Where creative literature meets digital technology to create immersive learning experiences

Some of our projects

 

2023

 
 

Count with us! A Nursery Rhyme Book

Count with us! A Nursery Rhyme Book is a marvel that brings numbers and animals to life by combining brilliant illustrations and storytelling in both languages, American Sign Language (ASL) and English. It is impossible for the child to view this story just once and invite them to view it again and again. Download here!

ASL Storytelling at DCPL


Continuing our partnership with DC Public Library, we had another Storytime Session at MLK Jr. Library Children’s Room! We had a great time sharing our new story Count With Us!. This story was wonderfully fun to engage with our young audience! Animals, numbers, and actions with the same handshape!

2023 Exhilarating Homecoming Fun

We continued fake tattoos from last year, and added on toy slides, a ball pit, and more to entertain children while we share to parents about our VL2 Storybook Apps! Can’t miss our pink tent!

10 year anniversary of the Baobab & VL2 storybook apps!

The Baobab launched on February 4, 2013, and was the world’s first ASL/English bilingual Storybook App. As a tool, it’s revolutionary in how Deaf children engage in literacy and redefined the reading experience. Science and Visual Language Visual Learning (VL2) research guided the design of the storybook app. Now it’s been 10 years!

A Day in Kitty’s Life App!

A glimpse of Kitty's daily life! A Day in Kitty's Life is a Storybook App for toddlers and youngsters, where the children learn two main concepts in this story: Action Verbs and Emotions/Traits.
Download here.

A Day in Puppy’s Life App!

A Day in Puppy's Life is a Storybook App for toddlers and youngsters, where the children learn two main concepts in this story: Action Verbs and Emotions/Traits.
Download here.

ASL Storytelling at Solid State Bookstore

We had a great time interacting with a lot smiling faces at Solid State Bookstore. Our project manager Conrad Baer did a fabulous job making The Pink Monkey come to life – a performance that was received with rapt attention by our young audience !

PLAYFVL Team Retreat

The PLAYFVL team (including remote partners) congregated at Gallaudet University for the first in-person retreat to discuss goals and developing exciting play-based resources. The team is eager to continue empowering Deaf children with language!

The Drop App!

An American Sign Language original, this splashy story is jam-packed with science themes pertaining to the stages of rain! Accompany Drop, the main character, as Drop navigates their first experience of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Fortunately, Drop has friends for support that make the journey splashy fun! Download here.

May 6th: Motion Light Lab x Gesture Literacy Studios ASL Storytelling Session at DCPL
(Martin Luther King Library @ Chinatown)

Cheers to a fun partnership with the DC Public Library and Gesture Knowledge Literacy Studios! This collaboration consists of monthly Saturday sessions where Deaf storytellers breathe life to stories through American Sign Language. The first session took place at the gorgeous MLK Jr. Library and featured Renate Rose ASLizing Teremok.

June 3rd: ML2 x Gesture Literacy Studios x DCPL Storytelling Session featuring Manny Hernandez

Continuing our partnership with DC Public Library and Gesture Knowledge Literacy Studios with the second ASL storytelling session! The children’s room on the second floor was packed with youngsters from infants to pre-teenagers eager to soak up a captivating performance by a renowned ASL master. Audiencegoers were treated to an treat- an original Manny story called “The Treasure”! 

Musical Thinking Exhibit opens

Visit this exhibit at  Smithsonian Museum of American Art and let us know what you think! We worked with them to make the exhibit accessible, paying attention to haptics and subtitles in particular.



 

2022

 
 

Homecoming booth with the theme of fake tattoo shop, huge hit with kiddos! 

Our homecoming booth was a bit hit - we went all out for the first in-person homecoming since COVID! A fake tattoo shop! We custom designed our tattoos: motion capture markers, rainbows and waterdrops from our most recent storybook app release, The Drop.

Hawes & Mills’s Adventures App

About a special friendship between a chipmunk and a thirteen-lined ground squirrel! This App is created by a team of staff members and alumni from Wisconsin School for the Deaf. Download here!

