Hyper Sign Jr.

Reviewed by Anise Hollingshead
Published by Trinity Software

Age Group: Age 4 to 8
Type: Language Arts
Price: $40.00

Description:

Young children can pick up the basic signs in ASL (American Sign Language) easily with Hyper Sign Jr., a product designed especially for early readers and non readers alike. A vocabulary of over 450 words provides kids with common words from categories such as colors, action words, clothes, animals, school, and lots more. The signs are demonstrated with video clips of people signing, and the words are also spoken.

Players can choose to go through the lists of definitions, play 1 of three games, or type in a specific word. There are 3 games, a matching game, tic tac toe and a guessing game to hone your skills. Each word in the games is also accompanied with a simple, yet descriptive picture that helps in deciding which word is the correct one for the sign.

Features

  • 450 signs of common words
  • Sign Alphabet
  • 3 games
  • Video clips
  • Option of Spanish or English text

Technical Aspects

When I installed Hyper Sign Jr., it wouldn't run at first because the program had a path wrongly specified. I tried reinstalling, using custom install, but it still wouldn't work. The error message said which file it was looking for, so I found the folder, and just copied the files from it over into the correct new folder. If this happens to you, just make a new folder named "kenco", then find the folder named "asym" and copy all the files from the folder "runtime" to the new folder "kenco".

The interface was easy to navigate and the video clips were a trifle grainy, but not enough to interfere with discerning the signing.

Report and Conclusions

Hyper Sign Jr. is a simple-to-use way for kids to learn the beginning basics of ASL. The game is not flashy, or does it have much in the way of activities, but the approach is good in that it gives examples of real people signing the words. The pictures used for the words are also good examples of the word concepts. All in all, a good program for beginning signers/hearing impaired children, but a little pricey for the content.




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