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Follett Learning Offers Online Resources

Follett Learning is offering its online resources for children K-12 for free during social distancing. Programs include: 

  • Community Share which enables public libraries to share digital collections with schools. 
  • Follett Destiny Discover® where educators and students can navigate Destiny Discover to search and use your school’s digital resources.
  • Classroom Ready Collections that include lesson plans, activities, videos and resources for teacher and student instructional use. Classroom Ready Collections are vetted to ensure all content is grade and age appropriate and that sites are active.

Google Translate Launches Real-Time Language Transcription Functionality

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on his Twitter handle that the Google Translate app on Android is rolling out new feature called Transcribe that can live translate speech into another language in real time. The Transcribe feature is available for all Android users with the latest version of the Google Translate app installed. Once the latest version the app is installed from the Play Store, users can access the new feature by tapping on the “Transcribe” icon from the home screen and selecting the source and target languages.

The new function gives users the availability to listen to speech in one language and then transcribe the text in another, essentially a talk to text translator. Like all machine learning, the feature is not without its limitations. Accurate transcription of audio can prove to be difficult, and machine translations are often not as naturally flowing as human-translated text, and can lack nuance. Still, the option is valuable, and a welcomed addition in machine learning translation apps.

According to the Google blog, you can pause or restart transcription by tapping the mic icon. The feature allows you to see the original transcript, choose a dark theme, and change the text size by going to the settings menu.

The Transcribe feature is said to work best in a quiet environment with a single person speaking at time.

Mango Languages Offers Free Subscriptions To Eligible Educators

Mango Languages, a digital-first language-education solution in K-12 and Higher-Ed, corporations, library systems, and government agencies worldwide is responding to the global COVID-19 crisis by offering its classroom products to eligible educators for free through the end of the 2019-2020 school year.

“As this international crisis endures, and entire school systems are closing, we realized we have something to give that responds directly to the strains schools and educators are feeling as they are forced to make a rapid transition to distance learning.” says Jason Teshuba, Mango Languages CEO.

The Mango Classroom product is built around Mango’s flagship language-learning app. The Mango app teaches language and culture through proven methodologies that build conversational-ready language skills in more than 70 world languages and over 20 English courses and is accessible across mobile and desktop platforms with features that allow for offline learning.

Mango Classroom provides additional materials for educator support in their Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and English for Spanish Speakers courses that align with universal standards of proficiency. Exclusive educator features and materials include teacher lesson plans and student workbooks which provide activities for classroom engagement, while admin features include progress and usage tracking, and automatically graded assessments. The program integrates via group provisioning, rostering, SSO, lesson deep-linking, and Clever.

Students and teachers will have full accessibility to online resources that include staff and student video tutorials and webinars.

For more information, go to mangolanguages.com/covid19-response. Mango’s customer service, account managers, and tech support will be available for implementation, questions, and troubleshooting.

Scholastic Offers Free Learn At Home Program

Scholastic is offering free online courses as schools across the country shut down due to COVID-19 on the company’s digital learning hub, which is accessible on all devices, including smartphones, and requires no sign-up.

In the Scholastic Learn at Home program, students will have access to approximately three hours of learning opportunities per day, including projects based on exciting articles and stories, virtual field trips, reading, and geography challenges. Courses are organized into pre-K and kindergarten, first and second grade, third through fifth grade, and sixth grade and above. 

The courses span the subjects of English language arts; STEM; science; social studies; and social-emotional learning.

“We designed Scholastic Learn At Home knowing that administrators and teachers need to create extensive virtual learning plans, quickly, and that students need uplifting and engaging experiences. Our hope is that even though daily routines are being disrupted and students may not have valuable time in school with their educators, together we can support meaningful learning at home while it is necessary,” said Lauren Tarshis, senior vice president and editor-in-chief/publisher of Scholastic Classroom Magazines.

The program is designed to be readily available at home and requires no printing for assignments. It will remain free and open indefinitely, according to Scholastic. 

