SignBank
2002: Using FileMaker In Deaf Education
FileMaker is award-winning database software for Windows
and the Macintosh, developed by FileMaker
Corporation. As one of the
world's most popular database programs, FileMaker is used
by millions of small businesses to create databases that
manage projects, assets, medical records, inventory, bookkeeping
and payroll. But don't let the friendly visual user-interface
fool you! FileMaker is exceptionally powerful, equaling,
if not surpassing, the capabilities of competing database
software.
Now
in 2002, FileMaker will be used in Deaf
Education and Sign Language Linguistic
Research, because of an ingenious new database
design called SignBank 2002. The
brainchild of SignWriting inventor Valerie
Sutton, SignBank brings literacy
to born-deaf children and adults through SignWriting,
a visual way to write the handshapes, movements
and facial expressions of any Sign Language
in the world.
Contrary
to popular belief, Sign Languages are not
international. They are rich languages
with large vocabularies and unique grammar
structures, that differ from culture to
culture, just as spoken languages differ
from country to country. SignWriting is
becoming the written form for Sign Languages,
and small pockets of educators and researchers
in 27 countries are beginning to use SignWriting
to improve Deaf Education.
Supplying
born-deaf children with a written form
for their native Sign Language, is believed
by some educators, to be the key to
literacy for some deaf children. And
SignBank 2002, in FileMaker Pro 5.0, is
a computer program tailored to test this
experimental educational theory, giving
researchers study tools, and deaf people
a dictionary that is easy to use.
In SignBank,
the written signs are stored and sorted
by the visual handshapes, movement arrows
and facial expressions of SignWriting.
This sequence of symbols is called Sutton's Sign-Symbol-Sequence (SSS).
To
program FileMaker to sort dictionaries
by SSS was no easy task for FileMaker programmer
Todd Duell, of Formulations Pro in San
Diego. Todd succeeded in stretching FileMaker's
capabilities, working side by side with
Valerie Sutton to make a successful SSS
lookup system.
SignWriting
symbols are easy to read for those who
use Sign Language. By providing a way to
search for words with visual SignWriting
symbols as the "search method",
words can be found in the dictionary, and
printed. Illiteracy levels are high among
the born-deaf. Reading spoken language
is based on sounds the born-deaf have never
heard. So for some, this will be the first
time they have ever been able to look up
a word in a dictionary.
SignWriting
has been used in the Albuquerque Public
Schools on an experimental basis since
1999, through the SignWriting Literacy
Project. The teachers who use it feel strongly
that literacy levels are improving in their
students. The Albuquerque Public Schools
will be the site for beta testing SignBank
2002, which hopefully will make its official
release to the general public in Fall,
2002.
So,
from the perspective of FileMaker Corporation,
the idea of deaf children age 6, using
their business software, is a new one!
But SignBank developers Valerie Sutton
and Todd Duell feel that the year 2002
will prove that the visual nature of FileMaker
will benefit the visual world of the born-deaf. A
natural partnership!
For
more information, contact:
Valerie
Sutton
Sutton@SignBank.org
https://www.SignBank.org
SignBank
2002
SignWriting
Online Dictionary Database
Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting
P.O. Box 517, La Jolla, CA., 92038, USA
|
NEWS
RELEASE January, 2002
