AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE (ASL)/ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING DATABASE PROJECT

DawnSignPress WILL DEVELOP A TWO LANGUAGE, FULLY RELATIONAL, DATABASE FOR AMERICAN SIGN LanguagE (ASL) AND ENGLISH. THE PHASE I DATABASE WILL BE BUILT USING THE MICROSOFT FOXPRO FOR WINDOWS PROGRAM WITH STANDARD .DBF DATA TABLES LINKED THROUGH WINDOWS OLE LINKS TO DIGITAL GRAPHIC, SOUND, AND VIDEO FILES. THIS APPROACH WILL PROVIDE FOR MAINTAINING TRADITIONAL TEXT, GRAPHICS, VIDEO CLIPS, AND SOUND CLIPS IN THE DATABASE. COMPUTER RETRIEVAL AND INDEXING OF ASL DATA WILL BE BASED ON THE "SIGN FONT" ASL LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS TOOL. A PHASE I PROTOTYPE INTERFACE WILL BE DEVELOPED IN THE FOXPRO FOR WINDOWS ENVIRONMENT WITH DATA STORED WITH CONVENTIONAL HARD DISK TECHNOLOGY. BASED ON DawnSignPress'S LONG EXPERIENCE IN DEVELOPING ASL MATERIALS FOR CHILDREN THE PROTOTYPE AND FINAL PHASE II PRODUCT WILL BE DIRECTED TO THE LEARNING NEEDS OF DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING CHILDREN. PHASE II OF THE PROJECT WILL EVALUATE THE CURRENT STATE OF THE ART IN MULTIMEDIA DEVELOPMENT AND STORAGE TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOP THE PROTOTYPE INTO A FINAL PRODUCT USING THE TECHNOLOGY THAT BEST BALANCES TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY WITH ABILITY TO RUN ON COMPUTER HARDWARE GENERALLY AVAILABLE TO THE ASL LEARNING COMMUNITY.