Why “Duolingo” is a Great Tool for High School Students Learning a New Language

Learning a new language can feel like a huge challenge, especially for high school students juggling a busy schedule. However, thanks to apps like Duolingo, language learning has become more accessible, and engaging for students of all levels. It presents a game-like style that keeps you coming back for more.

1. Convenient and Flexible Learning

Duolingo allows you to learn at your own pace, making it convenient to fit lessons into your schedule. The app offers mini games that you can take anytime, making it perfect for students with busy lives.

2. Engaging and Fun

Unlike traditional language learning methods that can feel like a chore, Duolingo turns learning into a game. The app uses points, levels, and rewards to keep you motivated and make learning feel like a fun challenge. As well as daily streak awards, which also allow for prizes. The game board approach helps students stay focused, making it easier to stay consistent.

3. Accessible for Everyone

Whether you’re just starting or looking to improve your skills, Duolingo offers lessons for all levels. It’s perfect for beginners who are just getting into a new language or for students looking to supplement their high school language classes. The app covers a wide range of languages, from Spanish and French to Japanese and Arabic, so you can choose one that interests you most. The app has different modes that consider your desire to learn. For example: if you select your reason to learn the language is for traveling, the app will consider what you might need to say for your travels. Things like ordering off of a menu, basic words and sentences, essentials like “coffee with sugar please” etc.

4. A Great Supplement to Classwork

Duolingo is a great tool to complement what you’re learning in the classroom. It helps reinforce vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, and gives you the extra practice needed to become more confident in speaking and spelling. Plus, you can track your progress and see how much you’ve improved over time. When it is a game and students can be competitive while having fun, the student is more likely to get it done, and take something away from it.

Getting Started

All you need to start learning on Duolingo is a free account, and you can do so by downloading the app, choosing the language you want to learn, and beginning your journey toward becoming bilingual. You can learn anytime and anywhere, making language learning more accessible than ever before.

Whether you’re learning for school, travel, or personal growth, Duolingo makes language learning a language feel achievable. Start today, and see how easy it can be to pick up a new language!

Best Practices for Using Educational Technology in the Classroom

As technology becomes a bigger part of our daily lives, it’s also transforming the way we learn in school. Whether it’s through interactive lessons or online collaboration, educational technology offers a plenty of opportunities to make learning more exciting and engaging. However, it’s important to use it in effective ways so that a student can get the most out of what they’re doing. Here are some of the best practices I feel you can integrate into your classroom:

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1. Set Clear Learning Goals

Before using any new technology in the classroom, make sure you have clear goals for what you want students to achieve. Tech tools should be used to help meet those goals, not just because it’s a fun tool. Whether you’re using it to help students be more creative, work together, or get immediate feedback, make sure it supports what you’re teaching.

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2. Pick the Right Tools

With so many tech tools available, it can be tough to know where to start. Pick tools that are simple to use and fit your goals. Here are a few that I feel like I know my way around, and would be interested in utilizing for lesson plans

• Google Classroom: Helps you organize assignments, communicate with students, and keep everything in one place.
• Canva: Great for designing visuals, presentations, and projects that encourage creativity.
• Kahoot!: A fun, interactive game platform that makes quizzes exciting and helps students review content.

It’s better to pick a few tools that you really know well, rather than trying to use too many at once.

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3. Encourage Collaboration

One of the best things about technology is that it makes it easier for students to work together, even if they’re not in the same room. Tools like Padlet let students share ideas and communicate easily. This not only helps them work as a team but also builds important digital skills for their future.

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4. Make Sure It’s Accessible for All

When choosing tech tools, think about how accessible they are for all students, including those with learning differences. Many platforms have built-in features such as text-to-speech and close captioning, making them easier to use. It is crucial to take time to learn about these features to ensure all students can engage with the content, while knowing what you are talking about.

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5. Give Students Some Freedom

Let students have a say in how they use technology for learning. Give them the chance to choose the tools they use for projects, or let them decide which topics they’d like to explore. When students have more control over their learning, they’re more likely to feel engaged and motivated.

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Key Takeaways

Using technology in the classroom can be a game-changer, but it’s important to use it in a way that truly helps students learn. By setting clear goals, choosing the right tools, encouraging collaboration, and focusing on accessibility, you can create a classroom environment that’s engaging and effective for everyone.