The editors of Scholastic Classroom Magazines have also launched a collection of kid-friendly resources for learning about coronavirus: https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/coronavirus.html

Tutor Platform Free To Higher Ed Institutions

TutorOcean is offering its online tutoring platform free of charge to all higher-education institutions. In addition, they have ramped up their server capacity, as well as support staff to meet the immediate demand to provide classrooms for face-to-face interactions between tutors and students.

“We know that budget cycles can limit a higher education institute’s ability to adopt effective technology on a timely basis,” said Will Li, co-founder and CEO of TutorOcean. “To help, we will provide any institution with free use of our platform to enable your students and peer tutors to continue to meet and provide learning support.”

The platform provides access to learning support with its easy-to-use online classroom and tutor management dashboard. Students and tutors can connect and interact anytime and anywhere while administrators can oversee the entire process.

Li claims that they can provide access credentials and have an institution ready to go in less than 24 hours.

https://www.tutorocean.com/higher-ed

Bill to Boost Bilingual Access in the House

Last month, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva introduced the Supporting Young Language Learners’ Access to Bilingual Education (SYLLABLE) Act in the House of Representatives. The bill helps establish high-quality dual-language immersion programs in communities with high numbers of low-income families and supports those programs from pre-K to 5th grade.

“Today, bilingualism is an asset in our multicultural society and provides our students with more job opportunities in the economy of the future,” said Rep. Grijalva. “The SYLLABLE Act recognizes that importance, supports dual language programs in low-income communities, and ensures that every child has access to new educational opportunities that prepare them for a successful future.”

Studies show both native English speakers and English Learners in dual-language immersion programs benefit from bilingual education and experience substantial gains in language, literacy, and math. While these programs remain in high-demand across the country, they tend to cluster in affluent communities that provide limited access to low-income students.

“The SYLLABLE Act opens the doors of opportunity to the students who benefit from dual-language learning immersion programs the most,” continued Rep. Grijalva. “Investments in creative programs like these are a significant step forward toward closing the achievement gap and helping our students reach their full potential.”

The SYLLABLE Act was previously introduced as the PRIDE Act in earlier sessions of Congress.

Interactive Display Bridges Physical and Digital Learning

At the Texas Computer Education Association Annual Conference (TCEA) in February, SMART Technologies released the latest versions of its interactive displays with ToolSense™ technology, which bridges physical and digital learning by incorporating tactile tools. Available on the SMART Board® 6000S series, the technology is exclusive to SMART. Fundamental to this new technology is that it’s intuitive, so users can just pick up the pen or object and interact with the board. The interactive display automatically recognizes a physical object and produces a digital interaction.

“The possibilities of the ToolSense platform are quite literally endless,” said Nicholas Svensson, SMART Technologies executive VP and operations officer. “The vision is to innovate specific tool sets for all education levels and subjects based on curricula and student abilities. The fact that we can incorporate tactile learning objects brings a new level to hands-on learning in the classroom and makes it accessible for everyone.” SMART has also released the enhanced SMART Board MX series, a high-value display with all the interactive essentials, and the SMART Board 7000R series, designed to provide the most precise writing experience for complex subjects and detailed content. All three series incorporate the most recent advancements from SMART, providing quality touch, ink, and embedded iQ Android™ computing experiences. All SMART Board interactive displays include free SMART Notebook® basic-version learning software and a bonus one-year subscription to SMART Learning Suite. smarttech.com

Countries We Come From

Bearport Publishing Company’s Countries We Come From series is an exciting and colorful exploration of culture, language, and geography. In the pages of these books, beginning readers travel to countries all over the world without ever leaving their classrooms, visiting places where they or their classmates may have come from. Each title in this 74-book series, eleven of which are also available in Spanish, explores the country’s culture and cuisine, language, and landmarks and everything in between.

