I chose to write about Microsoft Presenter. Microsoft Presenter is something that I wish I had known about before the presentations I gave. The presenter records what you say and tells you if you are going too fast and keep in good time with your slides. It also says where you need improvements. It will know if you are reading the slides too much. Microsoft presenter tells you which slides you need to work on for better improvement. This tool instills confidence in all presenters.

As teachers, we will not only be giving a presentation but our students as well. As teachers, we will be giving presentations daily as we discuss assignments and projects. Microsoft Presenter allows for improvement as you can rehearse the presentation over as many times as you need. Microsoft Presenter was created to help people to practice on their own in privacy.

Many students shape their communication skills through the education that they go through. Many educators struggle to communicate with the more diverse students that come from different cultures. Microsoft Translator provides useful translation for hundreds of languages, and many educators are now able to help their students that speak different languages. There are thousands of students that did not have English as their first language, and so this Translator helps these students to perform their best in these schools located in the US.

After reading chapter 2 (Communicators) in the Sail the & C’s textbook, I was introduced to a platform that I had no idea existed. This platform is called “Microsoft Translator” for Education.

But what exactly is translator for education?

According to Microsoft, the site provides free resources, tools, and how to guides for live captioning and translation in the classroom.

“Teachers manage many types of learners, including students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) who require assistive technology, and language learners (and their parents) who may not speak or understand the language of the classroom well. Microsoft Translator helps bridge these communication gaps, supporting accessible classroom learning with live captioning, cross-language understanding, and even multilingual casual conversations to help with student integration” (Microsoft)

Teachers can use this platform to translate their presentations, lectures. They can translate real time when having a parent-teacher conference. As well as study groups and a one-to-one conversation with students. This essentially breaks the language barrier that as teacher we may face.

Watch this video to understand the platform

I plan on taking the time to educate myself on using Microsoft Translator because I know that in the future I will be using this site and will encourage my students’ parents to use it , so we can better and further our communication to discuss their child’s needs.

Watch this video on parent-teacher conferences using Microsoft Translator:

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The world of learning being confined to the walls of a classroom is coming to an end and interactive software programs are the new frontier of education. Teachers are adapting to a newly connected world where we can share information instantly.

Microsoft Forms are a tool that can help us adapt to the modern world of education. Through Forms we can send out quizzes and surveys that help us evaluate both the performance of students and teachers, as well as the tools we use. Digital communication has become increasingly important and we need to teach our students how to be successful while using technology.

Microsoft Forms allows us to communicate with the specific people we need, while allowing for feedback and communication along the way.

In a world that is constantly evolving, it is our responsibility as teachers to keep up with the improvements in communication in order to properly educate our students and prepare them for the future.

Thanks for reading! If you like what you read (or don’t like what you read) let me know! @PatrickWCrowell

During the Perusall reading this week I learned that Minecraft can be used as a way to educate children on social skills. I love playing video games and I always believed they can educate in amazing ways. Video games are extremely stimulating and often involve the use of reading, mathematics, collaboration, and objectives. Minecraft has launched an education edition which is now widely used by schools everywhere. Minecraft is great for children because it is very appropriate for young ages and involves critical thinking. Students can have fun all while collaborating with others to create structures or even explore. This new education edition also teaches manty subjects such as architecture, math, chemistry, agriculture and even computer programming. Watch the video below to learn about Minecraft Education Edition.

I believe this is a big step in changing the way teachers educate. Education is rapidly evolving with technology and teachers everywhere are using new tools to offer the best education to their students possible. My local school district now has a STEAM class. It stands for science, technology, education, arts and mathematics. Students now have access to virtual reality headsets and more. Exposing young learners to such amazing technology may produce great innovators in the future. It makes me wonder what games or new tools will be introduced in the coming years.

This week we learned about the translation tools created by Microsoft. I was excited to read about the way that the translating program benefitted students but I was pleasantly surprised by the impact it had on the lives of parents who speak English as a second language.

The example given in the reading focused on a teacher who liked to host meetings with parents four times a year. Many of the students came from homes where English was not the primary language spoken so the teacher made sure to have a translator be a part of the meetings so the parents would feel more comfortable communicating and understanding what was being said. Unfortunately, the meetings had such high attendance that it was hard for the translators to keep up with their communication between the parents and teacher so many people ended up feeling like they were being left out.

With the help of the Microsoft translating tool in the form of a downloadable app, parents and the teacher were able to communicate easily with each other without having to depend on a translator. I look forward to using the translation tool in my classroom. I live in an area where there’s a high likelihood of having Spanish speaking students in my classroom and I’m glad that I’ll have a way to communicate with them in a way that’s easy and accessible to both of us. I’m very glad to know that Microsoft is offering so many helpful classroom tools for free and I’m looking forward to using all of them to improve my students’ learning experience.

1. The show I decided to watch for this assignment was called “Undercover” and the setting is in the Netherlands. The language the show was created in is known as Flemish.

I was unable to find any videos to share but the show can be found on Netflix. https://www.netflix.com/title/80225312

2. The setting doesn’t seem to be too different than what I’ve seen. Lots of rural areas and a few bars that don’t seem too different then what we have in the United States. The characters seem to dress quite similar and didn’t seem very different at all. I did notice that the majority of characters depicted had darker hair and there were no blonde haired people. Many of the men in the show often had beards.

3. I noticed a few differences early within the culture. In this country like many others with the exception of the united states uses the metric system. I also noticed that some of the subtitles were different much like the word “mate”. Obviously the language was foreign to me like nothing I’ve ever heard. They use cars as a main mode of transportation. These cars were often range rovers. The buildings were structured slightly differently, often colorful and made of bricks. The music also sounded different like they were using different instruments. Apart from a few aspects I would say it was surprisingly similar to my culture.

4. The physical surroundings in this show are also similar to me. I live next to a state forest and in the episode I watched they were camping in a very wooded area. Within the two episodes I watched there were no political or economic situations presented but, they do have a sophisticated police department much like the United States.