SIL GSLT is working with BILAT, a Deaf NGO, in Tanzania to translate and publish school textbooks. The textbooks are in Swahili and the translation is in Tanzanian Sign Language, on videos. So far 6 first grade textbooks have been translated. However, the sizes of the books are pushing Bloom to the limit and the books for later grades will be larger and more complicated. The videos are compressed as much as we can. One option we considered is to have Bloom support embed video code. This would mean that the Bloom books would stay small while the videos could reside on the teacher’s hard drive or in areas with better internet on YouTube or Vimeo.
I am sure hopeful that this can be solved. The idea sounds good. Besides benefiting the Deaf in Tanzania, this will benefit other sign language communities as they look to providing sign language textbooks for Deaf classrooms.
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I agree. This sounds like a natural extension of the current capability of Bloom to include videos, and a straightforward approach that allows linking to the videos (and storing them elsewhere) instead of embedding them in the Bloom file.
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I agree. This sounds like a good solution to something that must be resolved.
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