Hi Valerie and SW-list members, especially teachers of deaf students...

 

You would not believe what is going on here. We are so excited. We feel so happy. There is so much joy and respect and learning going on in my classroom.

 

Lumturi – a fourteen year old deaf student – has become the Editor of the brand new Albanian SignPuddle.

 

Thank you so much Valerie for this precious gift!

 

I am so excited to be allowed to experience this special deaf pride in her cultural heritage. Luturi came from Albania into my class about two years ago. She is able to communicate perfectly in German and Albanian Signlanguage. Thanks to the intense practice of combining GebaerdenSchrift with Spoken German she is wonderfully on her way to improve Spoken Language skills German and English.  We ask the Googel Translator quite often to overcome some problems and to translate from one language into the other.

 

Now that Lumturi is on her way to create her first entries the whole group of students is accompanying this process with respect and joy and all of us take advantage out of that.

 

You should know that there are 8 students in my class with severe different migration background.

 

We started a new project that is so much fun. We write several very short phrase is 8 different languages which focuses on the several languages of the families where my students come from. Starting with a first shot of the Google-Translator I asked the parents to check the translation and to correct the mistakes.

All of us feel so astonished that it is so much fun to watch these kids laughing and expressing their happyness about this experience.

 

We write the sentences in: Arabic, Albanian, Turkish, Romanian, Russian, English, German, German Signlanguage (DGS), Albanian Signlanguage, Signed German, German,

With the support of my “Speechwriting” we understand the relationship between a given oral language and the corresponding mouth-movements and all the problems with lipreading so much better.  This is very important to me!

 

Well Lumturi would love and is so eager to get in contact with you Valerie, and she would love to have a skype – contact with Adam Frost as well and she asked me to mention this.

 

Well today we made a big step forward and if you follow the link to the Albanian SignPuddle you will see, that we added the first signs that already allowed to write the first Email ever written in Albanian Signlanguage.  Uhuhuh – imagine – this is an historical event and who knows ... hopefully Lumturi will spread her pride and her feelings of happyness about being able to express her ideas in the best way she can think of ...in her beloved strong communication language which is Albanian Signlanguage.

 

 

Since Signmail is still a problem we found this nice workaround and Lumturi asked a friend to take pictures with her mobile of the screen and pictures while she is working with me at the Albanian  SignPuddle ...

 

One interesting aspect is that it is now so easy for me to catch up some Albanian signs and here and there we are kidding signing in Albanian Signlanguage and other people around would not understand anything .... just for fun.

 

Well just accept this short report as our big  THANK YOU to you Valerie for all what you have done to improve the world for deaf students ... especially for our class.

 

We feel very, very gratefull to you.

 

Attached you find two pictures ... the SignWriting Dokument as a picture from the screen of the monitor  and a picture Lumturi and me working at the teacher`s computer while I introduce her to working procedures...how to copy and rewrite SignPuddle –entries.

 

 

All best

 

Stefan and Lumturi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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