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Personally, I write much faster than I type (I think), because I'm always worried about making an error when typing.  If I'm writing, I don't think about the errors.  I just scratch it out and keep it moving.

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Personally, I write much faster than I type (I think), because I'm always worried about making an error when typing.  If I'm writing, I don't think about the errors.  I just scratch it out and keep it moving.

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Students are not taught how to type, so digital notes will be more time consuming. However, after this session, I will plan a lesson for them to type their notes online and see how they perform.

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In our school, I would like to see INB use across all classrooms and not all classrooms have access to Chromebooks all the time. However, I would like to see activities where kids build organization skills and process their notes multiple times. Part of this process could be using a digital notebook to add their handwritten versions to so they ALWAYS have them.

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Traditional is easy to access, helps with processing and avoids verbatim notes so students can put notes in their own words

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I think it can be more challenging to manipulate for some students, but allows them to see what classmates choose as important.

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I believe that handwriting and the speed and process provides a better opportunity to learn the material

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The ability to draw connections, pull in photos or links make it easy to embed and process.  In addition the ability to search key terms to find concepts makes it easier to study.  The traditional has it's advantages, but it is more about teaching students how to take better notes.

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Muller says digital notetaking by typing can influence and engage students in being more selective in what to type. Given the right structures in place such as Edji, Padlet, and frontloading how to take notes this method could be easier. The accommodations on Eji is amazing -- emoji, speach to text, and text!

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The transition from written to digital needs more tech before it becomes relevant to math notes. If i were more educated or had the resources digital might be the way to go.

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I did not read the article, but I skimmed the hell out of it. Just me playing with the article taught me how to use the program. Which is nice.

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Digital notes are better because of time efficacy in class and the opportunity to collaborate virtually and simultaneously is a huge benefit to the learning cycle. Teacher has to have systems in place and practice practice practice, but it I agree -Yes! Digital Notes!

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At the end of the article, the author notes that scribing/stylus apps are getting better. I think that handwriting recognition improvements would make digital note taking more effective.

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For Article Activity

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Read & Annotate, Be Ready to Share

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As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster - which comes in handy when there's a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.

For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting - it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.

In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning.

"When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can," Mueller tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective - because you can't write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them."

Mueller and Oppenheimer cited that note-taking can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. Generative note-taking pertains to "summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping," while nongenerative note-taking involves copying something verbatim.

And there are two hypotheses to why note-taking is beneficial in the first place. The first idea is called the encoding hypothesis, which says that when a person is taking notes, "the processing that occurs" will improve "learning and retention." The second, called the external-storage hypothesis, is that you learn by being able to look back at your notes, or even the notes of other people.

Because people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they're hearing. So on the one hand, Mueller and Oppenheimer were faced with the question of whether the benefits of being able to look at your more complete, transcribed notes on a laptop outweigh the drawbacks of not processing that information. On the other hand, when writing longhand, you process the information better but have less to look back at.

For their first study, they took university students (the standard guinea pig of psychology) and showed them TED talks about various topics. Afterward, they found that the students who used laptops typed significantly more words than those who took notes by hand. When testing how well the students remembered information, the researchers found a key point of divergence in the type of question. For questions that asked students to simply remember facts, like dates, both groups did equally well. But for "conceptual-application" questions, such as, "How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?" the laptop users did "significantly worse."

The same thing happened in the second study, even when they specifically told students using laptops to try to avoid writing things down verbatim. "Even when we told people they shouldn't be taking these verbatim notes, they were not able to overcome that instinct," Mueller says. The more words the students copied verbatim, the worse they performed on recall tests.

And to test the external-storage hypothesis, for the third study they gave students the opportunity to review their notes in between the lecture and test. The thinking is, if students have time to study their notes from their laptops, the fact that they typed more extensive notes than their longhand-writing peers could possibly help them perform better.

But the students taking notes by hand still performed better. "This is suggestive evidence that longhand notes may have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions," Mueller and Oppenheimer write.

Do studies like these mean wise college students will start migrating back to notebooks?

