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Coaching Retrospective: What impact have we had in five years?

Coaching Retrospective: What impact have we had in five years?  A little over five years ago, I sat across the table from seven or eight of our school’s senior leadership team to be interviewed for a newly-created position: Teaching and Learning Coach.  “Tell us about a time you helped others be reflective.” “What do you think about when you are planning instruction?” The questions weren’t hard to answer, but I had no idea what they thought of my responses.   At the time, I really didn’t have a clear concept of what the role of Teaching & Learning Coach would entail or whether I would be a good fit. I went home thinking I had quite possibly embarrassed myself in front of the whole LLT.  I guess I did okay in the interview though, because eventually I was offered the role, and became part of a cross-school team. The team has ebbed and flowed a bit over these five years, but one thing has been very consistent: the group of people I’ve been privileged to work with has been amazing. Th
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Tools for Language Learning in 2021

Human language is insanely complex, which is why computers and robots have long done a terrible job at mimicking it, and even now, their attempts are often more amusing than authentic. However, artificial intelligence is improving fast, and computers can increasingly listen to and understand human speech, thus the explosion in recent years of personal assistants, like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.

Similar technological advances have also brought lots of new tools that are super useful for language learners. In this post, I'm going to introduce a few, but the technology is developing fast! If you have a favorite tool that I haven't mentioned here, please add it to the comments below, so we can all learn from each other.

1. Google Tools

These are tools that are built right into the Google apps that we are already using on a daily basis.

Google Lens

Language learners can use this augmented reality tool to translate text around them without typing it into Google Translate. So, for example, they can point their phone towards a screen or document full of text, and it will just start translating. When I showed this feature to my students, one of them started actually shouting and jumping around with excitement. 

Closed Captions on Google Slides

You may have noticed Cornelius Minor using this brilliant speech to text tool. In my humble opinion, all teachers should be using it whenever presenting challenging material using Google Slides in real time.

2. Screencasting Tools

I hope that when our on and off remote and hybrid learning ends, one strategy that we all continue to use is moving some of our direct instruction to videos that students can refer to at their own pace. With a video, I especially love how explicitly I can plan my modeling and think alouds. You may already be familiar with Screencastify or Loom, and I'm going to introduce two tools that add some nice visual features. (For more about self-paced learning, see Sybil's blog post here.)

Explain Everything

Use Explain Everything like a very powerful whiteboard app, with screencasting built in. This tool is best used on an iPad. Luckily for those of us in the secondary school, there's now a cart of iPads ready for check-out in the MHS Library.

Prezi Video

Prezi Video is great for pretty simple presentations that you want to jazz up visually. As it doesn't work with animations in slides, it's a bit limited for me, but if you're building your video library and want some variation, this definitely makes attractive videos super simple to make.


3. Video and Film watching tools

Now that you've made some videos, the benefits for language learners are just beginning! On playback, there are now so many great features and tools to help them build their comprehension and/or use the video to build their vocabulary and other language skills. Some of these are really for English language learners, and some support all target languages. 

YouTube

YouTube has integrated three key tools that are great for multilingual learners. The simplest is the option to change the playback speed on all videos. I find that when I'm watching videos in English, I almost always speed them up, but when I'm watching in French, sometimes slower helps me a lot! 

The second is automatically generated closed captions. All your English language learner needs to do is click on the CC button, and they will have closed captions. On many videos, there is also the option to view translated subtitles into a variety of languages (here, the subtitles on my video can be seen in English, Japanese or French.)

EdPuzzle

EdPuzzle is a tool that allows you to embed questions in videos from YouTube, National Geographic, TED, or your own videos. At the point that you embed a question, the video will pause and prompt students to reflect on their learning. Do note that you should have your students log into EdPuzzle as guests to best ensure their privacy.



Language Learning with Netflix

This Chrome extension turns couch surfing into great practice with conversational language. While watching your favorite show or film in your target language, you see subtitles both in your target language and in your native language. In addition, there's a built in dictionary, so you can scroll over any word in the subtitles and see a definition of it. I haven't yet thought of great uses for this in the classroom (please add them to the comments if you do!), but I definitely think this is very useful as a home learning tool. I'm a beginning language learner in Dutch myself, and I find this to be great for me to practice vocabulary building, pronunciation, and conversational fluency. 

4. Even more fun tools

In no particular order, and without a lot of detail, here are some more fun and useful tools recommended by ISB ELD teachers from all divisions. Curious about them, or want some help getting started? Ask your friendly neighborhood coach or tech integrator. 

Newsela

BrainPop (including the "make a movie" function for students)

Quizlet (including the collaborative repetition game Quizlet Live)

Take Away 

Now that I've shared some of my favorite tech tools for language learners, I'd love to hear some of yours! Please share in the comments below.

- Kristin 




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  1. UnknownApril 5, 2021 at 2:23 PM

    Great post Kristin! You shared some old favourites and lots of new (to me) treasures in here. I agree, video mini-lessons are a game changer. Whether at school or home students can pause, slow down, and watch parts again. They can also watch the video when they need a particular skills, not necessarily when others need it. I can't wait to play with Google Lens and see what all it may offer!

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