How can this help our ESL educators support their ELLs in the classroom?

-irta

Mirta Ramirez-Espinola 

Hello! Have you used Live Captioning and Translation in Microsoft PowerPoint?

This is a great way to engage ELL students in the classroom. Please let me know if you would like more information about this tool.

Have a great day!

-Shane

Shane Starrak , I love this, and I will post it on my ESL/TESOL CIRT page. 

Gracias, 

Mirta

Dear Mirta,

I just posted something some of us do on the first day of class, which can help create instant engagement! I hope this is helpful. :)

Best,

Kimber Underdown

Kimber Underdown: Where did you post it? I would love to see that. I have used Padlet and emojis in feedback to help engage learners. I used to use Flip; I am looking through some other suggestions. -Mirta

Kimber Underdown, I see it. We must have had a glitch. I wasn't able to see that link initially. HMM.

Thank you, 

Mirta

Hi Mirta!

Thank you for sharing your experience and goals with the community! It’s wonderful to hear that you're pursuing graduate educational tech courses to enhance student engagement. The use of tools like Padlet and Flip demonstrates your commitment to creating interactive learning environments, and I’m excited to see how you’ll continue to innovate with additional multimedia content. I am so sad 🥹 that Flip no longer functions as we once knew it. We had a good run and it will be difficult to replace such an amazing tool!

As you explore new strategies, I encourage others in the Social Presence Literacy Lab to jump in and share their favorite user-friendly applications for engaging students. Personally, I’ve found tools like Wakelet, which helps curate resources into visually appealing collections, and Quizizz, which adds an interactive and fun dimension to quizzes, to be very effective.

I’d love to hear from other faculty members on what has worked for them! Please don’t hesitate to share your insights as you continue learning, I’m confident it will be a valuable contribution to this community.

Best,

Tom

Thomas Dyer During our short meeting, you suggested prompting questions and addressing more than one student in a response post from faculty that many may have questions or suggestions; that way, we can engage more than one learner when faculty responds. I agree with what you said about quality versus quantity. Mirta

Thank you for getting a discussion started, Mirta! I love that you have jumped in with Flip, and Padlet as multi-media tools; however, it sounds like you may be searching for something else. I see that there have been some suggestions that others have thrown out there like Quizziz and Wakelet - which are great - but I would ask what are you looking to achieve specifically? I have found that students love to be able to "hear" and "see" me. I have used Loom to create video walkthroughs to engage my learners with various things around the course. I have also used the Loom feature in Canva to narrate presentations. That provides a great opportunity to use your creativity to put together a presentation - with some fun animations - and record yourself narrating as well. 😉 

There is an option to  record in Microsoft PowerPoint. You can include closed captioning and a myriad of different graphics to enhance your recording.

Screenpal  is another free option that is easy to use and offers many creative options for students to record.

Thank you!

Shane Starrak, WOW. I have reposted your suggestions and will also play around with this application. I love it and thank you for sharing. Mirta

Jacob Aroz, I have used Screenpal, but I will sign up for a free Loom and Canva and see how they help. Sometimes, I need to look at the features and play around with them, and an activity will pop into my head. I just learned about micro-learning (snippets) to engage in learning. So, I will look into what you mentioned, as I would like to offer something they can see and hear. I also want to present something concrete but purposeful. I do not want my students to suffer from cognitive overload. I need practice in making content. Thank you!- Mirta

Yes, purpose is the key. I would not classify myself as a "quick adopter" of technology. Like you, I have to play around with it and almost discover how the technology is going to work for me. I have to figure out how it will represent me and my presence in the classroom. I do not want technology in my classroom just to be there.

I would agree with you that we must be wary of cognitive overload. May I suggest taking a post that you normally make in your class to engage with your students and begin a discussion and record it using ScreenPal or Loom? Don't worry about polish, allow yourself to be present like you would in a traditional classroom. This might be a nice first step to some of the other pieces of technology that others have discussed in our thread. 😊

Jacob 

Jacob Aroz 

Thank you for the suggestion. I worked for another university early on with an audio and a video option for feedback. I loved that feature, and they appreciated the verbal feedback. It made them feel connected. Once the student listened to the audio, it turned into text, and you could not hear it anymore, almost like talk-to-text. There was also a feature that let you speak, and then the feedback would be displayed as a text immediately, like on a cell phone. I used that feature. However offering everyone video feedback would be too time-consuming, and that feature was eventually discarded.

I like the idea of embedding myself in a video for the DB. I have embedded applications, but only a video for the WELCOME announcement thus far. I'm going to try Canva. 

Mirta

Jacob Aroz or Loom. 

