蜜芽传媒

Sign of the times at 蜜芽传媒 Jam

• By Paul Crichton
• 2 Mar 07, 04:23 PM

A new deaf literacy game from , who provide online educational resources, is pushing all the boundaries of technology to produce a compelling learning experience. I recently caught up with Dr Jonathan Hassell, Accessibility Editor at Jam, who talked me through it.

Called "Performing Hands", the game is an interactive learning aid for children aged five to eleven, to help them with both English literacy and British Sign Language (BSL) that utilises new technology to the full.

The hub of the game is that of an interactive book, with around forty different stories and nursery rhymes. Using a combination of rich, colourful computer generated backdrops and BSL actors, 蜜芽传媒 Jam have created engaging worlds for children to interact with. For hearing-impaired children who are used to signing being on the margins - literally in the case of TV 鈥� this game is a tremendous advance.

BSL is taught by watching and copying others sign. This game follows those teaching principles. For example, one of the nursery rhymes is Humpty-Dumpty. The signing storyteller 鈥� Handy Andy - tells the rhyme in BSL. The text of the rhyme is also shown, and each word highlighted as Handy Andy signs. Because the two languages are connected in this way, one re-enforces the other, leading to greater understanding.

Once the user is familiar with the BSL for Humpty-Dumpty, they can then sign along using a web cam to show their own hand movements next to Handy Andy鈥檚. It鈥檚 great fun for small kids to see themselves signing on the computer screen and, most importantly, they are learning BSL by doing not just watching.

There are other innovations in this game. To help improve children鈥檚 BSL vocabulary and grammar, there is a section for children to build sentences that an avatar 鈥� which is an animated character - will then sign. If you want to know what 鈥淚 threw the ball鈥� looks like in BSL then the signing avatar will show you. There are around 800 terms to construct sentences from. Whilst signing avatars have been around for a while, they have not been used in such an advanced way before.

Avatars are also used as actors in a play that children can write that is both fun and helps their creativity. Using a cast of characters based on fairytales, and then selecting dialogue options, they can write their own story in a series of acts that is then performed in BSL.

At the end of the meeting, Jonathan says with obvious relish, 鈥淚 think I鈥檝e got the best job in accessibility in the world.鈥� Having seen some of the exciting things they are doing, it鈥檚 not hard to see why he might feel that way.

There is no official release date yet, but the game should be available in the near future.

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