Assistive Technology

 Assistive technology has made a big impact on my students' school day and my instructional practices. Due to the fact that there is only one ELL teacher (me) for all of our elementary ELL population, I am not always right there to support my students. One way I found to help classroom teachers and students bridge this gap, was to introduce students to the Google Translate application. This application has several features that offer support to students when they feel they need it. The first being the ability to hover over a text and have it automatically translate to a native language. This enabled my students to "read" the directions given on independent assignments within the classroom. Students were also able to take a picture of text and select portions of that text to be read aloud to them in their native language. This feature was extremely useful for my newcomer ELL students. Many of them have limited reading skills in their native language, making the text-to-text translation somewhat useless. I also found the conversation button to be supportive for students when teacher lecture or instructions are being presented. This allowed for some of my students to understand or get a better idea of what was being said. This function allows the listener to push a button which then records what is being said in one language then converts it to the language selected in real-time. This tool would then read the translation aloud so that no reading is necessary. There are several drawbacks to this particular tool. The translations are not always accurate. Depending on the teacher's volume when speaking, their annunciation, and tempo, the device sometimes has trouble picking up what the initial speaker is saying, which in turn is mistranslated and can cause greater confusion. Another downfall is that the teacher must be aware that the translation takes a bit longer because it reads it off to the listener before picking up on the next dictation. This makes it very necessary for the speaker to be aware of their wait time between directions, or conversation. 

Throughout the two years I have implemented its use, Google Translate has different outcomes. A lot of this depends on the student's motivation to help themselves. For example, I had one student who would recognize they needed help understanding something, so they would get out their iPad and go to the Google Translate application and navigate to the tool necessary to help themself. On the other hand, I had a student who hated using the app for help because they felt that it made them stand out when all they wanted to do was fit in. I also think that this student lacked the motivation to learn at times, therefore avoided getting help so that he did not have to complete all the work. Therefore, the biggest takeaway from this being that the tools you provide are only as helpful as the user wants them to be.