"I think it is a hard sell to get people to go back to pen and paper," Mueller says. "But they are developing lots of technologies now like Livescribe and various stylus and tablet technologies that are getting better and better. And I think that will be sort of an easier sell to college students and people of that generation."

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Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away

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Researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer found that students remember more via taking notes longhand rather than on a laptop. It has to do with what happens when you're forced to slow down.

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Share how you will apply the 4 A’s to leverage digital tools to move toward a student-centered learning environment.

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Flipgrid is where social and emotional learning happens! The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families.

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Multimedia Note Taking

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Ditch That PDF and Hyper-Annotate

Your first step is to locate a PDF which you wish to have your students annotate. My favorite site to grab up to date current event articles for any subject and lexicon level is . Once in NewsELA find the article you wish to use and select the "Print Icon", of course we are only going to digitally print it as a PDF. NewsELA will ask how you would like the article, select "Article Only". This will redirect you to a chrome PDF "preview" screen where you will select the download icon in the upper right. You now have the PDF of the article which you will then upload to your Google Drive.

Hey, this is a digital document! Because of this fact, we are not limited to the confines of a 8.5x11 piece of wood pulp. So let's supersize our workspace. Go to file in the upper right corner of the Google document. Select "Page Setup". Change the orientation to landscape, then change the paper size to something larger, I like the "Tabloid" option. Your students now have a supersized workspace to annotate like a rockstar.

Annotations work best when you have a space to leave your thoughts/notes/comments on the article as you read it. To help with this great strategy why not create a 2 column table. First copy all the text on the document by using "Ctrl+A" then "Ctrl+C". Now delete all the text, select "Table" on the toolbar and create a 2x1 column table. Now paste the copied text into the left column by using "Ctrl+v". Now you have your text on the left and a place for your students to write on the right. But wait there's more! Add a 1x1 single box table underneath each section of the text and type "Summary". Want a third of fourth column? To insert new Column, "Right-Click" in current column, then select "Insert Column Right". A digital document is malleable, it has no set size, shape or form, make use of its transformational properties! Now you have a space for the students to summarize that portion of the text.

One of my favorite strategies when reading an article or text is to "Talk to the Text". This refers to the reader commenting on what the article is making them think/feel when they read that portion of the text. Statements like "This sentence is confusing" or "I can relate to this scenario by..." . This strategy can be easily done with the comment tool built right into the Google Docs tools. Just highlight the text you want to "Talk" to, you will see a comment icon pop up to the right of the document. Click this icon then type in your comment. Easy Peasy!

Here is a great way to allow your students to create easy highlights on their document, with each highlight representing a specific task, and then extract them to automatically create a color coded table of those highlights. First, in your Google Doc go to the Add-on option on the toolbar. Select "Get Add-ons" and search for "Highlight Tool", you want the one as seen in the picture below, then select "Add to Drive".

Once you have added the tool, it should now appear as an option in your Add-Ons. Open the Highlight Tool, then select Highlighter Library. Here you can select your Highlight colors and label them for whatever purpose you would like such as: "Main Topic", "Confusing Statement", "Will be on Test" ect. Select save and then begin to highlight the text. Once you have concluded your highlights, go to the bottom of the highlight tool where it reads "Extract Highlights"l and select "By Color" and extract to "This Document". The tool will then extract all your highlights and place them in a color coded table at the bottom of your document. Amazing tool to help "collect" your students thoughts for easy reference.

The "Explore" tool is also a great place to locate supportive texts and articles on the internet to further student knowledge of the article content. Simply click on the "Explore" tool in the bottom right corner and search keywords for related articles and websites. Students can visit the website to expand their knowledge or fact check information found in the article being read. If the website was helpful the students can then hyperlink the website to their text and comment on the reason they found the article helpful. Students can even easily cite the website as a footnote by simply clicking on the " icon next to the article link in the explore tool. The citation can be placed in MLA, APA, and chicago format with an easy click of the "Three Dots" next to the web results icon in the explore tool.

An extra step students can take is leaving a "Sticky Note" on the website they visited and leave information behind to review later. This digital sticky note can be place right where the student gathered information they deemed helpful, and leave a note as to why they choose to use it. To use the sticky note, simply install the Google Chrome extension Note Anywhere so it is available in your extension toolbar at the top of your Chrome browser. When your student is on the webpage they click on the "Note Anywhere" extension and a sticky note will pop up. Move the note anywhere on the webpage. This note will now be on this webpage until it is removed by the user.

