Disability Rights Argentina Project #39291

Help Deaf Children learn to read and write

by Canales Asociacion Civil

Project Report | Jun 16, 2020
Spanish as a second language for Deaf children

By silvana veinberg | executive director

Textbook Spanish for Deaf children - Level 1

In 2015 we started an innovative project to teach Deaf children written Spanish as a second language. Our first textbook aimed to deaf children in first and second grade in primary school was created based on the field of Arts: circus, cinema, painting, and photography… In 2017 we started to think of the second teaching level: a textbook based this time on Science that was released in early 2019.

Today, and thanks to YOUR HELP, we are proud to present our next project: we are starting to design a new textbook for Deaf children finishing primary school. This third level Textbook aimed at deaf students learning Spanish as a second language will be based on topics related to Deaf community: sign language, Deaf culture, bilingual education, famous Deaf people in sports, arts and science.

Due to the quarantine, our meetings are organized via zoom. Two professionals are in charge of the design of activities related to teaching Spanish as a second language, two deaf women provide material abut deaf culture, language and community matters, the team is accompanied by a Sign Language/Spanish interpreter, and the general coordinator is also present in order to have a holistic glance about the whole educative product.

As in the first two textbooks, we plan to illustrate all the activities and to incorporate sign language videos in all the units.

Now more than ever, Deaf children need to have accessible educational material. The pandemic situation left deaf children isolated in their homes with families that do not speak sign language and consequently cannot communicate with them. In Argentina, schools for the deaf are the only space in which children can freely learn and use their natural language (sign language). We must create material for deaf students to have the opportunity to learn in spite of being far from school.

Let´s help deaf children have a Textbook to learn how to read and write in Spanish!

Textbook Spanish por Deaf Children - level 2

Working during quarantine

First drafts - Textbook Level 3

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Feb 18, 2020
Coming soon!! Videogames for Videobooks

By Silvana Veinberg | Executive director

Teenagers creating videogames

Canales works on the creation of tools to promote the literacy of deaf children. One of our projects created in 2011 is Videolibros enSeñas (Videobooks), a website where deaf children find books and digital stories read in Sign Language.

We are in the process of expanding the promotion of literature through the development of interactive games that will be integrated into the Videobooks platform.

We will offer a new way to teach Spanish to deaf children to play, learn, actively participate, express themselves, share and find new challenges as they learn to read and write. This innovation will serve the deaf population to partly overcome exclusion and illiteracy.

We started working in coordination with Puerta 18 Foundation, a team of professionals that work with teenagers and youngsters from 13 to 24 years of age in technology training projects. Our first step has been a workshop in which deaf teenagers from a deaf school participated together with hearing teenagers from Puerta 18 in a workshop. During 2 hours hearing and deaf teenagers with their coordinators and sign language interpreters interacted and designed different games based on the Videobook “Los elefantes no juegan a las escondidas”.

In a second stage hearing children, helped by their teachers, developed two videogames that were presented to the general public.

After this wonderful experience, the team of coordinators and teachers asked Canales to provide them with a sign language course that was given by a couple of hearing and deaf trainers on basic signs about technology.

A group composed of Deaf and hearing experts will select varied videobooks on which templates of the games will be subsequently designed according to each videobook. Games will be tested with children in deaf schools to ensure that the content is understandable and conforms to the guidelines of the deaf community.

The templates developed will serve as the basis for the creation of games for all the videobooks that are on the platform and for those that are developed in the future.

Our major goal is to bring children back to the books. Gamification works nowadays as an attractive tool to catch children’s attention and this is the way we are transiting.

In order to increase the number of games we need your help!

Please join us in this new adventure to promote reading in deaf children!

Images of the videobook selected

children working with the help of the interpreter

Aplause

Sign Language workshop for teachers

presenting the first videogame

Links:

Videobooks' platform

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Nov 19, 2019
Two new classic stories in Argentine Sign Language

By Silvana Veinberg | executive director

La tortuga gigante

As part of the program to promote reading and access to literature, Canales enlarges the platform www.videolibros.org with two new classics stories from one of the greatest writers in Argentina: Horacio Quiroga. Las medias de los Flamencos and La Tortuga gigante (The giant tortoise) are now part of the collection of stories that children use in schools within the literature program.

In this platform, which allows Deaf girls and boys to access the same books as all the children do, the stories can be found in the categories “Stories about animals”, “Classic literature and "For older children". This Uruguayan author is part of the Argentine classical literature and that is why these stories are read in Argentine Sign Language. Both stories are located in Misiones, a province in the north of our country.

A story before going to sleep, is a shared, memorable and supreme moment in the promotion of reading, that in the case of Deaf children is almost nonexistent. 95% of these children do not have a common language with their hearing family. This fact, combined with often inappropriate literacy strategies, have resulted in a Deaf community that thinks “books are not for them”. Reversing this myth will break down one of the barriers that separates Deaf people from access to information and the pleasure of reading. "That is why in Videolibros we seek that the approach to books be attractive, in both languages, that it can be shared," express the project coordinators.

In Canales one of our lines of work points towards access to quality education for Deaf children. We think that if all children can access the same readings, the vicious circle of exclusion breaks down.

All people passionate about books can access Videobooks for free; they should only create a user, that we designed just for statistical purposes.

Sol Muñoz, a bilingual teacher for deaf children specialized in language practices, says: "Everyone deserves to have books in their own language because if we don't have books to read, there is no way to learn”.

That's why Canales is always in search of new stories. These two videobooks that join the Videolibros enSeñas platform, the winning project of the World Summit for Innovation in Education, are today available for you to enjoy.

Let´s work together so that Videobooks keeps growing!

Filming in Canales'studio

translation process

Las medias de los flamencos

baby deaf Isabella with her deaf dad at the studio

linguistic agreements

New classical stories in www.videolibros.org

Links:

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