Thing 12

I have to say that I have found the last few things VERY easy, and, I am really kicking myself right now for not having done all of this sooner. I think, though, that all of this is coming so easy because I already had a Google account, and, I'm always logged in to it. So, all I do is click the link, and, that's it.

 Being a language major, I must say that Google translate is an amazing resource. There are some things that it can't do, though. The biggest one is understand context. A lot of times you can type something in and it spits something back at you that it might as well have not even translated. In other words, it helps to have some kind of general understanding of the language itself before you even open it up. One example of this is that I have a friend that was a Latin major. Granted, that is a dead language, but, one would think that Google translate wouldn't care one way or another if it was dead or alive and kicking. Well,... not so much. She said that Google translate is terrible at translating Latin. From my own experience, it's not all that great at translating English into any language. In order for it to be right, the order of the English that is typed has to be the same as the sentence structure you are translating to. It has gotten a lot better over the last year or so with French. But, it still doesn't do too well with Spanish. As far as Latin goes, my friend is no longer in school, so, there is no follow up to that one. The problem with using Google translate as an educational tool is that it can make you kind of lazy if you aren't careful. It's really easy to fall into that kind of trap with something that easy to use. I don't use it as much now as I used to just because all it does is give me a word. It doesn't help me remember that word or how to use it. Plus, in the case of Spanish and Latin, it often comes out wrong. Granted, that is mostly due to operator error, but, another thing it doesn't always do is explain how to fix what's wrong or why it is wrong in the first place. I will say, however, for someone just needing to know a word or short phrase, Google translate est très bien!

I set up an alert for the Green Bay Packers draft news. I love my Packers. I do my best to keep up with their draft picks, but, some years, I get too caught up in more important things to remember to check in on them. Thanks to Google alerts, I will now be able to keep tack of who they are leaning toward picking up which will help paint the picture of what they might be able to do next year. As far as the benefits to education that Google alerts brings to the table, it can help teachers stay up to date with current trends in education and areas related to education. Just as an experiment, I set up an alert for education. The first site that came up was an article about how the senate GOP's education bill has faced a lot of hardship as of late because of cost concerns and thoughts that education has undergone a lot of changes too recently to be making any more just yet. So, I guess what I'm saying is that it's more for the teacher than it is the student. But, what benefits the teacher usually benefits the student too.