Locals create a new way to learn American Sign Language
First off, I had no idea there was a difference between what I consider “sign language” and American Sign Language (ASL). The former is an exact replica of English, the latter is very literally its own language. So already, I have no idea what I’m talking about.
But I know something cool when I see it, and so I give you FactSumo, a Philadelphia-based company launched by a woman who used to routinely get angry at me for not cleaning up after myself, and no, I’m not talking about mother.
Kim Ramirez is the CEO and cofounder of FactSumo, and she’s a Rider University graduate, class of 1995, and someone who was part of my post-college shore house crew. She was also neater than me, and I know that Sunday afternoons I wasn’t exactly helpful on the cleanup end up of things. I mean, we were just going to make a mess again, right?
Anyway, a lot of good times with Kim, and so when she reached out to me a few weeks back about the company she launched, it didn’t take me two seconds to get back to her.
In a nutshell: FactSumo is a mobile digital learning player. You want to learn Mandarin? FactSumo can teach you. Poker? FactSumo. Algebra? FactSumo. Check out their website; each lesson is embedded in what they call a “deck.” Cool stuff.
“We’re about mastery,” said Ramirez. “What we do is meant to be used in real life.”
Like … American Sign Language, which is free on FactSumo, and was created with a huge assist from the Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf here in Ewing.
“Two years ago, Kim called me and told me about their app and asked if we’d be interested in collaborating with them on their ASL decks,” said Joan Krasnisky, the superintendent of the school. “We were very excited about it because we’ve been hoping to have some way to teach ASL to parents who can’t come to our classes here.”
This kind of gobsmacked me, mostly because I don’t have a deaf child. But can you imagine? Your child is deaf, and they’re going to learn a new language, and they’re going to be able to express themselves just like everyone else, and you’d be almost literally blind to it. As a parent, it would be imperative to learn.
But it’s not easy. Imagine learning any other new language at this stage of life.
“People learn signs, but learning signs is different than learning American Sign Language,” Krasnisky said. “It has it’s own grammar and vocabulary. When you’re learning just sign language, you’re learning vocabulary and you’re putting that vocabulary into sentences. But American Sign Language is not in the same word order as English. There are many other components to it. Classifiers, morphemes, bridges. There might be one sign for six words. One word, like ‘run,’ could have seven different signs for seven different meanings. There’s a lot to learning American Sign Language, just like any other language.”
Yeah. So imagine tackling that as a parent.
And while the school offers weekly classes for parents, it’s not easy for all parents to get there. Remember, kids from all over the state are bussed in on a daily basis.
Enter FactSumo, filling a void. For while there are obviously other websites and the like that teach ASL, there is nothing like what FactSumo does. It charts progress, it offers reviews, it works as a teacher would work with a student.
And with good reason: The decks were created through the work of three deaf ASL teachers at the school, Kim Arrigo, Suzan Colon, and Delora Hill.
“We’ve wanted to do something like this, but never had the equipment or the know-how to get it done,” Krasnisky said. “Now parents can learn ASL while standing on line at the grocery line, while sitting at the doctor’s office, anytime. Same thing with the students. They can practice it on the bus, in the car. It’s just another way to provide more practice for our students.”
Great stuff, no?
And as for Kim over at FactSumo, I feel like I need to apologize to her for not pulling my weight on cleaning up the shore house on Sundays before we left. I was very bad at it. There may have been some shirking on my part.