ROUGHLY EDITED FILE
TECH SYMPOSIUM
TECHNOLOGY AND DEAF EDUCATION
NTID
JUNE 21, 2010
ROOM 1310
3:00 PM ET
SIGNED MULTIMEDIA STORYBOOKS: INTERACTIVE VOCABULARY
INSTRUCTION
PRESENTERS:
EMILY WHITESIDE
ON-SITE CART PROVIDED BY ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES
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This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication
Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to
facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally
verbatim record of the proceedings
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>> Hi, everybody, come on in and have a seat.
Welcome!
My name is Clair, and I work here at NTID, and I am
very happy to be able to introduce to you Emily Whiteside who
is a speech pathologist from Georgia.
She will talk to us
about the work she does with elementary school students.
She
is going to talk about multimedia storyboards for interactive
vocabulary development which something that I think will be
very interesting.
I have a nice handout that she has provided, so while she is
presenting, I am going to pass it out.
And then I am also
going to pass out the evaluation form.
I am going to ask for
you to please fill that form out and give it to me on your way
out the door.
We use that information so that we can improve
our next conference.
thanked.
So your input is really desired and
Okay?
So with that, I am going to pass it over to Emily.
Thank
you, Emily.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
Thank you, Clair.
This is signed multimedia storybooks for interactive
vocabulary instruction.
As Clair said, I am a speech pathologist in Columbus,
Georgia.
I work mainly with deaf, hard-of-hearing students who
are kindergarten through 5th grade.
Currently I have 13
students.
I am also an instructional technologist.
degree from Valdosta State.
I just completed a
So I have a big interest in music
technology to address instructional problems that our deaf
students have.
The way I see it, language acquisition is a huge problem for
our deaf students.
literacy.
And the thing that we want them to have is
That's the most critical component of early
childhood.
And of adulthood for that matter.
And I am interested in how I can address these problems
through my background in speech pathology and technology.
And
vocabulary, if you read any of the literature on literacy,
vocabulary it the critical component.
how literate a person will be.
It's what can predict
So that is one of the major
areas that I address with my students.
I just came up with a name for my research project.
This is
actually out of a research project that I did for my
educational specialist degree, and I named it "Signed
Multimedia Storybooks."
They're hyperlinked, digital learning environments.
animated videos of published books.
They use
And also live-action video
with Sign Language interpretation.
asterisk by the Sign Language.
And you see the little
Let me explain that a little
bit.
The school where I work has been the home for deaf
instruction in Columbus, Georgia, for probably 40 years.
They
began using signed exact English, and then have evolved to
trying to use ASL, and so what you are going to see is a
pigeon.
That's the way it is.
We're working hard to improve
skills, but we have not had interpreters who are accredited
because there are none to be found.
And the multimedia instructional activities and games.
And I just want to go over a little bit about what we'll talk
about today.
I am going to rush through my research project
because that's kind of the dry part, but to me it was the most
fun.
And the paper that is associated with it is on the symposium
website.
So you can get all of the nitty-gritty that you are
interested in there.
I'll also demonstrate project that I developed, signed
storybooks, and give you some tips and basics of how to create
them yourselves.
So this is the intervention, multimedia storybooks with Sign
Language interpretation and accompanying multimedia vocabulary
instructional activities.
The research project lasted over five weeks.
The average
student had 15 hours of -- 15 sessions, excuse me, and 10.5
hours of instruction with the storybook.
in-tact speech therapy groups.
They came in their
So I have two or three students
at time working.
We set it up on that desk stop computer with a large-screen
monitor.
They shared one mouse.
It was interesting.
And we covered five books in five weeks, and had five words.
It doesn't seem like a lot.
And the books that I used were "Good Night Gorilla," and you
can see it's a board book.
I think that there are 10 words in
there.
"Rosie's Walk."
The "Paper boy"
my personal favorite.
"Owen."
And "Brave Irene"
which was the most formidable to do.
AR grade level of 3.9.
It's
The language in it is daunting.
I had three measures -- or four measures that I use.
I did a
word pre-test which just presented the sign and the students
had four pictures to choose from.
When they saw the sign, they
just pointed to the picture that they thought it was.
The word meaning had a definition that was signed to them,
and then they picked out the word.
I also did a pre-test student perception survey that was of
Likert style.
They had to rate it a scenario given, and they
had to rate it from very sad to very happy.
And then during the five weeks I was a student participant -I mean, a participant, but I observed them and kept a teacher
journal that was that thick (indicating), and then had to go
back through it and try to make sense of that.
And I have abbreviated the results for you.
graphs and the numbers are all online.