Balance is key, because, as you pointed out Mirta using technology too much can be overwhelming. I would love to offer video feedback for each of my students but I do not have the time to record. I also wonder if it would be too cumbersome for them to review. Instead of being able to scroll to a specific comment within an assignment/essay quickly, they would have to try to fast forward and find the part in the video where I addressed a specific point of their assignment/essay. I could see it being great in theory but not as logical in practice. 

I would love to know how things go with Canva/Loom, Mirta. Good luck! 😊

Here is the link if you have a MAC.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/present-with-real-time-automatic-captions-or-subtitles-in-powerpoint-68d20e49-aec3-456a-939d-34a79e8ddd5f#OfficeVersion=Mac

Hi Mirta,

Congratulations on your deep-dive into edtech resources and tools that can be integrated to assist with motivation and engagement. This is one of my favorite subjects because I have learned to embrace innovations and appreciate how much knowing about using them can create a stimulating and memorable learning experience.

There are so many excellent tools and resources out there. My specialty here at GCU is facilitating graduate courses in Instructional Design, so we have to be current with tools of the trade for many domains, such as K-12, Higher-Ed, Corporate, Governmental, Military, Healthcare, etc. I also facilitate Technology Integration in General Ed and Special Ed at Touro University, where scholar-practitioners are learning how to develop technology-rich lessons and creating their own LMS.

My approach is to work collaboratively. We do a lot of Zooms to help each other work through the technical issues and discuss the frameworks, practicality, and support one another in a Community of Practice.

As for your query about edtech tools, attached are a few tools that we are currently exploring. 

All the Best,

-Kathryn Sky Tomlinson

Kathryn Tomlinson, Thank you so much! I will look at those tools. Anything I can implement to help my students/educators engage further would be significant. -Mirta

Thank you for sharing these, Kathryn! We can all benefit from checking these out. This past year, I have begun using Zoom to connect with students instead of the phone, and I have been using Wakelet to house my resources and share them with students and Loom as my primary method of recording videos. I am eager to check out some of the AI tools you have shared. 

For the coming year, I want to focus on integrating an AI chatbot that I created using School AI (app.schoolai.com) for several areas of my class - research and writing - that my students struggle with. I'd like to share that with students over the weekend to allow them to interact with it when I am not as readily available to see how it might help. 

Thank you for sharing! 

Jacob 

Jacob Aroz, I need to check out Wakelet. I have heard about this tech resource for some time, but I also need to review new tech tools to see how they can best fit my courses. I also do not want my students to suffer from cognitive overload. Dr. E

Jacob Aroz 

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, I noticed Dr. Thomas Dyer is an ambassador for Wakelet, which made me interested in looking that up. I am also saving your School AI link for future reference. 

It's interesting to hear your plan for adding an AI chatbot for your learners. That strategy has been highly recommended in several AI workshops I've attended lately. 

You all may be familiar with Dr. Jean Mandernach's series of AI Bootcamp session offered last fall here at GCU. She gave some powerful suggestions and resources for creating robust learning experiences using GenAI. Here is one of the blog articles that I have been using to inform and provide examples to other educators and learners I think might be interested in learning more about how to use these innovations effectively. https://cirt.gcu.edu/sotl/ai/educaition_revolution/centralized

Kathryn Tomlinson Yes, it was great! Thank you for sharing the link - you're a step ahead of me - it is a "must-see" for everyone here! 

Jacob Aroz, Thank you for your resources and support of other faculty! 

We welcome any ideas!

Mirta

Kathryn Tomlinson, I have worked with her before, and I need to attend an AI training. I have heard about the AI chatbox. 

DMirta

Another idea for differentiation is using a captioning option during your presentation:

Maestra.AI

You may think of captioning as only something for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, but it can truly help everyone. Even typically developing individuals can benefit, because it "locks you in". You are not only hearing the information, but reading it as well, which helps you retain the information in a more permanent way. Another great aspect of Maestra.AI is that you can save a transcript of your lecture. This could be helpful for those who learn best through the written word, and it is a great way to review the information later on. 

As an alternative, you could use dictation in Microsoft Word or voice typing in Google Docs .

You can have the microphone running during your lecture as your captioning, and then print the transcript or send it as a file to students.

Thank you!

-Shane Starrak 

Thank you for sharing this, Shane! There are some video recording software - like Loom - that record captions; however, the function can vary (depending on version, paywall, etc.). I have also run into issues with certain AIs being able to generate captions from YouTube videos. Thank you for sharing Maestra.AI - I dig the Spanish name - I'll have to play around with it. If you happen to use it to help with your presentations, Mirta, please share how it goes! 

Jacob