“It breaks my heart if they get pulled out of music or fine arts for English instruction,” Pamela Doran, an ed-tech specialist at the Punam County Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), told an audience Thursday during Empire State College’s Learning With Innovative Technology virtual conference. “Because maybe those are areas where they would excel.”
She recalled an instance where a frightened Spanish-speaking elementary student went looking for his sister during a live-shooter drill because, due to translation errors, he thought drill meant power tool. Then there was the alienated fourth grader who wore her usual white socks on Crazy Sock Day because she didn’t get an explanation of the special event. And there was the middle schooler who went hungry all day because she was too self-conscious to interact with cafeteria workers at the end of the long lunch line.
All of those situations could have been avoided with the use of free or low-cost artificial intelligence-powered language translation apps that the schools, and many students themselves, already had access to, Doran explained.
In a presentation called “Engaging a Bi-Lingual Classroom with Machine Translation,” Doran said Mandarin, Creole, Ukrainian and various languages spoken in India are among the languages other than Spanish that she has encountered in fairly rural districts north of New York City.
Doran provided a long list of available tools, demonstrating one in her own PowerPoint presentation. After two mouse clicks, Spanish subtitles appeared as she spoke. But, she cautioned, always speak slowly and clearly. And remember that American idioms such as “stay on the same page” don’t translate to other languages.
Another, Present Live, is available through Microsoft 365. After scanning a QR code via smartphone, users can select their desired language and view the interpreted slide presentation live. This tool is ideal for communicating with an assembly of parents that represents a variety of languages, Doran said.
“No installation needed,” Doran said. “These are underutilized.”
Doran said some educators might be hesitant to use translation tools because they recall problems with the 2016 version of Google Translate, which was a phrase-based system that was prone to mistakes, and may not be aware of the massive improvements in AI-powered education technology in the past year alone.
Another tool she recommended was Microsoft Immersive Reader, which translates entire documents and reads them out loud. Doran also noted an instance where Microsoft Translator benefited an educator and his students alike: A Korean teacher who spoke English fairly well but struggled with language nuances needed to clarify a precise calculus concept, and using the tool, he was able to teach a lesson in 20 minutes that would have otherwise taken him two days.
Doran then demonstrated a modern feature of Google Translate with a screenshot of a camera phone. The photographed street sign was in Russian, but on the camera the words appeared in English. The shape and color of the sign were the same for both. She said this tool came in handy when she interacted with two elementary students from India who could not understand each other’s language. By photographing each other’s handwriting and reading the interpretations, they were able to communicate.
As schools update their platforms, they should also be mindful of what they discard, Doran explained. Older tablets with the earlier versions of software, for example, could be given to cafeteria employees for basic translation functions pertaining to food selection and transactions.
“Tools make an equitable community,” she said. “We can bring them together. Let’s do this. It’s free, so why not?”
