Communication

 A classroom is a diverse space and home to all different kinds of learners. For that reason it is so important that we find creative and innovative ways to support our different learners. While reading Sail the 7 Cs, I learned about the wonderful ways that Microsoft Translator can help our Multilingual Learners. Many of the classrooms I've been in have had students with a native language other than English. Some of them already had a good grasp of the English language and were capable of navigating the complex learning of a high school science class with little extra help. Many students who were much newer to learning English however, had a much harder time. To make matters worse, most of these students' teachers did not speak a language other than English, and outside their designated ML periods did have much support in the classroom.

 Microsoft Translator can be a great way of supporting these learners and making things easier on both them and their teachers. Microsoft Translator provides not only a live speech-to-text translation to help people communicate face-to-face, it also provides a number of other services including live subtitles of lecture and presentations. teachers can use it to translate their lectures as they speak into a chosen language and display on their screen to the class. This feature can also be used to provide regular captions for hard or hearing or deaf students. If you have learners who speak different languages in your classroom, the feature can translate into multiple different languages to display on students screens as they choose. The Study Groups option even allows students to message each other and easily translate their messages for others to read, making group projects easier and more inclusive. The best part is, Microsoft Translator currently has 179 different languages and dialects available for translation! Microsoft Translator is such a great way for us to be able to support our diverse classroom of learners.