:15
The Importance of Deaf-Friendly Establishments
00:05:21
Interacting with the Deaf in Public Spaces
00:08:46
Variability in Sign Language
00:09:34
Incorporating the Deaf Community into Library Programs
00:13:03
Demonstration of Mango Languages' ASL Resources
00:16:58
Upcoming Features for Mango Languages' ASL Resources
00:31:01
ASL Webinar on Mango Languages for OLS Members
00:00:00
Dave Victorson
And of course, Troy won the Academy Award for that. He and my wife go way back to their teens, and Troy told me, really? After that happened, he said, you know, he started out in the basement in sign language in terms of theater, because there really was not a robust theater world centered on the sign language productions. So he started in the basement and made it to the absolute top of Hollywood, winning that award. And he was done. That movie was going to be his last, um, professional event as an actor because he just couldn't make any money at it. And so he needed to go out and get a quote unquote, real job. And now he has one in his life, has completely turned upside down, and phone stops ringing, never stops ringing. And he's highly sought after. But all of that aside, it's just a great movie worth watching. Of course, your prime Minister, when he speaks quite often there is somebody interpreting for the sign community in Canada, of all the countries in the world, probably has the best, most robust interpreting community and standards and pay. So the deaf in Canada are very fortunate. It's better than even in the United States. The certification process is much more rigorous. And as an interpreter in Canada, you can actually make a decent living. So it's pretty nice. Um, simple phrases truly make a big difference. Just think about how many times you go through your day and you say hello to someone in passing, um, or hey, nice to meet you. If you can't do that to a deaf person, you just pass. You just pass. And so like for example, the first one is hello. And I did this at the beginning of the presentation. He caught me off guard. I'd just like a simple salute. You can wave too, but it's just really pretty easy. And then. Nice to meet you. This is nice. You don't have to say two. This would be two of an independent word. You can just say, nice to meet and hear. Here's me meeting you, and you're on the other side of this. So. Hey, nice to meet you. So you guys should give it a try. Your videos are off, but I want you to sit there and in your own room. Try this. Just say nice to meet you. By the way, we have a solution for you being alone in your room so you don't feel quite as alone when you're practicing. And I'll get to that here in a minute and then need help, need and then help. You don't have to say do you need help? It just simply to simply need help. And your eyebrows are going to go up. The facial expressions are a big part of the language. If you've ever watched anybody signing. It's super important. It helps with the grammar and emphasis. So again, in your room by yourselves. Just just try this. Oh, yeah. I was going to do the wrong sign. Need help? Need help? And then the last one I'll show you is. Thank you. You could do one hand. You could do two hands. But be more emphasis with two. Thank you for coming. So I'm thrilled that you're here. Telling you now, thank you for coming to this this presentation. So last chance to practice it before we keep keep going. And by the way, it's almost impossible to it truly is impossible to sign and voice efficiently in two languages at the same time. It just doesn't happen. You see it, but both languages get degraded. So here comes a quiz. Uh, and of course, look at that. It looks like I made a typo. But of course, for this quiz, I did it on purpose. Does it really matter that I've got a capital Q and a capital Z? In this I could have been all lowercase or no. It looks like I've got this confused. Um, does anybody have an opinion? You can raise your hand or I'll just step through this in a second. But do you have an opinion? Does it matter that this punctuation looks out of whack for for those of us who are hearing. Well, in today's world, you know, the thumb is everything now. Two thumbs. Oh, my camera's disappearing. Um. Two thumbs. And, um, that's all you need. So typographical errors and autofill create tons of grammatical flaws, but it doesn't really matter. In the deaf world, communication matters. Number one. Depending upon where the person lives, they might not see another deaf person or someone fluent in sign language for several days or even a week or more at a time. So to them, they don't care if you say quiz or, you know, capital Z. It just doesn't matter to them. Communication is the priority and their culture in their kind of social habit patterns really show this. It really comes out. Um, here's another one. Deaf. Friendly. Do you think a place needs to be deaf friendly for the deaf to congregate in mass or go there consistently? For sure. For sure. If if a place an establishment is considered deaf friendly and the word gets out, the deaf are going to go there and they're going to continue to go there as long as that place is deaf