How many times have you left a comment or taken notes only to come back to them days later and not know what the heck you were talking about or referring to? Now we can leave short screencast reminders/tutorials for any idea, concept or tool. To unleash this powerful new strategy add the Google Chrome extension " Awesome Screenshot " to your chrome browser. Once it is installed, click on the "Awesome Screenshot" icon in your Chrome extension toolbar. This will bring a dropdown box with many different choices to take a screenshot of your page. If you simply want your students to take a "picture" of a certain portion of a webpage have them select "Capture Selected Area". This will take a picture of the area of their choice and then annotate over it with ink, highlights or text to create an artifact of learning. This image can now be added to the document in the pictures column of the Google Doc.

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Ditch That PDF and Hyper-Annotate Your first step is to locate a PDF which you wish to have your students annotate. My favorite site to grab up to date current event articles for any subject and lexicon level is .

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Call for true device use and training in K12

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I started my teaching career as a 20 year old football coach 16 years ago for Alta Sierra Intermediate. I was hired to help out with the offense and defensive lines, setting up drills, and planning our defensive strategies. I loved the 5-4 defense since I played nose guard in high school and believed the pressure would work well at our level. Needless to say, over time, keeping the same defense scheme game-in and game-out just didn't work. I discovered the importance of preparation, and realized using a defense I loved didn't always work. I discovered my defense needed to change for the offense that lay ahead, not the formation I knew best. I discovered my coaching skills needed to evolve and expand to ideas outside of my comfort zone so that my players had the best possible chance to be competitive.

Let me keep my sports theme going a bit before I get to my point. Hypothetically, let's say there is a high school track and field coach and they have coached the high jump event for their entire career. They are in fact the best high jump coach in the state, and have produced many top athletes through their instruction. They are approached by a new head coach and asked to also train his/her high jump athletes in the pole vault. For the purpose of this hypothetical, we will say the pole vault is not an event which scores any points for the team. In an effort to get the coach willing to take on this new responsibility, the head coach shows him the side by side description of the "high jump" and the "pole vault" events as seen below:

High Jump : The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern most practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing.

Pole Vault: The pole vault is a track and field event in which competitors must use a long, flexible pole (which today is usually made either of fiberglass or carbon fiber) as an aid to jump over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern most practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing .

The coach insists he/she loves the high jump for its practicality and unaided format. Only human will and skill are needed to do well in the event. The coach explains that with the pole vault, the athlete needs a device to do well, which can distract from the true skill of the athlete. If he/she takes on this other task, he will not have enough time to truly train his athletes in the event that matters and gives the team points in the actual competition. The coach also explains that he has coached the high jump for many years and all his athletes do really well at the end of the year championship meets, so why train them in this new skill? Why change a good thing?

This seems like a very reasonable argument. Why should a seasoned high jump coach change and try something else? Why train athletes for an event which is not even counted at the schools competitions? Well, let me put a new spin on this situation. What if the coach was informed that only 11% of his athletes would be competing in the high jump in college and 89% were being asked to compete in the pole vault. On top of this, none of the athletes would be given coaching instructions on how to compete or prepare in their new event. Now do you think the skills gained through high jump would prepare the athletes to compete in pole vault? Sure, some would instinctively adjust to some degree, but without coaching, many would struggle. Because of this, "College Studies" would show that incoming athletes perform better in high jump competitions than pole vaulting competitions. Is this a fair comparison? These are two different events, with very different skills needed to be successful. Yes the event descriptions seem to be similar, but the act itself is very different.

Of course this is an extreme hypothetical situation. No high school track and field program that I know of has a high jump event and not a pole vaulting event. But think about this for a second: if our goal as educators is to prepare our students for what is to come, shouldn't we include the skills in our everyday instruction to prepare them for this change? If the hypothetical situation above was in fact real, shouldn't the coach be preparing his athletes for the event they will most likely compete in while in college? Of course by now you are beginning to see where I am going with is post. In college today 89% of our students are using digital devices to complete work, create notes, and communicate with other students and faculty on a daily basis. Most of these students have learned how to use the devices, for better or worse, themselves with no coaching, support, or guidance on best practices. If we know the challenges that lie ahead for our students in college, why do we insist on not truly embracing the digital device in our public K-12 system?

