Dear SW List Members!
Recently our Deaf Action Committee members (the DAC) and I have had
meetings discussing our work with SignWriting this summer. As you know, at
present, our Deaf staff members are Darline Clark, Dave Gunsauls and Kevin
Clark. They are all members of the SignWriting List too.
We are all very pleased to have so many wonderful schools and groups
participating in the SignWriting Literacy Project in the fall, 1998!
As you know, four of the schools...Caldwell Elementary School in Wichita,
Kansas...Robart School in London, Ontario, Canada...Texas School for the
Deaf (Lower School) in Austin, Texas...and possibly the New Mexico School
for the Deaf, are the major participants. Plus there are three other
private groups too. Our plans for the summer are:
1. Ronice Munoz de Quadros from Brazil will translate the Literacy Project
materials into Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS). Ronice is arriving in San
Diego tomorrow night, May 28th, and will be staying with me for five days.
We will work together on the translations. Later Ronice hopes to establish
the project in Brazil.
2. We hope to be in touch personally with all of the teachers participating
in the project. There are a lot of details to arrange to make the project
work smoothly in the fall.
3. The DAC and I are completing the materials for the fall school year. We
are improving Goldilocks and Humpty Dumpty in ASL, completing Cinderella
and then we have two other stories that already have illustrations -
Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Darline has already done some work on the
ASL for Snow White and I am hoping that we will have the time to complete
Snow White by the fall. As you know, I do all the layout and publishing of
the books. I have three computers in my home, and I have one color printer
printing all day long. I run between the computers ...it is really funny
actually. One person running three computers. There are times when I feel
quite torn between the machines - ha!
4. I am also working on new lessons online for everyone - which will not
only benefit the teachers of the SignWriting Literacy Project, but also
anyone else interested in SignWriting.
5. And last...for several years we have been working on a new computer
program called SignWriter 5.0, which is a totally new piece of software
written in Java. We are not done, but I am hoping that we can have the
first version ready for the new school year too. For those of you
interested in computers, some of you probably wonder why it wasn't
completed long ago! The only answer is time and money - and we have little
of both. However, the benefits will be so great that I hope to devote time
to this, this summer. I am working with java programmers. I am not a
programmer myself, but I designed the symbols and keyboards, and work with
the many spoken and signed languages that are a part of SignWriter. My part
of the work has to do with editing the symbols themselves. Since we are
moving from an MS-DOS platform to the Macintosh and Windows, the symbols
themselves have to be fixed up dot by dot in a special editor, because the
graphics is handled differently in these new machines. I am half way done
with the symbol editing. I will keep you posted as to our progress.
So that is what is on the DAC's plate this summer :-)
What about all of you? Perhaps some of you have plans to work with
SignWriting this summer? If so, please share it with the list...
Have a wonderful day :-)
Valerie Sutton :-)
https://www.SignWriting.org
Sutton at the DAC
Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting
Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA
(619)456-0098 voice
(619)456-0010 tty
(619)456-0020 fax
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