The Pros & Cons of Collaboration

Collaborating as an educator can bring both benefits and challenges.  It is important to note what may be helpful and what may be harmful.  As a future K-12 educator, I understand that connecting with others is going to be a big help for how I decide to teach my class.  Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons.

Pros: 

 1.Diverse Perspectives: Collaborating allows educators to share ideas and strategies, leading to more innovative and potentially effective teaching methods that you are able to adopt.  This may help you in a lesson where you need help trying to explain certain things.  Other peoples opinions are always nice to hear, whether you agree or disagree.

2. Shared Resources: Educators can pool resources making it easier to develop high quality lessons and activities.  I’m sure many educators do different research and have different sources.  If someone shares a website with you, or vice versa, that is always a good thing.

3. Professional Development: Working with others promotes continued learning and professional growth through feedback and shared experiences. 

4. Improvement in Student Outcomes: Collaboration can lead to more comprehensive learning experiences for students, which can benefit their overall development for life. 

5. Supportive Environment: Collaboration brings a sense of community among educators, reducing feelings of isolation and providing emotional support, especially when things can be stressful. 

6. Enhanced Problem-Solving: Teams can brainstorm solutions, which strengthens each member to address issues more effectively. 

Cons:

1. Time Constraints: Coordinating schedules and finding time to collaborate can be challenging, especially with busy teaching loads, coaching, or different time zones.

 2. Differing Opinions: Conflicting teaching philosophies or methods can lead to disagreements, which might be more harmful than helpful.  It may be more of a distraction than a collaboration. 

3. Unequal Contribution: Not all team members may contribute equally, leading to frustration and imbalance in workload.   Similar to a group project for students, someone always doesn’t carry their weight.

4. Communication Barriers: Miscommunication can arise, leading to misunderstandings and ineffective collaboration.  Just like when text messages or emails are misread, this may be the same on an educational level.  Giving ideas but someone not comprehending it, or a language barrier causing for confusion.

5. Resistance to Change: Some educators may be hesitant to adopt new ideas or practices suggested by collaborators.   

6. Dependency Risks: Over-reliance on collaboration can sometimes demolish individual creativity.  Much like certain AI programs do work for people, this can be in the same boat.  Relying on something or someone else to present your work for you.

Above all else, I believe collaboration is beneficial and the pros outweigh the cons by far.

By: Kaytlin Czeslaw

1. Glean: Glean is a great accessibility tool that can be used in many classrooms! Glean was created to help students organize information much more effectively and help immensely with note-taking assistance. With this element, students are also able to record lectures and take notes simultaneously, helping students keep up at their own pace. One feature I find really interesting the transcription and keyword search features Glean offers that can adhere to students with hearing impairments and those who need to go back and review specific parts of the lecture.
2. FM Systems: FM Systems are wireless devices that help students with hearing impairments hear the teacher more clearly. While the teacher wears and speaks into a microphone, the student receives the audio through this tool and directly into their hearing aid or cochlear implant. This is a great way for students with hearing impairments to keep up with everyone at the same time.
3. Kurzweil: Kurzweil is a fantastic tool that has many accessible features to it. Kurzweil offers many features like text-to-speech, writing support, translation and is customizable to fit the learning needs of any student.
4. Writable: Writable is a writing platform that works to support students in developing writing skills through practice and receiving feedback. Writable offers a range of writing prompts, peer review, and feedback that helps make it easier for teachers to stay organized and manage writing assignments that will help students improve their writing skills. Writable contains a text-to-speech feature to help support students with different learning needs.
5. Edpuzzle: Edpuzzle is a great tool that allows teachers to integrate their lessons into videos with questions, comments, and quizzes all embedded into the videos. Not only is Edpuzzle a great tool to ensure the engagement of students, but it is also a great accessible tool. With Edpuzzle, it allows students to work at their own pace and has features such as subtitles and video playback to help aid student comprehension.
6. C-Pen Reader: C-Pen Reader is a great accessible tool with many features that adhere to students with different learning needs. These features range from text-to-speech, portability, language support, and dictionary function. The feature that sticks out to me the most is the language support, covering various languages and helping students stay at pace with everyone else.
7. JAWS: JAWS is a tool that contains many accessible features. JAWS has a feature called screen reading, which allows comprehensive screen-reading capabilities that allow visually impaired students to hear the text being displayed. JAWS also allows many features like braille support, keyboard shortcuts, and customization to suit the specific needs of any student.

