Educational Signbank

What is Auslan Signbank?

Auslan Signbank is an online language resource for Auslan – the language of the Australian Deaf community. Auslan Signbank was developed by Professor Trevor Johnston and consists of an online dictionary of Auslan as well as a growing range of other language resources. To go to Auslan Sigbank:  www.auslan.org.au

Auslan Signbank already includes signs that are education related. To search for these signs, go to: http://www.auslan.org.au/dictionary/ and select the relevant letter of the alphabet and in the column on the left, selection the category ‘Education’ from the drop menu. This list is quite limited however and hence deafConnectEd approached Professor Johnston about expanding the resources available to students and interpreters working in educational settings.

What is Educational Sigbank?

Educational Signbank is a growing pool of language resources that relate to the educational sector. Educational Signbank provides students and Auslan interpreters with:

1. a definition of educational terms in plain English and in Auslan
2. a suggested way of expressing this concept in Auslan. Often this is not an Auslan sign but a depicting sign, which represents some feature of the concept. In some cases there may be a number of suggested depicting signs to choose from.

In partnership with the Victorian College for the Deaf, deafConnectEd started Educational Signbank with signs relating to the automotive industry. These can be found below.

Expanding Educational Signbank (2017)

In 2017, the Department of Education and Training provided deafConnectEd with a grant to expand content in Educational Signbank, focusing on VET-related subject areas.

The first area we looked at was Hospitality. We worked with Auslan users who have experience in professional kitchens, or who are involved in studying Commercial Cookery.  Following a half-day workshop, we filmed around 150 videos for depicting signs and definitions for terms relating to cookery and professional kitchens.  The clips were then reviewed and have now been published in Signbank.

There are a total of 59 terms represented for Hospitality. If you have an alternate sign for any of the terms, or would like to comment on this new content, please use the “Provide feedback” link beneath the video entry in Signbank.

Terminology relating to language, literacy and study, as well as workplace health and safety have also been explored following a similar process of collaboration with Auslan users. These will be live within the next few weeks.

How to use Educational Signbank

Click on the link below and this will open the relevant Signbank page. You can also type the keyword directly into Signbank.

Remember:

• there may be two (or more) entries for each keyword – a definition and one or more suggested ways of expressing the keyword in Auslan.
• you can now also watch videos in half speed or even slower. Click on the ‘1’ at the bottom of the video to change the rate.