Now I know this is a generalization. There are many schools and lone wolf teachers truly embracing the digital device. But the reality is the vast majority of public K-12 classroom instruction is still paper & pencil, fill in worksheets, and drill-kill-skills practicing. Many teachers feel the digital device becomes a distractor for their instruction and antagonist to their students' learning. But the digital device IS NOT GOING AWAY. It will always reveal itself outside of your classroom and in the halls of instruction at college institutions.

I say to you now, WE NEED YOU to help our students understand how to take your mastery concepts of reading, writing, and arithmetic and port those over to tools we know our students will be utilizing in college. We need you to get out of your comfort zone and #DitchThatFEAR of change to better help our students succeed once they leave our instruction. If we continue to ignore the device they will be using to learn tomorrow, we are shackling the skills we hoped would empower them today. As with high jump and pole vault, we need to RAISE THE BAR and do what is right for our students.

Now let me address the elephant in the room. Without a doubt, studies have shown handwritten work to be more beneficial to student recall than typed work. I do not refute these studies, but I do wonder "Why?" Why are these the results we are getting? Is it the way the brain works? Is it the tactile feel of the pencil in one's hand? Or is it something else? Maybe it's because the students have been solely trained to high jump, then asked to pole vault with no instruction. You see, these studies take students who have taken notes using paper-pencil for 10+ years and put them against students who are using a digital device with possibly no educational training. We are asking high jumpers to compete in a completely different event, with a device they must learn how to use on their own. Maybe the reason these studies are so consistent is that K-12 teachers see them and use it as a reason to not allow/use devices in their classroom. This completes a feedback loop, a self-fulfilling prophecy, limiting the use of devices in many K-12 classrooms. I would love to see a study from students who have been properly trained how to use a digital device for 10+ years... hmmm doctorate thesis anyone?

Now I could very well be wrong. After years of testing and studies we may find that indeed, handwritten work is be the best form of learning. Fantastic! But this fact will not detour our students from using their devices to learn. This fact will not reverse the tide. Our students now and forevermore will be using digital devices to communicate, collaborate, create and complete work. So even if the studies show paper and pencil to be best, we STILL need to train our kids on using digital devices in their everyday learning. If we don't they will be left to their own devices (pun intended). They will be left to fend for themselves. They will become an athlete without a coach. For this reason, we must train our students how to master their digital devices, even if you yourself do not see an immediate benefit for your class. For this reason, I applaud AVID.

AVID, as many of you know, has a mission to prepare all students for college readiness and success. When AVID noticed the growing number of students utilizing a digital device in college, they had to rethink some of their methods in implementing their strategies. As a result, AVID has created a Digital Teaching and Learning (DTL) pathway to help students and teachers maximize their strategies through digital means and proper educational training before they set foot on a college campus. This forward thinking approach helps to bridge the learning gap created by the great leap from high school to college.

One final caveat; technology is NOT the savior of education. YOU are. What will have the most powerful impact on your students is your willingness to evolve year after year to be the best teacher you can possibly be; your willingness to see the world changing and your eagerness to change with it; your sensibility to see what our students will be up against and take the challenge head on. We need not to change the way we TEACH our kids, but rather, change the way we REACH our kids. We need to see past the noise, past the studies, and see clearly the path that lies ahead for our students. The digital device is not going away. Our students are not reverting back to paper and pencil. We need to do our best to prepare our students for THEIR future, not our past. We need to truly ask ourselves, "If we know our students will be competing in pole vault in college, would we continue to only train them in high jump?" I hope the answer is no. I hope the answer is clear. I hope you will raise the bar .

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I started my teaching career as a 20 year old football coach 16 years ago for Alta Sierra Intermediate. I was hired to help out with the offense and defensive lines, setting up drills, and planning our defensive strategies.

