Auslan Tutor

Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children

About this app

The NextSense Auslan Tutor is a video-based Australian Sign Language (Auslan) teaching application.

** Auslan Tutor 2 is now available.

Download it at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.org.nextsense.auslan.tutor

Please note that we will no longer be making updates and supporting Auslan Tutor 1. All updates and new features will be added to Auslan Tutor 2

The NextSense Auslan Tutor has been designed to assist families of young deaf children learn Auslan. More than 500 Auslan signs are included.

The NextSense Auslan Tutor moves beyond the basic premise of teaching individual signs by including five corresponding entries for each sign. These five entries are:
• a photo of the handshape used to form the sign
• a video clip demonstrating the single sign
• a video clip of the sign used in a phrase
• a video clip of the phrase used in a sentence
• a text note about Auslan grammar that is pertinent to the sign, phrase or sentence

These additional features help improve the users understanding and use of Auslan.

The portability of the NextSense Auslan Tutor allows for ongoing communication opportunities throughout the day.

Key features:
• Clear and easy to follow learning hierarchy
• Over 500 signs, each demonstrated multiple times in single signs, phrases and sentences
• Special Auslan grammar instruction for each sign
• Auslan Northern and Southern dialects
• Sign search
• Auslan alphabet
• Auslan numbers
• Categories
• Related signs

The NextSense Auslan Tutor was developed by staff at NextSense, in consultation with expert Auslan users.

With thanks to the Atlassian Foundation.

* photos/media/files permissions: the app has resources (images, videos) that it saves onto the device, and needs permission to access those resources.

To better understand our Android users, we have created a short survey which will assist planning our future app development in this area. Please click on the following link to complete the survey. https://tinyurl.com/y7xayx59

Ratings and reviews

The general concept of this is a great idea, but lacks a few things. If you were to add maybe a quiz section, and basically turn the learning into a game, it would make the learning a little easier. The menu is a little confusing and not so easy to search for specifics such as "I am". The videos just suddenly stop, why not apply a function to allow the user, to enable or disable a loop? The reason why I ask, is it's easier to learn repetitiously without having to press play over and over.

I'm starting to learn sign language as I prepare to get a hearing aid. A slow motion and repeat for the video would be good as would a written description / diagram. Another feature that would be great is a translator. Eg, the user types a sentence, the app removes / replaces unnecessary words and places them in the right order. Then a series of individual sign videos or animations are shown in sequence with captions for each sign.

Great collection - a bit tedious for learning from. Needs a function to be able to move through each instruction, rather than going back to the menu. Great resource to revise on forgotten words or phrases! 5 stars for that function - but the potential for improvement warrants less for the moment. A collection or playlist of common words and/or phrases would also be a good learning tool - but again, would need to be able to move directly through from each video. (a simple next / previous link on the video page would suffice. - bit of a tedious coding hassle tho.) ;)

What's new

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