Again, the
But what I found was
statistically significant increase on both the word on the word
meaning.
Or vocabulary achievement.
This was receptive
vocabulary.
They did not have to come up with a sign
themselves.
They had to recognize it in context.
Their experiences were very positive.
The most interesting
thing to me was to watch the group interact.
I had very low-
level children academically and language-wise, and pretty
sophisticated children.
I had oral students, and those who use
Sign Language exclusively.
But from the most challenged student, I had one with autism,
to the most sophisticated they were all able to contribute to
the group interaction.
experience.
They each had something to add to this
And another really neat thing was having the
vocabulary instruction embedded in the storybooks.
they got to see videos repeatedly of the story.
Over a week
So they
learned it just as if you are working with a toddler, and
reading the book to them over and over, they got to predict it
and they would get real excited about it.
And so there was a
shared schema of the group that has lasted -- this was done in
2008 -- on through the school year.
"Whiteside you remember perfect.
Where they'll say,
That was in Owen."
It's really neat to see that I said that it was overall
positive.
There were some instances of grabbing the mouse and,
"No I don't want to see it again.
of thing.
It's my turn,"
or that kind
Generally it worked better with groups of two than
three.
And also it worked better when the books -- the videos were
shorter.
Their attitudes were positive.
The biggest increase
in positive attitude that I saw was on the item that said, "I
enjoyed learning vocabulary from multimedia storybooks."
So that made me happy.
Interestingly, there was a negative
shift on one that said "I learned with captions." And I think
that as much as anything was a language barrier.
I didn't have
captions in there.
I'm not sure about that.
There were limitations.
I did not think that the test that I
created discriminated very well.
There were some items that I
thought they could get from the sign.
Many of my students, the
higher-level ones, already knew the vocabulary.
I should have
pre-tested them on that before I picked the words, but I
didn't.
As I said, I think that there was a language barrier
for the survey, so they may not have really understood.
may have just randomly guessed some things.
They
Extremely small
sample size.
And this was such a novel speech therapy experience I'm
usually the one in control, and there's nothing quite this
snazzy about our speech therapy.
factor.
So novelty may have been a
And, of course, I could have shown bias being the
observer.
I think that I have gone over part of this.
But when you are
creating something that's so time intensive as this really was,
you want to be very careful in picking out your vocabulary.
And, of course, there are books out there that teach you how to
pick out words that are relevant, and are going to be important
to the student.
And you want to do that, but when you have
such a wide variety of students that you are teaching to, you
want to be sure that you have something for that more
challenged student, and something for the more sophisticated.
I was thrilled to see the reaction of my students to
instruction in their primary language.
Because I had
interpreters interpret for me, and my skills are very limited,
I was able to provide them with an experience that they would
not have gotten.
And they were just ecstatic and asked for
more.
And I did see that they enjoyed a very rich, relevant context
for learning rather than the typical throw the cards out on the
table and say this word and what is this and moved on.
were overwhelmingly enthusiast nick their response.
They
And they
were also very curious about the technology and the video that
they wanted to learn how to do it themselves.
These are my references, and they are online.
Would you like to see?
I think we'll do "Good Night,
Gorilla."
It's a very big file so it takes it a minute to come up.
This is all done in PowerPoint.
and this was the neat thing.
So it takes them to a menu,
I could just sit back behind them
after I had shown them how to navigate through one or two
times, they were able to do that themselves.
So the little mouse suggest as activity.
There are five
activities, and I had my own idea of the order that it should
take, but they had other ideas.
So the first one was word hunt.
Peggy Rathman's book.
These are scanned pages from
And I did get her permission to do that.
Now, if you are going to use it in your classroom, and you
are not going to share it with anybody, and you are not going
to put it on the web, you can use limited scans and authors for
it.
So the child would use the cursor and just move over the
picture trying to discover where it changes into the hand.
(Video)
>> Lock.
Lock (signing)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
word, no definition.
And it will teach them and show them the
And then if they wanted to see it again.
(Video)
>> Lock.
Lock.
Lock.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
having that power.
(Signing)
A very simple thing, but they enjoyed
If they turned their head, which they often
did in a group, "Oh, look, that's Mrs. Grant, " they could stop
it and then they could go back.
(Video)
>> Steal.
Steal.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
(Signing)
So all five of the storybooks teach the
five words just with the sign.
And then this one that I call Sign with Me is just practice
signing the word.
(Video)
>> Wife.
Escape.
Wife.
Wife.
Escape.
(Signing)
Escape.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
(Signing)
She is from Alabama.
(Laughter)
And then this is the little dictionary.
