Innovative Designer

Standard 3 (for students)

Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.

Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.

Students select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers design constraints and calculated risks.

Students develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process.

Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.

ISTE Standards for Educators 2: Digital Citizen

2b. Advocate for equitable access to educational technology, digital content and learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all students.

ISTE Standards for Educators 5: Designer

5a. Use technology to create, adapt and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.

Tool: Microsoft Translator

Description

This is an option that is provided on Microsoft Word (as well as PowerPoint and Outlook). Without requiring the user to download any extension apps, Word helps them translate entire or potions of texts on documents by using the "translation" feature.

Opportunities

This is excellent for students who are English Language Learners. The worksheets or assignments they're given will almost always be in English, so this helps as a resource to them so that they don't have to refer to another app such as Google Translate to do their translations.
This is great for anyone in general who is learning another language! I imagine when students are expected to learn another language in secondary school, this could be a helpful resource to translate text between languages they are learning and languages they are familiar with.
As an educator, I can pre-translate documents for students if they need that as a form of scaffolding and support in their learning.

Limitations

The translations may not always be accurate or make sense.
There is a specific selection of languages that students can translate between on Microsoft Word. If they read/write in languages other than those preselected languages, then they won't have that as a resource.
Usually, Microsoft costs money and is not always accessible to all students. So, not everyone has equal access to the translator as a resource.

Watch the screencast video on the right to learn how to use the Microsoft Word translation tool!

Click the button below the video to get written instructions from Microsoft support on how to use the translation tool in Word.

Translations Instructions

Reflection

While creating the screencast to explain to students how to use the translation tool on Word, I realized how useful the tool can really be. What stood out to me was the ability of the tool to provide users with synonyms for words as they roll their mouse over different words on the translation. This is much more user friendly for students and is more convenient than Google searching different translations and then searching for synonyms

One of the ISTE standards states that there should be equitable access to educational technology for all students. This translation tool truly advocates for that because it provides students with the opportunity to learn in many diverse languages as necessary. I can see this being useful for English Language Learners as a way to support their learning. I can also see it being useful for students who are learning other languages. Teachers themselves could pre-translate text for students as a way to save time in class. I've once had a friend who immigrated from Vietnam and had to spend much of her day in class translating words in the dictionary word-for-word. This tool is honestly revolutionary to me because I can see how that would've been so useful to her as a learner and helped her stay caught up in class with everyone else.

Specifically, in my future math classroom, I will offer this to students if it's a resource to assist (but not necessarily enable) their learning. If I don't choose to translate all printed documents, I can also provide digital docs to students so that they themselves can translate any documents I hand out for lessons or assignments.