friendly. My wife and I have lived in the same house for 12 years now with our three daughters, and there are four grocery stores close by our house, and she could go to any one of the four. But just on cue, two employees at one of the grocery stores took sign language classes after they realized that she was going to their grocery store. And now when she goes there, they act like they're her personal shopper. I mean, they have a short conversation and ask her if she needs anything and can they get something. And they know we have a cat. So they go over there and get the cat food for her while she's in the grocery section or in the produce section. It's really pretty amazing. When I go into that grocery store, they have no idea who I am. I could be anybody. USA. Then another thing in our community, there are a couple of different coffee shops you could go to. And again, one of the people in one of the coffee shops learned sign language. And so now, just by osmosis, the people in that place know my wife. They know, hey, nice to see you again. Or what do you want? It's always the same order, but they have a short dialogue. And so my wife goes back to that coffee shop every single time. And part of you becoming a bridge between the two communities will enable your branch locations to be deaf friendly. And so it will attract a deaf audience. This one's pretty funny. So if I haven't spoken to any of my fluent ASL friends and I'm deaf and there's a there's an event or get together or a social gathering and it's supposed to end at seven. Good luck. What will happen is the formal event will end at seven, and you might have to shoo them out of the conference room or wherever they happen to be, but they're likely to stay in your library until you close, and then you're going to flash the lights and ask them politely to leave and scoot them towards the door. They'll go out the door. They'll stand in front of the library while you lock the doors and go home and spend another 30 plus, you know, you name it. Minutes to catch up on the latest or just have time to share or speak fluently in their native language. And if you translate that into a restaurant, they're going to sit at that table for a long time. So I know that could be good or bad if you're a server, but it really does happen. And it's funny to watch and like in mixed relationships, like where my wife and I, she's deaf. I'm not. I'm ready to go home at ten. I'm tired. She's just getting started. It's pretty funny. Kids get dragged into that too. You'll see it. Kids will be there and they'll want to go home. They're ready to go home. And the parents are not even close. If I'm in the stacks in your library and you walk down the down the stacks, I'm hearing you. Whether I'm really focused on hearing you or not, I'm hearing you and I might just get out of the way and let you go by without really giving it a second thought. It's just part of the ebb and flow of being here and hearing. But if a deaf person is standing there, it's totally okay to tap them on the shoulder. And I don't mean a big tap, but just a light tap and look. Okay. And then they'll know that you want to go by. So it's okay to do that. If you tap me on the shoulder as a hearing guy, because I'm involved in the deaf community all the time, it wouldn't bother me at all. But it might be a little bit different for folks who are not acquainted with the deaf community. So these are all the folks in the content that you'll have access to if you sign up for Mango Languages, um, ASL version. And I throw this out. Do they all sign the same? Well, because there are so many of them, I'm sure you already know the answer. No they don't. And sign language is a relatively new language compared to English and French and Spanish. And so it's evolving at a faster rate. And where people learn sign language. Combined with that, evolution determines how they sign. And it's all different. So here's Missy over here. She grew up in a hearing family, but she went to a deaf boarding school. So every Sunday night she got on a bus and went two hours south to Colorado Springs. And then every Friday afternoon, she got on that same bus and drove back up to Denver. So for kindergarten through eighth grade, she was, um, a residential student at a deaf school. So the nice thing about that is that all the kids there were deaf and much of the staff was deaf. So she got what you would call a a classical or just a traditional sign language education. This gentleman, Colin, Native American, grew up in Four corners with the corner of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado isolated on an Apache tribe community. So his sign language was different. And then he went to a deaf boarding school for his high school years. One here he went to a mainstream school. And for those of you who don't know what that means, um, his school provided interpreting services. So everywhere he went on that campus, from elementary, middle to high school, there was an interpreter close by who could help broker the conversations with his friends, classmates and teachers. And of course, they typically would sit in the front. So really identified