Surprising "Tech Essentials" of an ELL Specialist

This week I was thrilled to see an article come across my Google alerts titled “ELL Specialist: These are My ‘Tech Essentials’”.  I thought that I had finally found the perfect article that would give me all the answers on the absolute best ways to use technology to help my students learn English.  As I began reading, I was even more convinced that I had struck gold.  The ELL Specialist the article is referring to is the administrator for multilingual programs at Beaverton Public Schools in Beaverton, OR.  She is responsible for the education of 5,000 English language learners (ELLs), and those students speak more than 95 different languages.  This person obviously is an expert and has experience to know what she is talking about!

As I continued to read, I discovered that the entire school system is something called “Future Ready,” which means that the teachers and students are using technology in some form in every single lesson.  Teachers are expected to design lessons that are both innovative and engaging.  “Perfect!” I thought.  “They’ve definitely got to have some great tools to share with this focus on technology.”  I scanned down and saw three bullet points.  I was a bit surprised that she had narrowed her essentials down to only three things.  My surprise did not end as I discovered what those things are.

First, she named something that I had not heard of before, and we have not discussed in our CALL class.  Every ELL classroom in their district has something called Lightspeed Redcat audio systems.  This is an amplification system that is used so that teachers can use natural voices and not have to project so much throughout the day.  The justification is that it is important that ELLs are able to hear the teacher clearly.

The second essential was most surprising to me, mostly because I consider it a normal part of every classroom.  She named teacher laptops as another “tech essential”.  They are necessary for ELL teachers especially because of the need for creating lessons and presentations with lots of visuals.  Again, I certainly agree with this assessment, but was surprised to see it included because I feel like it should almost be a given these days.  I was looking for something a little more cutting edge.

Finally, she named iPads as another essential for ELL classrooms.  As I do not have access to these, or any one-to-one device for my students, I would have to agree that something like this would be ideal for my ELLs.  She pointed out that iPads are very useful to help connect students to their native languages.  They use Google translate to adapt the keyboard feature to put the English alphabet underneath the students’ native alphabet, which I think could be very helpful, especially for languages such as Ukranian that do not use the Roman alphabet. 

Overall, I definitely agree with her assessment that these three tools could be considered “tech essentials” for an ELL classroom.  I do admit to being a bit disappointed that they were not the magic solutions I was hoping for when I first came across the article.  As with any type of technology we try to implement in our classrooms, they will only be effective if we – the educators – are knowledgeable about how to use them effectively.