There is a picture
in the top right-hand corner that's supposed to give them an
idea of "escape."
Some of these words were concepts that are really hard to
depict.
As I said, some of my students are oral, and they can
hear, so I had some audio.
(Video)
>> Escape.
To get out.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
To get away.
I tried to write a very concise, very
simple definition that was kid-friendly.
(Video)
>> Escape.
To get away.
To get out.
(Signing) 'em chem you
hear the definitions at all?
(Video)
>> Escape.
Escape, escape.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
(Signing)
And they enjoyed those.
And then it put
it in context of the story.
(Video)
(Music)
And this was where I took a commercial animated story, "Good
Night, Gorilla"
which is available on discovery learner, and
our school district, well, all of Georgia subscribes to
discovery learning.
It used to be called united streaming.
you have to subscribe to it.
license to re-mix that video.
do what you want to with it.
Do
But though do give you the
You can download it, and you can
You cannot do it commercially.
You cannot redistribute it.
But you can use it in your
classroom any way that you want to.
So what I did was I
sandwiched, I did not have picture-in-picture capability, and I
was afraid that the cognitive load on the students would just
be too much.
I think that at the symposium there is actually someone who
addressed that.
I hope that I get to see that.
But to have them watching the action of the video and then
trying to see the signing in there, I was afraid that it was
too much.
You tell me what you think about it.
It does not
have the captions which I didn't know how to do at the time,
but I've learned how to do that.
(Video)
(Music)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
Let's just watch a little bit.
(Video)
(Music)
>> Good night, gorilla, by Peggy Rathman.
>> Good night, gorilla, by Peggy Rathman.
It's nighttime at the zoo.
on a balloon.
A mouse and a banana are floating
They are going to the --
(Music)
>> Look.
swinging.
There is the gorilla.
He is in his cage.
He's
Here comes the balloon with a banana and a mouse.
(Music)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
Okay.
So you get the idea of that.
Their favorite part was not that.
to be what they liked.
just a test.
I thought that was going
They liked the games.
It was really
They didn't figure that out, though.
So I had it divided into three parts, and later on I added a
fourth part.
(Video)
But the first was just the words.
>> Gorilla.
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
I know that's an alternative.
that this is more prevalent.
I think
(Signing)
So say they picked the monkey here instead of the gorilla,
which would have been understandable with that sign.
going to get a corrective feedback.
choice.
back.
They're
And then they had a
They could go on to the next item, or they could go
And I encouraged them to go back but didn't make them.
If they picked the correct one, they got a little animation,
or sometimes music which surprisingly they loved.
(Video)
>> Wife.
(Signing)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
Another hard concept that they counts,
but I knew that they would recognize Mrs. Obama.
(Video)
>> Across (signing)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
Really hard to show.
So if they picked
around, they would have gotten, oh, oh, and a clue there.
One thing that I found was that any text that I had put on
there, especially words that they probably would not have seen
high fives, they would know that sign, but just incidental
vocabulary that they are not exposed, to they loved.
loved reading it.
They
And they would play these everyday.
learned vocabulary that I had not intended.
So they
They learned
incidentally.
(Video)
>> Escape.
(Signing)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
Just simple animations.
art, most of this was just from MicroSoft
And the clip
PowerPoint.
(Video)
>> Steal.
(Signing)
>> EMILY WHITESIDE:
And they recognized this one.
They
loved these pictures.
Okay.
So that's "Good Night, Gorilla,"
the same type of thing.
having to use it.
sophisticated.
and the others are
And I would stay about a day ahead of
So I learned as I went and got more
This was the first one that I did.
But it
gives you an idea.
I don't know how much time I have left, but I will go through
-- 10 minutes?
Okay.
Some tips, some ways that I learned to -- as I muddled my way
through doing this.
The most important part is not the fun
part, but I think as I emphasized earlier is really to analyze
your audience and to determine beforehand what your specific
goals are, what time constraints you'll have and financial
constraints.
And what type of media is available for you.
Almost everything that I use was free.
MicroSoft is the only
thing that cost anything, and it came on the computer that the
school district provided me.
Pick your goals and objectives wisely, and your instructional
strategy which, for me, were the activities that I used.
then design your product.
And
Now, if you notice at the bottom, I
created a template, and it's available on Slide Share.
It's
just a PowerPoint where I have gone through and taken out all
of the actual pictures and the video.
links.
And that was the hard part.
But it's got all of the
It was designing all of
the link-backs so that you had it interactive.
And you are
welcome to use that.
That's available on the website, on the symposium website.
And this is just a list of the different tools or softwares
that I used, PowerPoint.
And I picked that because it is so
ubiquitous, and it's interactive.