with an interpreter. I you know, that's the way it is. That's the way the world has evolved. He had cochlear implants, and he's a great guy. You saw in our videos. And the first deaf adult he really met was Sierra at Arizona State University. And she had a similar background. Sophie's pretty funny. Fifth generation deaf. Fifth generation deaf. Boarding school or day school? And just a joy to work with. So all these folks signed differently. They're all in our videos. And as a student, the variations aren't super big for the most part. But you, as a sign language learner, need to learn how to kind of acquire and express signs that fit their language, their language level, or just their language approach. I know, and even in Canada there are multiple dialects. Um, it's not quite as different. Um, it's not like the folks in these 20 people, they could all talk to each other. It's not so big of a difference, but there are dialect differences that students have to be aware of and just ready to understand and be flexible. And if you don't know, you just ask. That's the other great thing deaf community. You ask if you didn't understand what they just said, they would much rather have you ask than just go and continue forward without giving it a second thought. So Mississauga, you've already built it. These are screenshots from your website. I modified the text a little bit. Um, but practice English. If you just change this to practice ASL and had some kind of infrastructure in place, you'd get to the new friends place. And then with 800 plus events in your summer, programs and clubs and shows, super easy to tweak these a little bit and make them deaf friendly. So I took this is a short list of the events, and I took the liberty to add, um, like the bookworm challenge when I was a kid growing up, this was always my favorite one is you just had a picture of a worm. I know it's crazy and all the books you read, so I just was like a reading worm. I just wanted to fill out that worm full of books. but all of these events could attract the deaf community, and it would be valuable for both them and the hearing community to to mix it up. This one, if you had a puzzle challenge, like a timing, like start stop, who can build this puzzle the fastest? I guarantee you the deaf kids would win that. Guaranteed. They're just way more visual. And it's really true when somebody says, hey, if you lose one sense, do the other ones pick it up? For sure? I've seen it. I've seen it with my wife. Um, so very visual. And, uh, to that I just want to throw something out at this off topic. I just realized it. But the deaf make eye contact and they maintain it, and they might gaze away, but they make eye contact in a way that is so much more different and so much more kind of intimate than the hearing folks, that if you immerse yourself in the language and in the culture, you'll really realize that plays an important role, but it also could enhance your hearing relationships with your friends and family. Because we quite often go through our days looking at the ground or looking up or not really looking somebody in the eyes when we talk to them. Okay, build it first so you build it, but you still need to do some outreach just to make sure you find the deaf community and sort out how to pull them into your world. So I pulled a couple of contacts up out of the that shows some schools that are teaching deaf kids, deaf schools. And I think these are all day schools, not residential. So the children go home and then rumble. This is a company that provides a lot of services to the deaf of all ages. So this might be a valuable resource to get deaf adults more so than the kids of. Whereas the schools will obviously be more aligned with attracting kids, but I think this one is interesting. Throughout Ontario and then the mainstream schools, these folks might be able to help you with it. But the mainstream schools for that 1 or 2 group of deaf children or hard of hearing children, um, is a great place in your local area to to track the deaf community and of course the ASL clubs. If the high school has an ASL program, there's a chance they have an ASL club as well. And they're always trying to find opportunities to meet and converse with native signers, hence the deaf. So you build it, do the outreach and, um, outreach to the colleges as well. For sure. If they have a sign language club, they're going to want and need a place to get in front of deaf adults. And if you build out, um, an event for that, you can pull the students, the hearing students and the deaf adults and put them and get them in the same room. Happy hour. Social hour. So if anybody has any questions, there's a natural break here while I get set up for a live presentation. Feel free to throw them in the chat or ask Salvi directly and I'll answer them. But give me a minute to get, um, the demonstration set up.
00:17:13
Salvy
Thanks, Dave. I welcome any questions now in the chat and I will monitor that. I've also put the link for Promote Mango website, the little Pimm's PDF, and I will be adding one more link which uh, one more link, which is the pricing information at OLS.
