Dear Deaf-Ed members

At the University of Edinburgh we have been building up the website of technical signs in BSL for science and we have now reached over 1,000 signs and definitions (more physics ones are going on soon which will bring us to 1,000). We are evaluating the way the signs are used with a Facebook project aimed at 13 - 18 year olds. We would like to recruit more deaf young people to this project. We have 10 Deaf scientists ready and waiting on the project to answer any science question in BSL on a secret Facebook site - that is, it's only accessible to people in the project. The young people upload video clips of their questions. We show the young people how to upload video clips if they don't already know. They choose which explanations they like - often one question is answered in several different ways.

We are using the BSL footage to analyse the way the technical terms are used in BSL and how young people ask questions. The genre of science talk has not been much studied in sign languages. Our method involves marking BSL sentences using ELAN software to analyse the clips. The people involved in the project are myself, Dr Audrey Cameron (who has a science teaching background) and Gary Quinn (a BSL linguist from Heriot Watt University). 

We initially thought this would be a short summer project, but we didn't find enough deaf young people to take part. We would like to extend the project to December. Do you know any deaf teenagers who might like to join in? If so, please could you pass on the information leaflets and forms to them and their parents / carers? The information is available in BSL on this open Facebook site, which is the first step in joining the project.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/188849237945346/

We will update you with the progress of the research.

Best wishes

Rachel

Lecturer in Deaf Education
University of Edinburgh

SSC Science Signs Glossary site: http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/bsl/list.html