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Article for promoting Digital Creation

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As an educator I believe that every lesson should come alive and connect with students on a personal level. I also believe that all teachers should have a drive in connecting with their students. It is up to teachers to ignite a spark that is going to catch fire with their audience. Just like a fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat to create a spark, a teacher needs to test out different combinations of ingredients to catch the interest of their students. For me, technology has been the spark to ignite learning and innovation in my classroom and on my campus. With the inclusions of technology in our everyday lessons, we are being given amazing opportunities to reach the "unreachable" - to reach those students who have not yet discovered the joy of learning. Our goal is to create a spark and have it spread across not only our campus, but our district, state, and country as well.

As educators we need to be leaders and innovators both in and out of the classroom. Change doesn't come from institutions. Change comes from individuals who buck the system and don't accept the status quo. When individual teachers take risks, others take notice and a movement begins. Yet change can bring about fear of unknown challenges ahead. When we ditch that fear, anything is possible . We search for and create lessons that allow us to discover the best ways to engage our students, while building upon our high goals and standards year after year. We strive to create student-centered lessons, and where appropriate, integrate technology into the classroom to help limit distractions, as well as motivate and engage our students to learn and create. As an educational technology innovator, I strive to encourage my colleagues to integrate more ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) standards into their direct instruction, which incorporates not only common core standards but also integrates tools, strategies, and ideas to draw students into learning, collaborating, and creating. The implementation of technology is a critical need in the 21st-century classroom, increasing student learning during instruction in the midst of our fast-paced digital world.

In our ever-changing digital society, the modern classroom has become a breeding ground of distractions or boredom for thrill-seeking youngsters. Many classrooms have become a place where students fiend for their digital media fix, only to be told to put their devices away. How can we for a moment believe that because a bell rings our students digital life comes to a pause? These distractions can also arise from the improper implementation of technology by educators, stemming from a lack in professional development practice, and in turn resulting in loss of interest from the students, who then resort to using their own technology during class in improper ways.To limit distractions in our classroom environment, we must present information in ways that will truly engage our students. It's not about changing the ways we teach our students, it's about changing the ways we REACH our students. Utilizing the tools our students use for communication outside the classroom inside the classroom provides a great opportunity to reach them. This task can prove to be beneficial when realizing each student learns at a different pace and in different ways. We wish to create a non-static environment, rich with ever-changing student options, incorporation of differentiation, and one that encourages a project-based learning/collaborating mindset which our students need. The goal is to have our students become the creators of content, not just educational consumers. Students need to become so engaged that they can't help but to pay attention in class. In this "living classroom" setting, information is constantly being supplied to, or discovered by, students through many different mediums, all the while allowing the lesson to be malleable from hour to hour, period to period, and day to day. These living classrooms create an environment where students do not have the time to become distracted or board. It is up to us as teachers to create an educational space where our students can't help but become collaborative communicators emboldened by the opportunity to become creative citizens full of curiosity.

In our ever-changing world, it is becoming more and more evident that no student should be utilizing more technology outside the classroom than they are inside of it. We should not be overlooking the strengths that our students have been cultivating since birth. Technology is a known commodity to our digital natives, and to tell them they are not allowed to use it is analogous to tying their hands behind their back. The use of technology in our classrooms can empower teachers to engage and motivate students using the most advanced and appropriate technology the world has to offer, using the tools our students have grown up using. Through the integration of technology we can become a new and different kind of teacher- one who takes problems head-on with a fresh set of eyes, who does not back down from a challenge because they deem the situation to be too hard. We have become educators privileged with an opportunity to share with many of our students the joy of learning for the first time.

By all means, I am not saying technology is the savior of education. I am also not saying that a completely digital classroom is the answer. What I am saying is that a blended learning classroom is what we should all strive for. I understand the studies that state handwritten notes are shown to provide more memory retention than typed notes, and I agree with the studies. However, I do not believe these studies are completely applicable to all the uses of technology available in classrooms today. We are not talking about a student in solitude typing away as a teacher lectures. We are talking about students collaborating, sharing, communicating, and creating within our classroom walls and beyond. I am saying we should encourage our students to complete a sketchnote by hand, but then UPLOAD those notes to a blog or resource where ALL students can see, learn, and utilize them. I am saying we need to let our students read and highlight an article, but then have them share their thoughts in a digital backchannel, collaboratively create a presentation, then screencast their findings to the class and to the world. By including technology in the way our students learn, we are building a community, opening communication, displaying citizenship and encouraging meaningful social interaction through digital media, exactly the same way our students LIVE their everyday lives. Students now control their own learning. As educators we need to cultivate student differences and allow them to thrive the best way they know how. Technology has changed the world in which our students live, so why can't it change the classrooms in which they learn?

