This week, I wanted to provide some resources both for you and your students about how to add captions to videos/presentations, how to translate captions, and how to translate websites. Of course, computer-based captions and translations are NOT ideal or perfect by any means, but they are available on-demand for free, so there is definitely some value there. Additionally, any captions or translations are better than NO captions or translations, so it's at least worth a try.
Most of my explanations are in video form, so I'll just provide the links here with a few written details as needed.
For teachers: how to upload captions to a video. This is a fair amount of extra work, because you have to create a written script first (or after) in order to upload the captions, but if you have a short video or one where it's really important for students to understand, it might be worth it. Karen Cervantes and I also were brainstorming how to upload caption tracks without having to write out a script first or transcribe what you said, and we had the idea of using a separate Chromebook or your phone to do voice-to-text as you are speaking (many programs do this, including Google Docs: just go to Tools --> Voice typing) and then use that as your caption track. It wouldn't be perfect or have punctuation but it would be way better than nothing. I haven't tried that yet, so if you do, let me know how it goes!
For teachers: adding captions to Google Slides. When you are doing a Google Slides presentation, you can turn on captions that will automatically show up on the screen as you're speaking. If you're doing this during an in-person class, you either need to be close to your laptop or be using a microphone plugged into your laptop (or maybe one of those lapel microphones would amplify your voice enough for the computer to pick it up? Someone try it and let me know!), but it would be GREAT if you're recording a Screencastify video or sharing a Google Slides presentation on your screen during a Google Meet.
For students: how to turn on subtitles for videos. If you just create a video and don't add caption tracks, then this won't work. However, it does work for many videos already uploaded to YouTube by other sources.
For students: how to translate a website in Google Chrome. A cool feature that many students don't know about!
For students: how to use Google Meet. I actually created this video for parents to show them how to use all the different features of Google Meet, but if you jump to 3:40, it shows you how to turn on captions during a video meeting. Then whoever is talking will automatically have captions at the bottom of the screen! You can suggest students to use this if you use Google Meet with your students.