UC San Diego

The use of technology in classrooms is a new, slowly emerging concept in many Deaf schools and programs even though the technological revolution is moving rapidly, as seen in our everyday lives. Thus, technology is rarely used as a tool to connect ASL and English while promoting literacy. This curriculum is an attempt to provide an innovative way to connect ASL and English using a relatively simple technology program, Aurasma, which is an augmented reality platform that can be an optimal connecting tool for ASL and English literacy in Deaf students. This approach evolves the traditional use of teaching ASL and English in a classroom into a high-tech, virtual classroom where students can independently learn, reflect, and express in both languages simultaneously. As a result of students' hard work reading their assigned books, students hosted an "augmented reality walk" where they presented their final productions to the public. Their productions were poster boards with numerous pictures already triggered to their ASL videos of specific literary elements. During the augmented reality walk, people walked among the various boards and used their iPads or iPhones to trigger the pictures on their boards and view the ASL videos about the English texts they read. With this curriculum, students were not only able to connect both languages but also display great growth in their metacognitive and language skills. Based on the presented data, this is a successful high-tech, virtual bilingual curriculum that other educators of the Deaf are recommended to implement in their classrooms