In the diverse learner classroom, access tools like Read&Write by Texthelp even out the playing field and allow students to break through their barriers to realize full potential. This is a creative tool that’s designed to support students with reading and writing challenges and offers a set of features to enable learning to become more accessible, inclusive, and personalized. Let’s look a little closer at what makes Read&Write such an important resource for educators and students alike.

What is Read&Write?

Read&Write is a digital literacy support tool designed to present students with a range of learning needs, such as dyslexia, ADHD, and other learning differences. It embeds itself seamlessly into popular platforms like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and most web browsers, enabling students to access features at any time they may need support.

Top Features of Read&Write

1. Text-to-Speech

Students can have any text read aloud, from online articles, PDFs, to assignments. Such features are priceless for students who feel challenged by reading comprehension or see poorly, as this feature transforms written material into oral speech.

2. Speech-to-Text

The speech-to-text feature enables students who cannot write or type to dictate their thoughts, which the tool then converts into text. This feature supports students with mobility issues or conditions like dysgraphia.

3. Word Prediction

The tool suggests words as students type, therefore helping them to complete sentences in a quicker and more correct manner. This feature helps when working with those students who might struggle with spelling or have scanty vocabularies.

4. Dictionary and Picture Dictionary

Students can quickly look up definitions or see visual representations of words they don’t understand. This dual approach supports a wide range of learning styles and needs.

5. Highlighting and Note-taking Tools

Such tools allow students to outline their ideas, highlight information for its importance, and summarize it for an assignment or studying purposes. It is an excellent way to improve focus and enhance research skills.

Why Read&Write Matters

Tools for accessibility, like Read&Write, level the playing field and permit students to take full advantage of their education despite their struggles. In addition, personalized support allows students to work independently, building confidence while helping develop key literacy skills.

Now, take the case of a student with dyslexia who has had persistent experiences of continually falling behind with reading assignments. With Read&Write, students would be able to listen to the text being read while following along—the advantage is that it will help them remain on task, even retain more information. A student with a physical disability can use the speech-to-text feature of this tool without having to rigorously engage in physically typing out written assignments.

How Educators Can Use It

Teachers can implement Read&Write as a means of creating inclusion in the classroom. They integrate the tools into their lesson plans and also provide training to students on how to use them so that all have equal opportunities to succeed. It is also useful for the English language learners, who can, with the dictionary and translation tool, bridge the gap in language.

Final Thoughts

Read&Write by Texthelp is more than just a tool; it has been a lifesaver for those students going through their own adversities in the classroom. This does so by knocking down these learning barriers and enabling each student to shine in their own way. Whether it be making the class more inclusive or just needing a little extra help, Read&Write is the go-to resource that truly shows technology can enhance the art of education.

Learn more about Read&Write and how it can help to empower your learning community!

By: Reese Zapata

Text-to-speech can help in so many ways. It can help students gather their thoughts as a rough draft to see their thoughts, or it can help students who speak different languages understand their classmates. You can translate different languages and open doors for communication that wouldn’t take place elsewhere.

Captions allow viewers to visually see what you are saying by following along with the captions. This helps students who struggle to learn auditorially. It provides different options to learn and listen for different types of learners.

Writing fonts: You can change the writing fonts and spacing of the letters to help students who have difficulties reading. Some students struggle with dyslexia and having more spaced out letters allows them to differentiate the letters easier and improve their reading skills.

Visor: This feature puts a visor of your color choice on the screen. This can help students with visual impairments. It can also help emphasize certain parts of the texts to improve the focus on the students.

Mercury Reader: This tool gets rid of all advertisements and non-related pop-ups. This is extremely helpful for students who struggle to stay focused and tend to fall off track. There are no distractions, and the only content is the article.

Print-friendly: this removes all of the pictures and only prints out the article itself. It is helpful when you strictly want to focus on the text and not outside information and images.

Finder: This tool allows you to type in a word and find it within the article instead of having to search through the entire article. This is extremely useful when there is a large article and you are wanting to find a specific section.

Here is a short video with additional information about tools that could benefit your career!

