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We live in an increasingly interconnected world. Information
technology is allowing individuals, organizations, businesses,
and governments to communicate instantaneously across vast distances,
and at the same time, immigration is making American society itself
more ethnically and culturally diverse.
Both of these trends are putting pressure on schools. Educators
need to find new ways to communicate with parents of students
who speak only limited English, and they must learn how to offer
all students opportunities to collaborate with their peers from
other cultures. Fortunately, those tasks are made easier by a
variety of multilingual web and computer-based technologies. These
free services can translate online, search foreign-language web
sites, and help forge partnerships between U.S. schools and their
counterparts around the world.
The need for multilingual communication will continue to grow
over the next half century. By 2050, Hispanics, non-Hispanic blacks,
Asians, and Native Americans will account for approximately half
the U.S. population, nearly double the current ratio of 27 percent.
Hispanics will comprise nearly a quarter of the population and
Asian Americans more than 10 percent. Clearly, schools will have
a responsibility to communicate to large groups of linguistically
diverse parents and students as well as to other members of their
communities.
The Internet is a tremendous resource for accomplishing this
task. According to Market Data Retrieval, 90 percent of schools
currently have access to the Internet. As the Internet continues
to grow, more teachers and administrators will begin developing
web pages that contain information about a school, a curriculum,
or other topics. School leaders can offer limited-English-speaking
parents access to this information by directing their attention
to several free online translators.
Translation services
A recently released free online translation service, Free
Translation by Transparent Language, provides text and web
page translation from English to Spanish, French, German, Italian,
and Portuguese as well as from Spanish, French, and German to
English.
Because these translations are created by software packages
rather than human translators, absolute accuracy might be an issue.
But if they are used to share a general understanding of the material,
they can be an effective support system for learning and communication.
Another free service that provides a more visually appealing
translation is Alta Vista Babelfish,
which can translate entire web pages or inputted text. As with
other services, this translation offers approximately six paragraphs
of text per translation.
An Israeli company, Babylon.com Ltd., can provide instantaneous
dictionary translations from English to Spanish, French, German,
Japanese, Italian, Hebrew, Portuguese, or Dutch. With Babylon,
second-language students possess a computer dictionary that works
online with the web and with e-mail as well as offline with word
processing programs, spreadsheets, or any other text-integrated
program. One advantage is that students don't have to load a CD-ROM
or web page dictionary for each word they want to translate. The
service allows users to right-click on a word on any web page
to receive an immediate definition and translation. Babylon appears
to hold great potential for Hispanic and Asian American ESL students.
It is currently available for free
download (for a limited time).
In addition, commercial translation services are also available
for schools. For example there are software packages that produce
student registration forms, applications for free and reduced-price
lunch, and other commonly used forms in various languages.
Multilingual search engines can be used interchangeably with
online translation services to locate curriculum resources that
support learning in a student's mother tongue. After translating
a term into the other language, a teacher can use these search
engines to locate materials.
One such search engine is AltaVista
Digital, which can search for web sites in 25 languages. Another
is Euroseek, which can find
resources in 29 languages, including Welsh, Bulgarian, Turkish,
and Macedonian.
There are many other search engines that support language resources
on the web. School administrators and teachers should work to
identify the languages used by their students at home and look
for search engines in these languages.
Worldwide partners
In addition to translation, multilingual resources can help
schools and classrooms build partnerships around the world. In
fact, American educators can learn a great deal from the collaboration
now taking place between teachers in various countries in the
European Union. One example is European
Schoolnet (EUN), whose object is to promote the use of information
and communications technologies in European schools. This organization
uses information technology to support teachers' professional
development, foster cooperation among European schools, and offer
other pedagogical and information services.
For these European teachers to communicate and collaborate,
they must speak with each other in one of the many languages of
the European Union: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese,
Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Greek, and Italian. Of course, many
European teachers are multilingual, enhancing the likelihood of
communication.
In the United States, on the other hand, relatively few educators
have the language skills to engage in a global curriculum partnership.
But by using web-based technology, U.S. teachers can work with
foreign teachers to enhance the learning opportunities for their
students. In fact, some are already involved in an international
collaboration project through an online virtual collaboration
project called I*EARN, or the International
Education and Resource Network.
I*EARN is located in more than 60 nations, including the United
States, and works in 29 languages. It describes itself as "a global
community of youth, teachers, and youth service leaders committed
to using telecommunications to make a meaningful difference in
the world as part of the educational process." Many I*EARN projects
support extensive language and cultural understanding.
Sharing stories and games
Two of these projects give students a chance to exchange information
about folktales and folk games native to their countries. In the
Folk Games Project, students from Romania, Russia, Kazakhstan,
the United States, Latvia, Spain, Argentina, Italy, Lithuania,
Uganda, and Croatia share a variety of games: funny games, games
focusing on nature, games related to human life, and tongue twisters.
The project began last fall and will run through March 31. An
accompanying folktales project brings together students in Argentina,
Australia, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands,
Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and the United States. To find out
about participating schools, visit the school database.
Multilingual software can help educators in programs such as
I*EARN communicate across language barriers.
"The main difficulty we face when working internationally is
the language barrier," says Felix Cardozo, a teacher in the I*EARN
project from Salta, Argentina. "To help with the language issue,
we used online translators and Babylon."
"Language has always been the main barrier for participation
in international projects," adds Marcelo Duran, of La Toma, San
Luis, Argentina. "Personally, I have used Babelfish online from
AltaVista. My students search for and participate in global projects
in I*EARN."
As these online services show, information technology is helping
people around the world push the boundaries of space and time.
The growing global economy is accelerating the rate of travel,
both virtual and real. Companies are expanding and relocating,
requiring their workers to communicate in a variety of languages.
The 21st century is full of promise for a wave of information-savvy
young people. The challenges for schools is to offer these students
multilingual opportunities that will prepare them to be effective
information-age workers and global citizens.
Joe Slowinski is an educational technology policy
analyst and associate instructor in the Indiana University system,
where he teaches courses in computers in education and the social
foundations of education. He also serves on the editorial review
board of Information Technology, Education and Society.
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