00:17:51
Beth
Hi. Since we're on a little break too, I'll just mention as well for the wireless pricing that is password protected. It's only available to public library staff in Ontario, and it's something that I distributed to the group, uh, last a few days ago, last week. And if, uh, if anybody that's in the webinar here today isn't on that mailing list, you can send me an email and I will send that off to you. And, um, I don't know if Salvi can I put my email in the chat or would you have to do that for me?
00:18:26
Salvy
I think you can.
00:18:27
Beth
I can, okay.
00:18:30
Salvy
Unless I've got the control.
00:18:31
Beth
No, no, it looks like it's letting me. Yeah.
00:18:34
Salvy
Oh, wonderful. Thanks. Thank you. Beth.
00:18:36
Beth
Thank you.
00:18:39
Dave Victorson
Okay. Thank you. Beth. Anything else?
00:18:44
Beth
Nope. I'm good. Thank you.
00:18:45
Dave Victorson
Fantastic. Okay, so on the right, I've got my cell phone. I hope you see this on the upper right. Pick a language I could scroll up and down. And of course we know the one I'm going to pick. Here we go American Sign Language.
00:19:01
Salvy
So you're showing us a you are you are, um, casting your cell phone on the screen and you have your browser window.
00:19:13
Dave Victorson
That's correct.
00:19:14
Salvy
Okay. So yeah, you are a rocket scientist, I knew it, I know.
00:19:19
Dave Victorson
A long time. I know Elon Musk put it that way. Okay. So here on the right is the it's web enabled. So it's not an app. It's the web based version of what you will also see if you log in to Mango Languages on the left which is near the web browser. So here it is. Looks the same. Pretty close. Um, but for the purposes of this demo, in my mouse control, I'm going to slide the main browser over and cover up the cell phone. This makes it easier to present. And here we go. So these were intended as college courses and um, first semester or first year. The high schools use ASL 101 for an entire year. And then they use 102 for a second year. And the colleges will typically do it for a semester for ASL 101 and a semester for ASL 102. So here we go, 15 modules. The intent was 15 weeks. Um, you can spread it out. You can do it as much as you or as little as you want, but we suggest that you sit down in front of the computer really for 20 or 30 minutes at a, at a go. Um, if you're doing less than that or using an app, those tend to typically be like, uh, vocabulary enhancers, Answers, but not really language teaching, because it takes a little bit of thought and focus to actually learn a language. And if you just learn it a couple of words or a couple of vocabulary at a time, you're probably not learning the language. So it takes a little bit of time investment. Our goal is to just get started. It says it right here. Not a lot of language instruction, but simply let's just get started. So I'm going to pause it for just a second. On the right is Magic Mirror. Um, we built that to solve the problem of what do you do when you're home alone or studying alone, and you need to practice signing? Well, you can see the sign model on the left is signing. Hey, she's trying to get somebody's attention. You could do this right in front of them. Like, hey, hey, hey. Or even across the room way over there. You could wave your hand or wave it to try and get someone's attention. Perfectly acceptable. But again, we have this magic mirror so you can practice it at the same time. So hey hey hey hello, hello. So you get that feedback. It's not it's live feedback. And it helps you accurately model what the signer is doing. Now mango languages has a great voice replay option. And so this is our version of that voice. Replay your your. And you can copy this as many times as you want.
00:22:12
Salvy
So you would just slide the the time bar back and forth if you wanted to review something Dave.
