Daniel Greene

Tag: reviews

Products, services, consumer rights, customer experiences, gadgets, websites, movies, restaurants, reviews

  • Deaf Lawyer Writes Succinct Synopsis of Gallaudet Protest

    This article by deaf lawyer Kelby Brick is the most succinctly and eloquently written synopsis of the Gallaudet protest I’ve seen to date — and it puts the hearing media’s coverage of the event to shame!

    I first saw a link to this article on ridorlive.com.

  • Reflections on the CIT Conference

    Here are some of the things I learned, was reminded of, or thought about during the CIT conference I attended this past week:

    • I was reminded that people remember most what they learn first and last (primacy and recency). In the future, when I teach a class or a workshop, I will begin and end with exercises that engage students in active learning that is content-focused. Also, I was taught that nothing shuts down a student more than fear and anxiety. Hmm… Note to self: in the future, do not begin a class by giving out graded homework that for several students is copiously red-penned and graded lower than they might have liked, and do not end class with a discussion of the next homework assignment! 😉 Instead, begin a class session with a lively, fun exercise that engages students in active learning that is tied directly into the content matter of the class. End with a summary of what I taught them in class that day, or — better yet! — with an active learning exercise in which the students take turns summarizing (teaching each other) what they learned in class that day. Don’t bother marking up their papers with all kinds of editorial marks. If their writing is very poor, give them a poor grade and have them come to you after class if they want to talk about it. Hand out homework on a paper to them as they leave the classroom. Take care of “housekeeping” during the middle of class. Save the first and last portions of the class for the meat of the lesson. (Inspiration: “Designing and Delivering Effective, Learner-Engaged Trainings” by Len Roberson and Shannon Simon — one of the only workshops I ever gave all fives to on the RID evaluation form)

    • A conference venue for attendees who communicate in sign language must have large common areas, wide corridors, non-distracting walls (e.g. floral patterns and huge mirrors), and lighting that is bright but not glaring. Unfortunately, the Red Lion Hanalei Hotel in San Diego was not an ideal conference venue for visual-gestural communication and traffic flow!
    • Discourse analysis and genre recognition are areas that I would like to do further learning and teaching on. (more…)

  • LiveJournal Communities re: Interpreters

    Here are some of the LiveJournal communities I found last night:

    • aslterps: started 5 October 2003; c. 240 entries; last entry 18 August 2006.
    • anti_bad_terps: started 5 March 2004; c. 40 entries; last entry 23 April 2006.
    • certified_terps: started 2 February 2006; 14 entries, last entry 15 August 2006.
    • itp_students: started 1 February 2006; 14 entries; last entry 23 July 2006.
    • vrs_411: started 21 June 2006; four (4) entries; last entry 28 June 2006.

    (By the way, it took me an ungodly amount of time to compile those data. Does no one know of an easy way for a LiveJournal Community visitor to see when the community was started and how many entries it has without having to page back through all the entries?)

    I guess these really are more journaling “communities” rather than “blogs.” Online interpreter communities have been around for a long time, especially in the form of ListServ’s, Yahoo! groups, etc. These communities differ from ListServ’s in that they are out in the open for all the world to see. They each have their group originators and moderators, but no one person seems to be the main blogger of any of them. Some of the posts and comment discussions are interesting. For the most part, they don’t seem to “log the web” in the sense of providing links and commentary about other Web documents, as discussed in Journal vs. Blog. They are more a collection of discussions about either real or hypothetical interpreting situations, or bad experiences they had with other interpreters.

    (more…)

  • I Found Some Other ASL Interpreter Blogs

    It wouldn’t be the first time I was the first one on the Internet to do something (see my Style Sheets Demo Page and HyperHaiku), but thankfully, I am not the first ASL interpreter to have a blog. I did some more searching this morning on DeafBlogs and found some other interpreter blogs. Here they are:

    • certified_terps, a LiveJournal community
    • anti_bad_terps, a LiveJournal community
    • OakHomey— I don’t see much there about interpreting, except that he feels he can’t blog about his personal life because it would damage his relationship with his clients. Hm…
    • Shanni’s Blog— I don’t see much about interpreting there, but there are some posts that mention her experiences as an interpreter, and there are lots of beautiful photos.

  • Where Are The ASL Interpreter Blogs?

    Is it possible that mine is the first ASL interpreter blog? I have searched the Internet for other ASL interpreter blogs, and I can’t find any. There are hordes of Deaf Blogs and Vlogs out there—hooray for deaf people!—but where in the blogosphere are my interpreting colleagues?

    I wonder if there are no ASL interpreter blogs because we have to keep our mouths shut about our work to protect client confidentiality. Yes, we need to protect our consumers, but we can talk about our work publicly! I believe it will benefit our profession and our consumers, too, if we talk about our work in a way that is illuminating without betraying any confidential information.

    That is my goal here—to talk about ASL signing and interpreting in such a way as to inform and stimulate discussion while maintaining a sense of professionalism and respect for my colleagues and our hearing and deaf consumers. I look forward to the time when this blog is full of comments from deaf and hearing readers engaged in meaningful dialogues that have a profound and positive effect on the work we do and the people we serve. I look forward to adding other ASL interpreter blogs to my blogroll and being added to theirs.

    Blog on, ‘terps!

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