Google Translate and Google Lens apps

[ddelboccio]

Hello all.  I wanted to bounce this off of this community to see if anyone has any answers/suggestions.

My district is grades K-8, where K-2 use iPads and 3-8 use chromebooks.

We have a lot of non English speaking students in our district and we have been using the Google Translate iOS app on the iPad to do language translations.  The Google Translate iOS & Android app appears to have Google lens built into it because you can turn the camera on, hold it up to a piece of paper with any text and it will translate the text it sees in real time to another language using the camera.  Very cool!

I was hoping to do the same thing using our chromebooks by pushing out the Google Translate android app to them.  The trouble is, apparently android aps on chromebooks do not have system access to the chromebook's camera because that specific feature is unavailable when I tried.  The Translate android app just acts like the camera is not there,

Is anyone else aware of such a chromebook option to accomplish the same thing?

Holding up a piece of text to the camera and having it translated into another language?

[LydiaVanThiel]

Hi @ddelboccio 

This isn't a problem that 'tech' can solve.  It's a policy issue.  Both in relation to how decisions are made as to who gets what AND in relation to supporting students with learning needs.  

Making blanket decisions regarding who gets what type of device will always leave out some children.  Any classroom with EAL (English as an Additional Language) should have some iPads on hand for translation purposes just as you described ... or even better, let students learn to use their phone to do this.  

Teachers working with students have a responsibility to ensure materials are in a format that students can use.  This means the teacher should scan and ocr the material for the student.  The school should provide digital tools and training to then use these resources.  Using an iPad with Google Translate is just the quickest, easiest way to do this.  Gives the student some control and encourages the student to only use it when they need to use it.

The easiest thing for the teacher is to take photos of the pages and share with the student.  We have Google Photos turned 'off' for students, so this also means the teacher has to download and save to Drive -- then share with students.  I did a test of it.  It then can be opened on a Chromebook using the Google Lens on a new tab.  It was a bit slow ... but works.