WOW Wednesday – Smith Jackson School
On Wednesdays I highlight some of our amazing MVSD staff on our social media pages. Everyday our staff are using tech in new and exciting ways, are learning new skills, and are sharing ways in which ed tech is assisting them in their practice.
I had an opportunity to visit Smith Jackson School yesterday as part of a broader school-sites tour in Dauphin and was welcomed by Tegan Zacharias and her Grade 3 team. During my observation I was thrilled to see one of our EA team, Michelle, move unobtrusively through the room to assist with translation services for new students joining from Ukraine. Michelle utilized Google Translate to take photos of the slides Tegan was discussing so that the text content was translated to aid in student comprehension and participation.
A challenging aspect of translation at the primary level is that students are emerging readers and many translation apps utilize language levels that are beyond the scope of student understanding. The system Tegan and Michelle have in their class allowed for an integration of the tech tool, Google Translate, to provide a framework that was coupled with a more detailed, age-appropriate, explanation from a caring adult to assist in overall comprehension. Great work!
Do you use translation services in your programming? If so, we would love to hear what apps/programs you use; especially if they are geared towards primary users.