Today I will be writing about some tools that I found were best for students, Technology is one of the best tools that you can use in the classroom and even though some schools do not allow cellphones it may be the best bet to allow them to have fun and use the cellphone for educational purpose to keep the children active and paying attention. The next is having the children support each other this is important because you need to make sure that all of the students get together and are comfortable around each other. The next is giving students the information that they need like certain places or websites they can go to, to help them and give them ideas. The next tool is coding, coding gives the chance for the children to show their creativity and it shows what student is into those type of things and what child is not very interested. The next is writing assistant, this is helpful because if you can communicate with someone to help you it is easier to finish assignments, but also some children just copy and paste other than reading it and explaining it in their own words. The last tool is comments printer, I say this because when a student writes a essay or something of that sort, a teacher can leave comments to help a student to make their assignments better and for the student to get a better understanding.

By: Mia Lopez

For students who struggle with reading, writing, taking notes, and managing their time, the Wellness Center has put together a list of products and applications that can be useful with anyone who has a disability. These tools listed below include apps that may be downloaded for free or at a very low cost from the Apple and Android app stores. This blog post focuses on the following Audio/Speech and Reading applications that are offered in the Accessibility Toolbox on Stockton University’s Website under the Wellness center tab.

https://stockton.edu/wellness-center/disability-services/accessibility-toolbox.html

Here some Audio/ Speech Applications:

1. QuickVoice Recorder: A useful tool that consists of one-touch recording that syncs recordings to computers for a few seconds or hours during use.
2. Speechify: (Text to Audiobook) Creates audiobooks out of any material, then listen to any pdf or highlighted text with just a tap of a button.
3. NaturalReader Text to Speech:  This accessibility tool converts Microsoft Word documents, PDF files and e-books into spoken words. Then, assists students who want to hear the flow of documents written before submitting the document.
4. ListNote Speech-to-text Notes: Takes notes as you speak.
5. Speak It!: Documents, emails, PDF’s, and web pages can be placed into this app and the text will be repeated back. After, the app will create audio files which can be sent via email.
6. Dragon Dictation: This awesome tool dictates emails, documents, and status updates on social networking apps with Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s voice recognition.

Reading Applications:

7. Easy Reader: This resource can make books more accessible for individuals with dyslexia or visually impaired.

8. Learning Ally: Through a Learning Ally membership, you will have access to nearly thousands of titles, including the world’s largest library of audio textbooks.

These are some accessibility tools that are offered to Stockton students

1. In Class

This tool is beneficial to use for organizing class schedules, video notes, audio notes, or photo notes.

2. MyHomework student planner

This tool allows you to track classroom assignments, homework, and tests in a calendar display. The calendar provided within, can also be synced to other plate forms!

3. C-Pen Reader

A C-Pen reader is a portable device that reads printed text aloud with an English, Spanish or French human-like digital voice. This could be used for assignments, reading, exams, ect.

4. Glean

Glean is a tool that can be used to help students capture, organize, and review information more effectively. This is to create meaningful notes from, lectures, meetings, or independent work.

5. JAWS

JAWS is a tool used to read allow text on a screen. This is to help anyone whose vision prevents them from being able to see the screen and obtain information visually, this allows them to obtain information through hearing.

6. Mathshare

Mathshare is a tool used to breakdown math problems in parts to organize the problem and enhance focus.

7. Easy Reader

This tool helps those who have dyslexia, low vision, or blindness by reading aloud text information.

The tools that I found most helpful are Glean, Zoom Text, C-Pen reader, Thunder T3, Fm Systems, JAWS, and Dragon Naturally Speaking. I believe all of these are the most helpful our of the rest. All seven if these tools are great examples of assistive technologies that are made to support people with disabilities. They are helpful because they allow these people to engage more effectively in daily life situations. These resources address a variety of requirements, providing specialized assistance for people with learning, physical, visual, or aural impairments. For instance, ZoomText helps persons with vision impairments read and magnify material on the screen, and FM systems help people with hearing loss hear better in noisy surroundings. Blind people may work, learn, and communicate digitally thanks to tools like JAWS and Thunder T3, which help them navigate computers efficiently.

These technologies can also help people become more independent and confident. This can possibly allow them to become better at performing tasks that they might otherwise need help with. Dragon Naturally Speaking can help people with physical disabilities by allowing hands-free computer use through voice commands. C-Pen Reader is kind of similar by helping with literacy and understanding by reading printed text out loud to people with dyslexia or other language difficulties. By providing equal access to communication and information, these technologies help people with disabilities reach their full potential. This improves their quality of life and promotes inclusion in social, professional, and academic environments.