As educators we need to remember that using multimedia and technology is a great addition to traditional methods, but all technology should be looked at through the goals and achievements you have in mind for your students. Going digital does not mean going 100% paperless. Going digital means to begin to leverage the digital techniques our digital natives are already using outside the classroom walls. As stated before, studies may show writing notes to be more effective than typing notes, but that is not what we are doing here. In fact, the integration of integrated/manipulatable/hands-on technology use is still in its infancy and studies are just beginning (such as the study HERE). Data is hard to gather based on the many variables at play with technology use, such as the tools being used, who is teaching/implementing the technology in the classroom, and the activity being studied. Blended learning is the best model to look at when implementing technology into the classroom. Correct use of technology in the classroom allows for the instructor to make the learning more meaningful by allowing their students to interact with the lesson, not just consume it. It allows the students to become creators of content, not just members of a passive audience. When used correctly, technology can become a powerful tool to enhance and empower student growth. Anything new can cause pause in our educational community, but remember - no one ever created change by following the status quo. We need to be leaders in change, but you can't be a leader if there is no one following you.

Through learning to implement new technologies in the classroom, we can consistently uphold our mission as educators: to be lifelong learners and to prepare our students for tomorrow, not just for today. I consistently try to honor our mission by creating meaningful multimedia videos through apps like EdPuzzle, creating engaging assessments using Kahoot and Quizizz, creating interactive digital labs and presentations allowing collaboration through Formative and Nearpod, enhancing student voice through screencasts or Flipgrid, and Interactive Digital Readers (IDR)/ Interactive Digital Notebooks (IDN) using the power of Google's GSuite tools, following AVID and ISTE standards. You can even smash them together to create the ultimate APPsmahing lesson, an amalgamation of awesomeness! If you are reading this and are saying to yourself "This seems like a lot of work", then yes, you are correct. No one ever said making a difference would be easy. Anything worth the time is also worth putting in the effort. Once you start seeing the power of incorporating technology through blended learning lessons, you will never see technology as one more thing to add to your plate. You will begin to see that technology IS the plate! You will no longer see technology as another brick in your lesson, but rather, it becomes the mortar holding the lesson together. I know change is hard, but as educators we have pledged to be lifelong learners. We have pledged to be the best educator we can be, not for awards or accolades, but for the advancement of our students. John Dewey said it best over 100 years ago, "If we continue to teach our students today the same way we did yesterday, we are robbing them of tomorrow." Change does not mean we are doing anything wrong, it only means we have a chance to do more for our kids. By producing meaningful and engaging experiences for our classes, and through the use of our online collaborative environments, we can continue to provide positive experiences, increasing engagement, motivation, creativity, community and a continued joy of learning in this 21st century.

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As an educator I believe that every lesson should come alive and connect with students on a personal level. I also believe that all teachers should have a drive in connecting with their students. It is up to teachers to ignite a spark that is going to catch fire with their audience.

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Hello

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Voice, text, or document translation

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Google’s service, offered free of charge, instantly translates words, phrases, and web pages between English and over 100 other languages.

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Microsoft Translator for Education

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Breaking Language & Communication Barriers

Schools are increasingly diverse. Teachers manage many types of learners, including students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) who require assistive technology, and language learners who may not speak or understand the language of the classroom well.

A diverse student body includes family members too, who may not share a language with teachers or school staff, making school enrollment, teacher-parent conferences, and conversations with school staff a challenge.

Microsoft Translator helps bridge these communication gaps, supporting accessible classroom learning with live captioning, cross-language understanding, and even multilingual casual conversations to help with student integration.

