The Baobab

***DOWNLOAD THIS ON TABLETS ONLY*** This app is formatted for tablets only; and is compatible on Samsung Galaxy and Google Nexus tablets. It will not run on mobile phones.

The Baobab is an original story about a curious little girl who goes on a search for a rare, delicious fruit growing from an ancient Baobab tree. The little girl encounters animals and lands herself in a peculiar situation! Children will enjoy the daring little girl's mishaps and adventures, the rich ASL storytelling, and the captivating watercolor illustrations.

• Interactive and bilingual ASL/English storybook app designed for visual learners, especially deaf children
• Original story, first developed through ASL storytelling and then told through English print
• Available on the App Store
• Design principles are based on research on science of learning on visual language and learning

App Highlights:

• Original story told in ASL and English
• Easy & accessible navigation designed for children
• Rich interactive narrative with direct English-to-ASL video translation
• 170-word American Sign Language glossary. Parents can learn ASL along with their child
• High resolution watercolor illustrations
• App design is based on proven research in bilingualism and visual learning

Key Research Principles:

The benefits of bilingualism--for both hearing and deaf language learners--have become more and more apparent in recent years. We know from research that a child’s early exposure to bilingualism provides fundamental advantages in cognition, language, and literacy. This finding is true for bilinguals whose languages are both spoken and for bilinguals who sign one language and read and write in another. In fact, this early bilingual advantage does not go away; research confirms that the cognitive and language benefits that come from being bilingual continue throughout the lifetime.

The new series of VL2 ASL-English storybook apps for the iPad builds upon findings from research done on deaf bilingual children. For one, we know that proficiency in a visual language, American Sign Language, has been positively correlated with English literacy and spoken language development. Opportunities that provide engagement with visual language and printed literacy place deaf children on a path towards fluent bilingualism.

By being exposed to examples of extended use of sign language (such as stories), deaf children are provided opportunities to develop cognitive flexibility and metalinguistic abilities, and these, in turn, help to facilitate the development of English literacy skills. Research from VL2 and other centers shows that early visual language experience offers far-reaching advantages for a deaf child’s linguistic, communicative, cognitive, academic, literacy, and psychosocial development.

Children, parents, and educators who use this app can watch the story in ASL, read along with the English text at the bottom of the screen, and watch videos--with sound--of the translation of selected words in the text. A rich body of work in early literacy indicates that fingerspelling helps vocabulary acquisition and helps form a phonological level of language access for deaf children. The apps make use of the advantages of fingerspelling, even incorporating commonly used linking techniques such as “sandwiching,” where a word is signed, then fingerspelled, and then signed once again. Because of what we know about the importance of fluent language models in the teaching of the grammar of a visual language, the storyteller in The Baobab is a fluent signer.

For more information: www.VL2StorybookApps.com