Stanford ASL Instructor Cathy Haas taught this Fall in the Lab’s Language Teaching Studio. I have wanted to work with Cathy for over ten years and wanted her experience in the Lab to be a positive and productive one. At about the same time Cathy Haas started teaching in the Lab, I began work on the World Sign Language Project: a project for crowdsourcing a multilingual sign language dictionary based on a core lexicon of 600 Russian Sign Language signs. The idea was to structure video commenting on the YouTube Channel such that signers around the world could post video blog replies to each gestural entry on the channel. In seeking international participants for the project, I came across a simple and elegantly designed IPhone app for Norwegian Sign Language called Tegnordbok created by the Moller Resource Centre – Statped in Norway. Upon downloading the App, I immediately thought that replicating such it with Cathy Haas and her students would be a great use of the Lab’s studio capabilities as well as a simple introduction to the world of iOS development and publishing.
Tegnordbok Iphone Screenshot (note superb video quality)
I contacted the developers and requested permission to use their code. Olle Erikson responded and graciously made the code available under a Creative Commons license.
I installed the iOS SDK, purchased an Apple Developer License, and started hacking my way through the code. When it looked like this project might actually be feasible, I approached Cathy and her students with the idea of creating an ASL prototype. There was enthusiasm and Cathy began planning the content to be captured. I staged the classroom for shooting video by removing tables, arranging lights, and setting up the capture cart. Using Cathy’s list of signs, students then took turns performing and filming each other against a portable blue screen. The project signers were Mariel Pareyda, Zimberlyn Bolton, Melissa DeMers, Brendond Martin, and Kali Lindsay. Cathy’s TA’s, Lydia Santos and Kevin Jordan, also volunteered to sign and did some amazing interpreting work. In addition to signing, student, Melissa DeMers, took digital stills of the video shoot. Alvin Addo and Melissa DeMers also created artwork to serve as the app’s icon and logo.
Stills from Video Capture in Class - Photo by Melissa DeMers
Lighting was the most challenging aspect of the project, but we did increase the production quality iteratively as we progressed. Kenneth Chan and Connie Rylance both offered useful suggestions.
All of the video assets for the project were created in one to two days in Quicktime Player.
Still art work and graphic elements were a collaborative draft process and took a little longer. Iphone Apps have an icon and an “about” html page. The icon Below are icon designs by Alvin Addo and Melissa DeMers.
Opening Splash Screen
Icon Version by Alvin Addo
Icon Version by Melissa DeMers
Sign Glossing Done in Kaltura in CourseWork
Screenshot of Kaltura Module in CourseWork
Glossing the signs was done by students using Kaltura in CourseWork. After the video was shot in the Lab, I realized I had no way to know what the signs meant. My lack of organization actually led to an interesting workaround; collaborative glossing. I uploaded the clips to a CourseWork (Powered by Sakai) Site with Kaltura enabled. Kim Hayworth and Christine Dougherty assisted with enabling Kaltura in the Language Lab Studio CourseWork Site. (All of the Lab’s teaching spaces have CourseWork sites.) I then emailed Kathy’s students with screencast instructions on how to change file names in Kaltura. Kaltura did my work for me in many ways by allowing students to gloss the signs they had contributed. Proofing the glosses was also simplified for the instructor. Kaltura made something hard to do, easy, fast and flexible.
After capturing the video, adding glosses, and adding graphic elements, it was easy to create a working iPhone app that ran in iOS Simulator using the code from Norway. Students were excited to see themselves signing in the app in Simulator view. I have also successfully installed the pilot app on my own phone with the help of Matt Rampone of HighWire Press and Stanford Grad Student Todd Branchflower. I will be presenting the pilot study at AsiaCALL in Bangkok in February. We will continue to investigate over Winter Qrt and will be seeking funding sources to advance the project as a task-based service learning project.