Real, full-color photos immerse readers in the sights, colors, and people of each country while age-appropriate vocabulary and simple sentence construction make these 32-page books approachable for second- and third-grade readers. These books align with Common Core standards and are available in reinforced library binding.

The engaging text, bold design, and stunning photos are designed to spark children’s interest in the world around them.

Bearport Publishing’s goal is to provide kids with books they want to read, as it is one of the surest ways to foster reading achievement. They believe that books with good writing and amazing photos are irresistible to kids.

These are the two principles that guide the development of all their curriculum-aligned books for children in grades pre-K–8. The books are designed to help get kids excited about reading, even if they are struggling or reluctant readers, by focusing on topics that appeal to young readers, such as animals, sports heroes, and scary places. With every book, close attention is paid to text length, vocabulary, and picture–text match.

By limiting the amount of text on each two-page spread, the design leaves lots of space for big, bold photographs, which make the books less intimidating and more inviting to kids.
bearportpublishing.com

Outschool Seeking 5,000 Freelance Part-time Teachers

Teacher explaining lesson in video call while girl taking notes

Live educational platform Outschool is looking for 5000 additional teachers to help fill the incredible demand that has arisen due to COVID-19 (up 500% last week and going up exponentially daily as schools close). Teachers set the curriculum, schedule and price for classes, and typically earn around $40/hour.

The platform is a marketplace of live online classes for kids ages 3-18. Classes meet in small groups over live video chat where students are safely connected with teachers and classmates who share their interests. These classes are offered through our marketplace and conducted on our remote learning platform, powered by Zoom.

Applicants need to fill out an application form, record a brief introduction video, and pass a background check. Once approved, teachers can start submitting classes and get enrollments. There’s no long term commitment and they can currently accept applicants from US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They expect to add UK soon as they broaden their ability to conduct background checks.

Outschool is also offering FREE classes for kids/families (limit $200 per family) affected by school shutdowns at public schools, up to $300K worth of classes in total, with the help of Zoom. They are continuing to seek additional donations to keep increasing free class availability.

Outschool is partnering with schools in the San Francisco Bay Area to help prepare them for any closures and would like to help schools anywhere that are already affected or are working on readiness plans. If you are a school leader preparing for potential closure, visit outschool.com/school-closures

U.S. Department of Education Guidelines for Web Access & Students’ Rights

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education has released a webinar on ensuring web accessibility for students with disabilities for schools utilizing online learning during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In addition, OCR published a fact sheet for education leaders on how to protect students’ civil rights as school leaders take steps to keep students safe and secure. These resources will assist education leaders in making distance learning accessible to students with disabilities and in preventing discrimination during this Administration-wide response effort.

As more schools across the nation shift to distance learning, OCR’s webinar reminds decisionmakers of their responsibility in making distance learning accessible to students with disabilities, unless equally effective alternate access is provided. Online learning tools must be accessible to students with disabilities, and they must be compatible with the various forms of assistive technology that students might use to help them learn. The webinar advises school leaders to routinely test their online activities to ensure accessibility.

“OCR’s accessibility webinar is intended to remind school leaders at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels of their legal obligations to ensure that all students, including students with disabilities, can access online and virtual learning programs,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kenneth L. Marcus. “Students with disabilities must have access to educational technology utilized by schools, and OCR will continue to work to ensure that no student is excluded from utilizing these important tools.”

In addition, the new fact sheet released by OCR presents information on the rights of students with disabilities during school closures and includes tips for preventing incidents of discrimination. It also includes information on ensuring that no student is discriminated against based on race, color, or national origin. The document reminds schools of their legal obligation to comply with non-discrimination obligations under civil rights laws, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and provides tools to assist schools in facilitating distance learning for all students.

These communications follow a previous letter from Assistant Secretary Marcus to education leaders on preventing and addressing potential discrimination associated with COVID-19. The Department continues to update www.ed.gov/coronavirus with information for students, parents, educators and local leaders.

For additional resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, please visit: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

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LanguageMagazine 2023

Language Magazine