You can link through it.
It's also easy to use.
MicroSoft Movie Maker, and Discovery Education Streaming.
You can go online and look for that.
It used to be called
United Streaming Video.
CamStudio has a free demo that you can use to do screen
captures if you need to show how to manipulate something on the
screen.
Audacity if you need to edit any sound which I use that a
lot.
And narrating the script, the sentences, and the words, and
the game.
Picnik, are any of you familiar with that?
editing sharing site.
It's really nice.
It's a photo,
You can get pictures
on there.
Picasa is also a photo sharing site.
And Flickr.
Flickr you can actually search for licensing
where they'll let you use commercially, or Share and Share
Alike.
So you can use the word gorilla and use the photos that
the author has allowed you to use commercially, and share and
share alike, you are not going to profit from it but it will be
free.
And Wikimedia Commons has very good photography.
those resources are listed on the handout.
All of
This is just saying
that I used PowerPoint for those reasons.
I created this manually.
In other words, I created a great
big ole flowchart that I put down on the floor and dared anyone
in my house to breathe on or move by.
It's just 3-by-5 cards
that told, okay this slide will have this on it.
have this video.
This word.
link to Slide 2000.
was just my road map.
for you to use.
This picture.
It's going to
And it's going to
And then it will also link back.
So it
That's what I turned in to the template
You can do your own and create it like that,
and then be sure to save it as a template.
I tried to pick navigational icons that were cute, and also
simple and made logical sense for the student.
And I think
that they did because they would yell out "Find another
activity!"
And they knew exactly where to go to get that.
The fun part for me was actually creating the content, making
the videos, collecting the photos, regarding the audio, and
writing the script.
Gorilla,"
If you notice for "Good Night,
as I said it only has 10 words in it but because I
wanted to extend their language, I rewrote it.
I hope Ms.
Rathman was okay with that just like you would narrate, okay,
now we're going in here and doing this.
If you heard her say
that the balloon is floating down to the zoo, put the mouse on
it, it just told what was happening.
So I had to re-write that one.
""Rosie's Walk" I just used
that.
We tried to include as much richness of the language as we
could, but also make it accessible to them so that it had to be
tweaked a little bit.
And I think I just went over this.
photos.
Where you can get great
Those are available on the handout.
And, again, the animated stories, you can just about you what
want on Discovery Learning.
Also, if you are into non-fiction, they really like the
stories that are on there.
Write a child-friendly script.
And then be real sweet to your friends who are talented.
I
had to really lean on my buddies who can sign and asked them to
do that.
They were very nervous about me being here today.
We used a quiet, well-lit room at the school, brought in
extra lights, put up a backdrop, and used a solid shirt for the
actual video.
Audacity was the same way.
I just wanted to demonstrate what I meant about remixing.
It's going to show how I took "Rosie's Walk,"
wanted and added other things.
took out what I
You can also on the storybooks
from the video pause it and capture just a screen shot from it
so that if you need a picture of a gorilla and you don't want
to do the video, you can just grab a picture and save it as a
picture.
You will see that in here.
You download that video.
You can also add subtitles.
This is a still picture captured
from Rosie's Walk.
(Music)
They come out named with numbers.
So if you are going to be
re-using it, you need to rename them something that you
recognize.
(Music)
Take out you what don't want.
there, you can take it out.
do that.
If you don't want the music in
If you want to add sound you can
And that, of course, was the video that I shot.
Then, of course, you get to decorate your slides the way you
want to.
That was fun.
And PowerPoint is so great because you can make it
interactive and you can make it game-like.
Most people know
this, but I will just show you in case you don't.
animations.
You can add
You can embed objects like sound.
(Cheering)
You can play a game with it.
to what I did with the game.
So what I did here is similar
I just made both of those
pictures link to another slide.
the horse.
So they were supposed to find
They click on the goat, it goes to Slide whatever,
and then you have to be sure to find a way to get back.
import another active link.
horse.
excited.
So you
And then they can go back to the
Put a picture up there and animate it, and they get all
When you get through with it, just go through and -- about
100 times -- and make sure that every link is active.
one nice thing about having that template.
That's
I am sure that
they're not all correct, but you can find a few that aren't.
And also sit behind a student and watch them use it.
That will
give you a good idea of what you can do to improve it.
This is the template cheat sheet.
And I think that's a good place to end.
Questions?
Thank you!
(Applause)
>> All right.
So please complete your evaluation form and
then just drop it with me.
was very interesting.
Thank you, thank you, Emily.
That
Thank you.
* * * * *
This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication
Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to
facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally
verbatim record of the proceedings
* * * *