Release of Halloween vampire avatar “Vegetarian Vampire”

On October 31st we introduced the world to a sassy vegetarian vampire perched on the hallowed steps of Gallaudet’s Chapel Hall. This video was full of Easter eggs (can you find them?!) and the team had a blast making it! This video went viral on our varying platforms of social media like on YouTube with 4K views!

Thai does a K-5 research study on The Baobab (Thai)

Thai does a K-5 research study using The Baobab (Thai) focusing on vocabulary development. Teachers in Deaf classrooms gave out students a pre-test, went through the story three times bilingually, and gave out a post-test. Results show a great improvement in their bilingual vocabulary skills using the Storybook app!

The Pink Monkey App!

Inspired by long-time Deaf cultural folklore (and often a perennial late-night fireside favorite), the Pink Monkey is re-created with fun word-play twists about a lost teenager who encountered an unusual creature in a stranger’s mansion.
This App has a new mode that explains idioms! Download here.

Major Storybook Creator Update: 3+ modes

The VL2 Storybook Creator, our free platform for anyone to make their own storybook app, has been updated to include the capability to make more than just 3 modes! Traditionally, our platform offers three modes: WATCH, READ, and LEARN. Now you can control which modes you want, and how many modes you want! The photo shown is The Pink Monkey, where we added a fourth mode using READ mode, and used it to teach idioms used in the story!

Dimensions wins best in Animation category at Clin d’Oeil!

At the 2022 Clin D’Oeil Festival in Reims, France, Motion Light Lab was awarded the Best 2D/3D Animation for the short film Dimensions. With a running time of 18 minutes, Dimensions was created using motion capture, featuring renowned deaf actors and cutting-edge animation technologies. Read more.

Tayla and MJ give a presentation at NAD conference

During summer 2022, Tayla Newman and MJ Kiego gave a presentation at the NAD conference in Orlando, Florida titled: “Motion Light Lab + Technology = ASL Literacy For All Ages.” The presentation touched down on all the different aspects of Motion Light Lab from storybook apps to 3D/AR development. 

ML2 receives $1 million grant from the LEGO Foundation!

The LEGO Foundation awarded Motion Light Lab a $1 million capacity building grant to create systemic change for deaf children and their families. ML2 and SKI-HI will be teaming up to create resources and an awareness campaign called PLAYFVL: Play and Language Access for Your Family Through Visual Learning. ML2 and SK-HI were one of the ten finalists chosen!  Read more.

Texas Heroes App!

Julian Moiwai & Texas School for the Deaf releases their first Storybook App: Texas Heroes featuring Erasmus “Deaf” Smith and Emily West. View it here!

Tim Cook visits ML2!

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, visited Gallaudet University to give the commencement speech for the 2022 graduation ceremony and stopped by our lab beforewards! We were excited to meet him and shared our collection of storybook apps with him. We told Tim that Mavo will be becoming a TV show in 2024!

Creating a signing world: How we can end language deprivation

ML2 founder and director Melissa Malzkuhn and ML2 research operations specialist Sarah Miller co-wrote an article titled “Creating a signing world: How we can end language deprivation.” Published on Ashoka’s Medium website, the article was a culmination of the team’s experience in Ashoka’s Dela Accelerator program, which helps empower organizations to push for systemic change. This was a great way to highlight one of the guiding principles for ML2: making sign language accessible and a human right for all Deaf children.

Connecting Capitals: A Digital Coffee Table Book

Connecting Capitals is a creative exchange project between Gallaudet University and BOZAR that uses art-making, education, and technology to connect and empower Deaf youth between the ages of 18-27 from the United States and Belgium.

Dela grant from IKEA awarded!

Motion Light Lab founder and director Melissa Malzkuhn was selected as an Ashoka Fellow in August 2020. She along with two team members, participated in the Dela Accelerator programme, a global systems change accelerator co-created by Ashoka and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship. Fellows were provided with support in developing an impact scaling strategy, networking and financial support. In August 2022 IKEA awarded ML2 with a $24,424 grant to continue our work ensuring sign language is accessible to all Deaf children.