00:22:17
Dave Victorson
Yeah yeah here we go. So I just did it. Your your and we could go all the way forward here towards the end. Um, we have a couple of approaches here for teaching. Um, the fingerspelled words. And at the end I'll talk about an announcement for a release of a new product coming your way within the next. Definitely inside of a month. But we teach the vocab, the Fingerspelled words is part of Pangrams, and those are sentences that have all of the letters of the alphabet in one sentence. And we do that because it's a more natural way to fingerspell than just memorizing the ABCs. We also don't really promote you starting out learning fingerspelling, because what happens then is you always are going to lean on that skill versus learning the new signed words. And if you and it's a very common and kind of misunderstood concept, but the hearing world seems to think that, hey, if I can just fingerspell, that's good enough. If I meet an Hispanic person who's native Spanish speaking on the street, and I start to verbalize the letters of the alphabet to communicate with them, it's not optimum. It can work, but it's just really not optimal. It's just not the best way to do it. So we introduced fingerspelling here at the end of really Get Started, but we'd rather you you learn the 20 to 25 signs that you can you can see in the Get Started video. Let's see. We didn't pause it. So there we go. So day. So there's day to practice it all day long and model the signing. Next content block is the end skill demonstration and a part of world language standards. It says you need to show that student that person what the goal is. So at the end of the first week or at the end of the first module, you should be able to already have a really short and definitely scripted dialogue with a deaf person. It'd be frightening, but you could you could actually do this with a deaf person after the first week. Here comes the theory and grammar. It's important, but I also say it's not as important as you might think, because imagine how you learned language as a young child. You just started to hear it. You heard your parents talking when you were lying in your crib. You heard them in your bedroom. Um, you heard the radio, you heard the TV. You just absorbed the language without anybody teaching you the grammar. You know, for the first three, four, five years of your life. And so you can learn sign language the same way. However, as an adult, we're trying to accelerate the learning process. It is important. And the cultural part is important. As you see right there. Just waved her hand to show you that she's trying to get attention. And here in the room, you can flash the lights. You know, tapping someone on the shoulder doesn't work. You just flash the light switch on up and down. Light comes on and everybody's going to look to where that light switch is. We have captions here as well. There it is. There the captions. So next module. These are the.
00:25:47
Salvy
Magic mirror now.
00:25:49
Dave Victorson
Yeah. Great point. So back with the magic mirror because we want you now to practice again. And one of the real key this classifier, this index finger pointed up I already showed you that it can mean two people meeting two people passing person going in front. I can point at you, I can point at me. They means a lot of different things. And so this skill or this knowledge of classifiers is a really powerful part of the language and something you will need to learn as you journey through the language. Magic mirror again. So this is a list of vocabulary words. You can practice them. You can click on any one of them. Get name. Here's the name. So it's important to learn the vocabulary. But there are also other things to do as well. Phrases. You okay? It's just a slight raising of her eyebrows as she's asking that question. It's super subtle on her. And and that's where everybody signs a little bit differently. But that that's part of the grammar. And, um, this is moving the eyebrows. So that's something you'll learn as well or get a rubber face.
00:27:04
Salvy
So Dave, I see numbered phrases. And after each, uh, after each one of the signers is completed, it, it auto loads the next one. You don't have to press next, but at any point you could press stop to catch a break or redo one. Okay.
00:27:20
Dave Victorson
That's exactly right. Yeah. And here's another one. This is actually challenging, but I would never say that learning a second or third or more language is supposed to be easy. But again, we built this to try and solve that problem of hey, I don't have a deaf person that lives nearby. How do I practice signing? So what we do is we create that same dialogue that was part of the end skill, but we remove a signer. So instead of her responding to Missy asking, what is your name? She's going to disappear in a second and then I'm going to get a chance to answer that question. So my name is Carolyn, and then what is your name? So Carolyn's going to disappear. And I have to step up. So she's gone. What is your name? And of course, you would fingerspell your name. You know my name. And d a v e and then your name. I'm going to ask Missy her name. These are. You're definitely going to watch these more than once, but it's going to enable you to get to that point, that high goal that we set of being able to have a short, simple, unscripted back and forth with a deaf person after the first week. That's the goal is communication. And the sooner you do it, the more satisfied you're going to be with your learning progress. And so this one is teach someone. And what we're trying to do here is cement a few words or phrases in your mind that just don't go away. So if you can teach someone this short list of words and phrases without referencing the video, you know you've learned it. That material is going to be in your long term memory and accessible to you. So we ask you to do that as well. And it can be roommate anybody. Just teaching someone helps you cement the learning process. And of course, here's the homework. Every every learning System needs to have some kind of way to measure your progress. So this is name. Question number one. Name. Answer it. And then I can save the answers or grade them. Hit grade. And of course I got one right. Name and 24 wrong. So one out of 25. But I can reset this and do it again. So. Of course everybody wants to get 100%. So reset try it again and go through the homework. Again a second or third time. And back to the course outline. So here we go. That was the demo. Um let me jump back to the presentation. We're pretty much done.
