[Sw-l] Conducting Academic Research: Gamification for Signed Languages

[Catalina De la Rocha]

Charles, That quote is gold! :) I guess it reflects the richness of Sign Language. 

Valerie, Thank you so much for sharing all these amazing games. 
The cards by Anne-Claude Prélaz Girod and the Association SignÉcriture in French-Switzerland 
are actually very similar to an idea that I came up with. 

Before finding out about SignWriting I also had the insight that all the positions of the hands 
were used across different Sign languages and that perhaps there was a way to use them as 
characters to mix and match and create words. Similar to a game of Scrabble, where the same 
chips can be used in different countries, but because the context is different, the interpretation 
is different.

Yesterday night I had the idea of creating a deck of cards with  just one or two hands printed 
on one side. One card at a time the players will take turns to guess the movement, position 
and expressions that are missing and finally guess the word. 
Then technology part comes in when players can use a tablet to scan these cards to see an 
image/animation/video of the correct word . 

I'm curious to know what would happen if the same deck of cards is played by signers from 
different parts of the world. Would all of them come up with different words that use the same  
handshape? Would it be an engaging activity for everyone? 

Something that I'm aiming for in the creation of this game is to allow the players to build their 
own libraries of words. I'm imagining a scenario where a deaf child wants to teach his cousins 
the MSL words related to soccer. He could go take the cards and a tablet to his cousin's house 
and create the libraries of words and the play to see if they learned. 
He could share his library with the community and other signers from the country could use it 
and review it. 

These are just some ideas I had and I wanted to share them with you. 
Thank you!

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