Perceiving fingerspelling via point-light display: the stimulus and perceiver both matter paper

Motion Light Lab collaborated with Action Brain Lab on a research study to better understand perceiving fingerspelling in difficult visual environments. Motion Light Lab created point light display videos of a signer fingerspelling both real and made up city names. This was conducted online with 238 participants, both Deaf and hearing.
Read more.

 

2021

 

Dimensions

The year ended with our first short film, sponsored by Sorenson Communications!

Happy Holidays 2021!

What’s sweet, wears frosting, and slings out the baddest ASL holiday rhymes? Check out the song Nutmeg, Cinnamon, and Sugar put together just for you! Enjoy!

Pigmental Studios Launch “Here Comes Mavo!”

The first animated children’s television series featuring a Deaf lead character and 3D avatars who use Sign Language. Learn more.

 

ASL Literacy Activities highlight - ONE YEAR of running!

Last year, in light of COVID-19, we started ASL Literacy Activities to put together activities, ideas, videos to support your child's learning at home. Today, we are still keeping at it as we do see the benefits of those resources which includes 18+ weeks of FREE activities such as worksheets and coloring pages! This month, we celebrated one full year of ASL Literacy Activities!

Happy Halloween 2021!

Bones has a message to share with you .. and this skeleton is willing to go to the extremes to leave a lasting impression! What does Bones do? Watch and prepare to be awestruck!
Happy Halloween from ML2's Team Lab!

CREST Network

CREST is a worldwide network for students, researchers, developers, and professionals who are curious about sign-related technology. We invite you to join us!

 

Sorenson calendar

The year kicked off with an amazing calendar featuring our storybook apps, in collaboration with Sorenson Communications!

Augmented Reality holiday card from Gallaudet University

We were also basking in the glow of our work during the 2020 holidays, our team created the first-ever Augmented Reality holiday card from Gallaudet University. See it here if you’ve missed it.

The Baobab in Saudi Arabian Sign Language and Arabic

We released The Baobab in Saudi Arabian Sign Language and Arabic!

 

The Baobab in Panamanian Sign Language and Spanish!

We released El Baobab, which is in Panamanian Sign Language and Spanish!

The Adventures of a Tripod

We announced The Adventures of a Tripod contest winners! People submitted really wonderful English translations of the beautiful ASL story. Check out their translations here.

Eat Your Veggies App!

Our bilingual ASL/English storybook app, Eat Your Veggies, launched!

 

CoLab in Thailand: The Lazy Elephant

We released two NEW storybook apps with our CoLab, the National Association of the Deaf Thailand (NADT): The Lazy Elephant and Great & Good Friends. Both apps are in Thai Sign Language and Thai.

This was made possible by the generous support of the US Embassy in Bangkok.

CoLab in Thailand: Great & Good Friend

We released two NEW storybook apps with our CoLab, the National Association of the Deaf Thailand (NADT): The Lazy Elephant and Great & Good Friends. Both apps are in Thai Sign Language and Thai.

This was made possible by the generous support of the US Embassy in Bangkok.

The Lazy Elephant in ASL Edition!

As a part of our CoLab training program and cultural exchange, we translated the Thai folktale-inspired story, The Lazy Elephant to ASL & English.

The Lazy Elephant is a great story about a (you guessed it) lazy elephant who gets lost… and learns his lesson!

A Tale of Two Foxes

A Tale of Two Foxes is a story that introduces young readers to the types of clouds and two foxes who cannot agree on what they observe!

Evon discovers Black Pride

As a part of our storybook app training program, a team at California School for the Deaf Fremont developed and created Evon Discovers Black Pride storybook app.

Crest Fest 2021

The summer months were busy with our CREST Network’s CREST Fest 2021. We hosted 7 virtual events in 6 weeks with top people in the field of sign language technologies. We welcomed hundreds of attendees from all over the world.