00:30:30
Salvy
I'll open it up to any questions that that, uh, the folks might have, but thank you, Dave. That was great. You've you've subtly showed the science behind the teaching methods as well in the process of doing the demo, which is nice, I think. Um, you know, many librarians are educators as well, so I think they all appreciate the science behind the methodology.
00:31:01
Dave Victorson
So we're adding to the mango platform. You know, we get feature requests and we get, um, just community requests for what's coming, what's next. So we built the word of the day. It's 350 words each day. A new one will display on our website, eventually on Mango's website, and they'll provide those as resources to you so that on your web pages for your individual libraries, you can have a word of the day that plays or auto plays and catches somebody's attention to maybe investigate and do more. You know, what's going on with ASL at my local library. And then fingerspelling, I mentioned that we tried to avoid it. Um, you know, formally teaching you finger spelling and practicing and drilling. But the world has spoken, and we put courses that we already have. Actually, we had these finger spelling courses first. They're one unit college courses set up to work well in Mango's environment. So those will be rolling out shortly. I know their marketing campaign, we talked about it two weeks ago actually strategized with it. You'll probably be seeing contact from mango in the very near term about both of these. But these are things that just get added to the platform. It's not an additional charge beyond the regular sign language core materials. It's just more valuable material that will help you and your communities. Anybody any questions? There must be something out there that's on your mind.
00:32:36
Salvy
Yeah, I'll monitor the chat. Dave, for any questions. when we spoke in preparation for this webinar. Dave, you were saying, um, that there may be a module in the works, uh, for, um, using the, the terminology inside of libraries of um, to, to, to help employees of libraries, um interact with def.
00:33:05
Dave Victorson
Yes. Yes for sure. So um, we have our core product and then we have some librarian specific terms and phrases that will further enhance what you learn in our core products. And that's coming real soon. We've actually committed to, um, end of October getting that out. Um, I say that with a smile. It it's a moving target. Um, part of it. I will blame Troy, the gentleman who won the Academy Award. He was going to be in our curriculum, so we had a shoot date lined up. And of course, a much more important event in his calendar showed up, so we had to delay it so he may or may not end up. He's in our curriculum now, but he also might end up in the librarian curriculum as well. Um.
00:33:54
Salvy
But so library specific would mean that, you know, there'd be terminology like circulation desk or info desk or things that are more wedded to that, that space so that, uh, staff can be more familiar with the signing required for that terminology. Is that the way it works?
00:34:12
Dave Victorson
That's correct. Not a must have, but just a little bit more enhanced kind of focus on librarians. But certainly our core material is what, um, has brought us forward with mango to this point. Um, it's been a little more than a year now since we released it, or right about a year, actually. And so we knew we wanted to do this. And now the time is right.
00:34:45
Salvy
Okay, well, I don't think there are any questions at this point, so I think we'll bring the presentation to a close. Um, and Dave, I want to thank you for taking some time to spend it with us here with Ontario Libraries and OLS members.
00:35:08
Dave Victorson
Yeah. You know, I appreciate the opportunity. Feel free to reach out. Um, we're always available. And if we're available, we pick up the phone or answer our email right away. Thank you.
00:35:17
Salvy
Thank you Dave. Thanks everybody for joining us today. The so.
00:35:21
Beth
Much.
00:35:22
Salvy
You're welcome. The recording will be available shortly.
00:35:26
Beth
Have a good day.
00:35:28
Salvy
Bye bye.
00:35:29
Dave Victorson
See you later.