thomsen.: aslta conference 2011

This morning the sun shined its ray through the hostel window and started to annoy my eyes, yet, I knew that it was more than that, it was time for me to wake up early in the morning. 6:09. That's the time that my phone indicated and I just couldn't help rolling my eyes and stare at the ceiling in utter disbelief. You see, I couldn't sleep last night. Just tired as hell, but my mind was utterly unstoppable. I'd probably burned more brain cells than fat alone altogether last night. Is that even possible? If some scientist is reading this post, could you please inform me and my audience?

The warm rays on my skin felt nice after I pushed the hostel door open and stepped outside. Something in my gut told me that I was gonna be missing out of part of a beautiful day since I was heading to the hotel for my last day of the ASLTA conference. The other night I had planned on stopping by Starbucks in the morning before breakfast was going to be served at the hotel, but I totally forgot one important factor: today is Saturday (Most Starbucks in the downtown Seattle area are closed on Saturday except for afew popular places). So, behold, the surprise on my face when after a fifteen minute walk to the hotel that Starbucks, was, indeed, closed.

I love my memory. Two days ago, I remembered seeing another Starbucks not far away down the hill from the hotel that was close to Seattle Best Coffee. I love my memory. I love knowing that businesses always compete against each other. I love my memory. I love knowing that for every Seattle Best Coffee, Starbucks always has one either next door or across the street.

Speaking about memory, yesterday, I was walking down Pike street in downtown Seattle and there were people starting to gather around. I got curious and this is what happened (watch the video!)

Nevertheless, the morning is now back to normal since I have my favorite Starbucks coffee fix! I can take on anything now! First to business, I entered the hotel and immediately took the elevator stairs down to the courtyard room and meet up with Terry to get my receipt to prove that I paid for the conference in cash. Nothing felt better than having that piece of paper to make sure that I got reimbursed by my employer. I, then, headed to grab some food for breakfast. This morning, I surprised myself by only eating fruits for breakfast: banana, strawberries, and grapes (along with grape fruit drink!). After about ten minutes of enjoying my breakfast along with my coffee, I was surprised to have company at my table. :-)

First session: How to Develop a ASL Teaching Portfolio: This session provided some excellent feedback and understanding how you can, by using the web, create a portfolio to track everything that you've been doing to demonstrate your experience as an ASL Teacher/Professor. Not only did they gather information on their experience, but also incorporated topics such as teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, teaching sample, assessment, and presentation. It appears that as ASL increases it influences as a foreign language option in high schools and colleges that the bar in standards will be raised for ASL teachers/instructors as well. Thus, having a ASL Teaching Portfolio will demonstrate to potential employers your creditably in what they're looking for.

Second session: The Implementation of Required Lab as Part of ASL Interpreting Curriculum: This session provided some interesting ways of how you incorporate a lab section as part of your classroom curriculum. The concept of the lab is threefold: provide labs as teaching and learning tools to practice and

enhance ASL skills; educate students in ASL used by the Deaf community; and practice what they learned at ASL Labs during ASL course work. The instructor indicted that if this became a requirement for all ASL classes, this would raise bar in standards and significantly increase the student's skills in ASL!

Third session: ASL Cinesthetic: my favorite workshop/session of all time while attending ASL Now! ASLTA Conference 2011! Basically, in simple words, it's the evolution of ASL literature and the technology of film making are creating a new perspective on ASL literature. Since I'm a huge fan of watching film, this session was a no-brainier for me. Best quote of the session, quoted by Marika Kovacs-Houlihan,

"ASL cinematic techniques are a brilliant way to create a story or poetry using the ability to visualize just like in the film. The art of ASL story/poem and cinematic share astoundingly similar features. A great storyteller will enable the audience to visualize his/her story in our heads by sensing the environment, mood, and intensity—Just like how a movie editor would have made their film."

You should watch: Deaf Ninja and Fastest Hands in the West!

Last, fourth session: ASL-English Bilinguals as Snowflakes: This session provided some information on how being bilingual is better than being monolingual. Basically, it demonstrated with fact and figures why it's important to have more than one language has showed that your child will be able to understand language concepts and will have a more balance approach when it comes to understanding language(s). Basically, the presenter advocated that both: English (read and write) and ASL (visual communication) language should be incorporated into the curriculum for students who are deaf/hard of hearing.

There you go! Now, since you actually read through until the end (or if you're smart and lazy, you skimmed down to the end), I have a surprise for you. If you can find me in this video, and tell me how many times I'm in the video, I will send you a free $10 Starbucks Gift Card! Please leave a comment if you have the answer, now, for some of you who do not know what I look like, I highly suggest that you "Like" me on Facebook to increase your chances of winning.

May the best man or woman win!

ASLTA 2011 CONFERENCE DAY THREE from i DEAF NEWS on Vimeo.

Such a beautiful day today. What can I say? This day is off to an excellent start. Right now, I'm sitting in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, WA. First word that comes to mind: fancy. You know if I was rich, then that would be a different story, but guess what? I haven't gotten there yet ;-) Even with a discount, the cost a night for a room at this hotel is around two-hundred a night. Some of you are wondering, "Why are you in Seattle in the first place?" To be honest, there's two reasons: first, I missed the city and always love being anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. Second, there's a conference that I have to attend to help me improve my already amazing skills teaching American Sign Language.

I still haven't decided which session I want to go to...there's so many great options! I guess I'm gonna go with these two: Assess Student ASL, HOW? presented by Kim Pudans-Smith and Overview of ASL Teaching Methods presented by Dr. Keith Cagle and Kim Brown Kurz. However, before I went their presentations, I decided to go check out National ASL Standards Overview that was being presented before those two sessions. I think the National ASL Standards Overview was extremely informative since they simplified quite a bit from last time and the 5C's made it that much more to understand. I'm not really going to elaborate too much, but if you want to learn more, feel free to check it out here.

Of the two sessions, I really found that Kim Pudans-Smith to be much more engaging. It seems that many ASL teachers were having a difficult time finding ways to assess the ASL skill(s) level of their students. Kim believe that having a well-organized rubric is the key to making not only the teacher job easier, but as well as it gives students a better understanding of what the teacher expectation(s) are.

Although, I do wish that the question(s) should have been saved for the last half an hour of the presentation because she was still unfinished with her presentation when we were running out of time. Again, it just strictly time management that could and should improve for next time.

Lunch: Ivan and Starbucks. No additional comments! Check the photo!

Again, the presentation, Overview of ASL Teaching Methods (actual presentation, part 1, part 2), was informative, organized, and extremely detailed. Almost too detailed. Yes, it is true that we read faster than when we're listening, but when you have that much information, it's easy to get distracted. I noticed that some of my colleagues were getting bored, lost, or trying to catch up to be engaged in the presentation. Again, it's a matter of personal taste and your learning style. As for me, I typed notes in my laptop, when that died, I took out my iPod Touch and continued to take notes to help me remember and recall what I learned.

Overall, it was a fantastic learning experience and I'm looking forward toward to learning more tomorrow! It's gonna be a long day too!

thomsen.

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