Microsoft Translator in the Classroom

Microsoft Translator in the Classroom

Live Transcription & Translation

Presentations: Add live captions to PowerPoint Presentations (Windows only)
Presentation Translator provides live transcripts of a teacher's lectures in many languages including English. These subtitles enable people deaf, hard of hearing students, and language learners to follow and participate in group discussions using a personal computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone.

Presentation Translator can also learn and adapt to the speaker's vocabulary - such as the technical terminology associated with a specific subject area (such as chemistry or history) - which improves the quality of the speech recognition. This can be done automatically using the content of the slides and slide notes. Currently, this feature supports English and Chinese only.

Tip: to enable terminology adaptation, customize your presentation 5 minutes prior to the discussion, as outlined below. This will ensure that you are ready to go when you start your class or lecture.

For Teachers: How To Create Live Subtitles

Click the button below to install Presentation Translator (Windows only)

Open the PowerPoint deck to be presented

Click on the Slide Show tab

Click Start Subtitles

To enable adaptation to the content of the slides, click the box next to 'Customize speech recognition' (below, circled in orange)

To enable Q&A mode, click on the title bar Settings menu and click "unmute audience".

For Students: How To Join The Conversation

Download the Microsoft Translator app for Android, iOS, or Windows 10

Join a conversation by entering the conversation code or scanning the conversation's QR code

Choose a language and enter the conversation.

Join the discussion by pressing the microphone icon (below, circled in orange) and speaking, or by typing directly into the text box. Translator automatically translates all comments into the user's language - even if other users are speaking in a different language.

Please note that the student will not be able to speak or type from their device until the teacher un-mutes the audience.

Classroom Conversations: Language Learners & Students who are DHH

By using the Microsoft Translator live feature, students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) can follow live, classroom conversations by reading discussion transcripts. Students can also ask questions from their own device by pressing the microphone button or typing into the conversation window. Conversations may be saved for later reference.

Similarly, language learning students can follow classroom discussions by receiving transcripts in their own language. They can also ask questions in their language by pressing the microphone button on a smart device to speak, or by typing their question in the conversation window.

Students see all comments in their native language and can also see them simultaneously in the language of the classroom. Bilingual transcripts aid student language learning and comprehension. Conversations may be saved for later reference.

Videos

Microsoft Translator live feature

At Chinook Middle School in Bellevue, Washington, Mr. Russell White - Chinook's principal - uses Microsoft Translator to communicate with parents who speak multiple languages. Using the Translator live feature and the Presentation Translator PowerPoint add-in, he's able to speak in English while parents follow along on their own device, in their chosen language. Check out this video produced by Microsoft Education highlighting how Chinook Middle School is fostering an open, multilingual dialog with parents from around the world.

Want to have real conversations with people across different languages even if you can't speak their language? With the Microsoft Translator live feature, your device becomes your own personal universal translator. Check out our Get Started video to start using the app.

In this demo video, English, French, and German are spoken and translated into Italian speech and text. Microsoft Translator supports many more languages than just those three! Visit http://translate.it to learn more.

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint

For this demo, English is the chosen speech and captioned language - highlighting the use of live captioning for the deaf or hard of hearing community. Users could also join and participate in other languages (not shown in this video).

Learn how to get started with Presentation Translator, an Office add-in for PowerPoint that enables presenters to display live, translated subtitles in any one of more than 60 supported text languages.

Additional Resources

Products that feature Microsoft Translator

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Schools are increasingly diverse. Teachers manage many types of learners, including students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) who require assistive technology, and language learners who may not speak or understand the language of the classroom well.

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When teachers show up to a tech panel we hope to avoid this

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When teachers show up to a tech panel we hope to avoid this

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Hi I’m Tim from a Yuma AZ here to learn how AVID
can digitize my world!

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Jeannine from CA. I teach English in a CTE Media pathway

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Easy to use collaborative annotation tool. No student sign in needed.

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Hi, I’m Kristen from Poway, California. I am an AVID elective teacher, and I am excited to gain confidence in my tech abilities and strategies 😁.

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I’m from Roseville, CA and teach middle school history. I would like to incorporate more Google tech into my students learning.

