Blog 01: Education


Week 02 Blog 1: Education


"Online apps designed to more effectively meet the learning needs of ELLs (Education Dive, 2017) By Shalina Chatlani


The basic ways of Learning English Language have been very crucial for every student because of the language barrier. According to the US District Administration, there are 24,000 students that speak 80 to 90 different languages in Salt Lake City School District. These students are from a variety of cultural backgrounds and as well as their languages. Google translate application plug-in is one the ways the ELLs (English Language Learners), administration and parents have turned to online applications to close the equity gaps in terms of learning. In this way, words can be translated for students to more effectively understand their respective activities and homework. But according to Education Dive, machines aren't able to translate the languages with complete accuracy and human translation may still be a better option. Data shows that diversity is increasing because of the states' immigrants arriving and public schools struggle to meet the needs of those families.

"The online benefit is to get the conversation started. There sometimes a reluctance because of language barriers for parents to come talk to the district. We want to make sure that communication happens, and if people have a question they can get those questions answered", (Jason Olsen, Communications Officer of Salt Lake City Schools) The advancement of language equity providing multilingual content on school websites and apps is actually a real matter in the innovation of ELL. I have read on the District Administration site that some of the districts serve increasingly diverse populations according to the district administration. These include Spanish, Arabic, Somali, Vietnamese, Karen, Nepali, Burmese, and Hmong. The use of machine translation comes with various levels if reliability when it comes to the accuracy. The author addressed that human translation may still be a better option to reach students and parents but due to the population increase the use of machines is inevitable. Many school staff members turn to Google Translate which offers a free plug-in that can translate an entire website into more than 100 languages on demand. Google translation is one of the best options, Shalina Chatlani concluded. It is when Google Translate appears as a tab, button or banner on the district's site. "You have to be careful because things are translated out of context and there are certain terms in English that don't have a translation." Alejandra Bosch, translation manager at St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota says as she warns that Google's accuracy varies. Which is practically true since on of the limitations of Google Translate is that it may not work with third-party apps, embedded PDF documents or text in images. That is why some districts have abandoned machine translation entirely, "At this point in our district, we believe that a machine is not going to replace the human. It is a tool that we could use to help us when we're translating something, but needs to be vetted by a human in the end." Says Bosch from the district administration article.

This article from the Education Dive has delivered a brief and good insight for me. It tackled the increasing growth of the English Language Learners, and how translations of many different languages have been crucial to engage with students, parents, and administrators. It helped me understand how these applications may help to reduce the language barriers of every school districts including the students and teachers interactions as well as school sites. I learned that even with the use of the online application, human interaction is still irreplaceable. Since there a lot of less common languages that these technologies do not perform as well, because of the limitations of the service and the fact that the district has no control over the service itself.
However, the article brought me to learning that numerous school communication apps now offer translation capabilities, and district leaders are taking advantage of those tools to engage ELL. There is an app called Remind that translates messages into more than 70 languages so it can help teachers send messages to parents and translate it to their native language (vice versa). Some city schools have implemented TalkingPoints translator app as well as the Metra Lingua PENpal, a handled device shaped like a large pen with a "sound spot" and the device speaks the phrase in the selected language. This article has shown that technology based translations have been pivotal to nowadays innovative education.

Education Dive. (2017). Online apps designed to more effectively meet the learning needs of ELLs. [online] Available at: http://www.educationdive.com/news/administrators-online-apps-ELLs/446089/ [Accessed 7 Jul. 2017].

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