Dear parents & students: Information about the research.

Here is a very short (55 seconds!!) video about the study in ASL with English voice over.

For more information, or to participate, contact me: umhaimes (AT) myumanitoba (DOT) ca

The race is on to run the experiment with 240 students before I have another baby! (due May 30).

It just occurred to me that an update might be a good idea, as it has been quite some time!!!!

I am currently on a leave of absence from the university and my research because my partner and I welcomed a healthy baby boy to our family. :-) He turned 6 months old this weekend!

I will be back at my research as of January 2014.

Very quick update.
I have been very busy as a Deaf Studies Program student in addition to my research.

I completed the pilot study and defended the paper on that study (and passed :-). I still need to complete revisions for that paper.

I presented the results at an international conference this summer in Norway, where there was interest in the study and I will be presenting a poster at an international conference in Wales at the end of March.

I have just renewed my Ethics approval and received permission to extend the project Canada-wide.
 
I will send a summary of results out to parents and educators who helped me with recruitment within the month.

Wow, there's nothing like a blog post to make you feel as though you are progressing! Day-to-day it really doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere. Research can such a slow process!

Brenna

Just a short post to say that I'm working at my research paper and also, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I'm in classes, I got into the Deaf Studies Program jointly offered by Red River College and the U of Manitoba! 
I'm a busy woman....better get back to work.

Wait, I'm also organizing talks at the U of M Friday afternoons, here's a link to the google calendar for the talks.

"Back to School"/Research

It's been some time since I have posted anything.  I kind of let the summer get away from me, but I am relaxed, tanned, refreshed and ready to get back to work!

I took some time off and for work I focused on filling in necessary forms over the summer.

The conference in Norway (the International Symposium on Bilingualism 8) was a great success. My presentation went well (despite my jet lag!) and I enjoyed all the presentations I attended and meeting and sharing discussions with other Sign Language linguists from around the world!

I attended the Winnipeg Church of the Deaf's Camp Kakepitay's 45th anniversary on Canyon lake.  My partner took some 4-day pinhole camera pictures, which can be seen at http://clarakusumoto.wordpress.com/
We both had a great time!
(Kakepitay means Deaf in Oji-Cree)

Otherwise I camped, canoed, and cottaged my way through the summer. Filling in some paperwork and doing a little work on my data throughout the summer.  I feel a little guilty for not working harder, but in the end I think I'm better off for having taken holidays for the first time, really, since I started my Masters in 2008!! (I didn't have time off between my MA and PhD, in fact there was a month of overlap!). There's nothing like an extended holiday to get you excited to get back to work!

I am currently preparing to send out some information to teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (hopefully Canada-wide) to begin to establish more contacts for continued research, prepare for a presentation I am giving for a Lunchtime lecture series at the University of Manitoba (@ 12:30 Jan 27th), and prepare the paper on this research to defend sometime this semester.

Back to work indeed! YAY!! (yes, I am a big nerd).

Getting there...

Gave a practice presentation on the (first draft of the) results from the research project yesterday.

It went well!!! I received a lot of great feedback for improving the presentation.  More work to do.

The results, in brief are that Deaf children do think in ASL when they read English, but it looks different from Deaf ASL-English adults and Deaf DGS-German adults.  ALSO Deaf children read English (their second language for most) faster than hearing children (their first language)!  All very interesting!   To me at least :-)

I'm off to Oslo, Norway for the International Symposium on Bilingualism (#8) on Monday.
When I get back the next steps are writing the final research paper, and writing and sending out preliminary summary of results to participants and their parents.

Back to work :-)

T-minus 1 month until the conference!!!!

So much has happened since my last update, I'll just list what I can think of at the moment:

• I finished meeting with 18 wonderful kids and their families

• Based on meeting with those kids I've made some changes for future meetings that I think will improve the process.

• I went through the results (and worked out some confusing areas with the help of my research assistant Sherry Clark and advisor Dr. Erin Wilkinson!) and compiled them into one database and have started the statistics with the help of my advisor, Kevin Russell (a.k.a. statistical genius)

• We have found some interesting results, keep checking back for more information on them.  I'm not ready to report any specifics just yet.

• I was awarded a research fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for this research (such an honour to have the importance of this research recognized!)

• I was awarded a travel grant to the International Symposium on Bilingualism where I am presenting this research June 15th (in Oslo, Norway).

• I have another Survey up for English monolinguals to complete.  It's up for 4 days only and should only take 15 minutes.  The link to the survey is:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P3GZ8JJ and the password is:  again

I think that's it for now.  Back to work!