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Love tech and can’t wait to learn how to bring digital notes to my students/district

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I'm here to integrate more tech in my classroom

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I'm here to integrate more tech in my classroom

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Implementing AVI'D Schoolwide and one to one chrome books.  Want to find ways to bring them together.

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My school is transitioning to 1 to 1

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Hello

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I chose this strand because the more relevant tech we can include in middle school, the better off our students will be

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I’m Michelle - 6th grade science teacher from Honolulu

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Hello! I am Stacy and I am from Minnesota. Skol! I want to learn more about the tools.

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From khsd in Bakersfield CA. Have gone paperless this year, 100% digital this year. What am I missing?

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Hello I’m

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Hello I’m Cassie from Montrose, Minnesota! I would love to learn more about incorporating Google and Microsoft in my classroom.

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Patty Short, from Phoenix Union HSD.

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HS Math Coach
Kerman, CA

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Write something

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Okay... how do you get what you are saying  on the screen

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Okay... how do you get what you are saying  on the screen

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Terrie from the Central Valley California

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Terrie from the Central Valley California

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Hello Bill from Colorado - Principal Middle School

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Hello Bill from Colorado - Principal Middle School

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Hi. Crystal Kelley from San Marcos HS in TX. AVID and English teacher and campus coord. 

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Hi. Crystal Kelley from San Marcos HS in TX. AVID and English teacher and campus coord. 

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Please fill this form out to guide our DTL and SI future

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Hello

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AVID District Coordinator - San Marcos CISD
San Marcos, Texas

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Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.

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Tweets by biocarm

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Gabby Flores, Calexico Unified School District (California).  Secondary Academic Coordinator.  

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Gabby Flores, Calexico Unified School District (California).  Secondary Academic Coordinator.  

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Hello, I'm Cheryl, looking forward to meeting you!

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Hello, I'm Cheryl, looking forward to meeting you!

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Here to see Joe in action and I've been hired as an AVID Staff Developer for this strand.  Excited to take risks and learn (@rfishtrom)

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#AVID2018

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Carol Hirota
Stockton,  Educational Services & Adult Education
@CarolHi

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I'm here to learn more about using digital tools inside the classroom.

@serenacowser

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Munks, AVID coordinator Buchanan High School
@BearNation_AVID

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Looking forward to some Awesome Google fun!!!!
@Momma_Watt

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Hi, I'm Roxanne, a College Prep teacher for 10th graders in Los Angeles

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Hi, I'm Roxanne, a College Prep teacher for 10th graders in Los Angeles

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From Minnesota and we are new to AVID and hope to start next year with our 7th graders

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Hello! I’m Mikayla. AVID elective teacher and English teacher. I’m here to learn some new skills and build confidence in using tech in all my classes.

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PreK - 6 Principal, rural NY

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Highland High School
Gilbert, AZ
jennifer.castillo@gilbertschools.net

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Raegan Freund
AVID Instructional Coach from Wichita, Kansas
#WPSAVID

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Hello, I’m Manuel

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I’m Lisa. Here to see what’s up with tech and AVID. #AVIDinCCSd

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Glad to get to know your story

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Hello, I'm Tami from Washougal Washington!

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Hello, I'm Tami from Washougal Washington!

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Hi! I am LaTalia!  English Teacher from SC😘

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Mari,
digital school wide want to use it in my classroom

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Hi, I am Ivette...a  college prep teacher. 

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Hi, I am Ivette...a  college prep teacher. 

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Heavy tech user looking for new stuff.

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Hi- I'm Megan. I'm looking for more ways to integrate tech .

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Hi- I'm Megan. I'm looking for more ways to integrate tech .

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Lynda. I'm here to try to be better at tech.  

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Lynda. I'm here to try to be better at tech.  

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Great start! Here we go!

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Hello I am Jasmine

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Ivet Gonzalez...STEAM Coordinator at El Sol Science and Arts Academy 

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Ivet Gonzalez...STEAM Coordinator at El Sol Science and Arts Academy 

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Raegan Freund
AVID Instructional Coach
#WPSAVID

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What program are you using to transcribe your presentation? It is awesome😁

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What program are you using to transcribe your presentation? It is awesome😁