I know this is a kind of old topic, but I wanted to share the experiences I've had with a few different apps over the past couple of weeks since I started studying ASL, and decided it would be better to just continue this thread than to start a new one.
ASL Project "Fingerspelling Tutor"
The ASL Project's "Fingerspelling Tutor" only deals with fingerspelling, not ASL... but for the specific purpose of practicing receptive fingerspelling, it's the absolute cream of the crop... hands down, no contest. It uses a computer-rendered signer, which provides two HUGE benefits:
* When signing entire words, you see the transitions between letters. Every other program I've seen that even TRIES to show entire words just blinks from photo to photo (or, for 'j' and 'z', MAYBE to an animgif).
* You can control the signing rate in fairly fine increments without compromising its clarity. With apps that use video from a human model, the video usually turns to a blurry interlaced mess at slower playback rates.
Unfortunately, it doesn't teach numbers, and it's not particularly cheap ($50 with shipping). But for the specific purpose of practicing the recognition of fingerspelled words, it's ABSOLUTELY the best program of its type available today. In about a week, with about an hour of practice per day, I went from barely able to recognize anything besides A, E, C, T, R, and N (the letters the free downloadable demo version covers) to being able to go as fast as 3 letters per second (with occasional replays).
===================
Instant Immersion ASL
Absolutely, positively, DO NOT waste your money on the 5-CD version of "Instant Immersion ASL". This program (actually, collection of unrelated programs on 5 CDs) is "turn of the century" CD-ROM shovelware of the worst kind. It has a 2-disc app (Ready-Set-Sign) that's basically a digitized VHS sign-language tape from the late 80s or early 90s... sliced, diced, and repurposed with a Windows 3.1-ish UI. It has (on another CD) a cut-down lite version of Vcom3d's Signing Avatar dictionary, which is arguably this package's sole partially-redeeming feature. It also has an ASL video phrase dictionary that wouldn't be half-bad if they hadn't come up with such pointless phrases to demo, and came on a single DVD-ROM instead of making you swap discs for half the words/phrases.
I paid $30 for it at Borders... basically, because it was there and I could take it home to play with immediately. I DO NOT recommend this SPECIFIC edition of the program (the 5-disc non-Deluxe version) under any circumstances.
That said, the jury's still out on the 8-disc Deluxe edition, which I ordered from Amazon Marketplace for around $20 with shipping. I DO give the program credit for at least TRYING to teach proper ASL grammar, and it appears that the Deluxe version includes the kind of games/tutorial apps that I wanted in the first place.
=======
Rocket Sign Language
I demo'ed the 6-day free edition of Rocket Sign Language. To be honest, it's not half-bad for a first try by a language publisher, as long as you buy it with your eyes wide open and know what its specific shortcomings are:
* The signing game uses English word order. At least, for the 'recreation' signs that are part of the demo version.
* The signing game uses multiple-choice questions... most of which have answers that are so painfully obvious, anyone with the slightest wisp of inductive and deductive reasoning skills can probably guess 17 or 18 out of 20 correctly on the first try, without having even studied any of the signs first. That said, I'll admit that I haven't seen the full version. It's not inconceivable that they intentionally chose to present the recreation signs in the demo version BECAUSE most of them are fairly obvious, and they wanted to give newbies a sense of accomplishment.
* The study guide (for the free 6 lessons, at least) shows signs for things like greeting others, but never even touches upon the underlying grammar or tries to explain what the individual signs were or how they work together. And in any case, uses English word order. But then again, 99% of "learn a new foreign language" books do the same thing in their first few chapters.
* The video was obviously shot with conventional, non-HD/progressive-scan cameras. When you watch a video at reduced speed, it turns into blurry interlace-artifact mush.
* The fingerspelling game didn't particularly impress me... but to be honest, after using the ASL Project's Fingerspelling tutor, I don't think ANY other program of that type could impress me much.
* They obviously hired someone to spam Google, and every blog & message board in the world, in the name of "search-engine placement". To me, that's a MAJOR turn-off. If I Google something, and the first 27 pages of search results are obvious Google-baiting, my warning sirens go off. I did some more research on the company, though, and it appears that they really ARE legit... just a small company that hasn't quite realized yet that if you go overboard with the Google-baiting (like they have), it's going to start turning people off.
On the plus side, the program can be bought online and downloaded immediately for $50 (it's officially $100 + s/h for the physical version, with the $50 being a promo price, but some advanced google-cache browsing quickly reveals that it's perpetually been on sale for a limited time).
Truth be told, I might buy it eventually... especially if the 'Deluxe' version of Instant Immersion ASL ends up sucking as badly as the 5-cd version did. To me, the biggest turn-off is the English word order. Someday when I'm carrying on a real conversation in ASL, I'd like to come across as someone with better language skills than a migrant farmworker. If Rocket ASL used ASL signing order, I'd buy it in a heartbeat just to add one more practice app to my growing pile. One improvement that I think would compensate for the too-easy multiple-choice questions would be for them to add an option to hide the answer text until you actually mouseover it (forcing you to come up with the answer on your own before having the available options revealed to you). IMHO, if they did a "2.0" version with proper ASL grammar and hidden-until-mouseover answers, it would DEFINITELY be the best program of its type.
