Enhance Learning with PowerPoint's Subtitle Feature for Inclusive Education (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, I was working on a PowerPoint presentation and I stumbled on a brilliant free feature that will be a game-changer if you've got learners with a hearing impairment or who speak English as an additional language. Let me show you what it is in this month's Tuesday Tech Tip. Okay, I'm going to get straight to it. PowerPoint has a subtitle feature and it's pretty accurate. I'll quickly run through how to get it working and then show you how you can use it to create blended learning materials for your learners. Let's take a typical session where you've got a group of learners that you're presenting to. You talk through your PowerPoint, you ask questions and your learners take notes. But one of your learners has a hearing impairment and isn't catching everything you're saying. We need to ensure all of our learners have the same opportunity to make progress in our sessions and it's not just hearing impairment. It's likely we've got learners in our sessions who speak English as a second language and issues around understanding what we're saying can become barriers to learning and making progress. Well, by turning on PowerPoint's subtitle feature, you can have live subtitles play alongside your presentation. Just go to the Slideshow tab and on the right here, click Subtitle Settings. Choose your spoken language and the language you want the subtitles to be. We'll keep ours set to English. All we have to do now is select the Always Use Subtitles button and play the presentation. A barrier to learning is anything that prevents learners from fully engaging in their learning. During training, most learners have to face several different barriers to learning. Think for example, a student who has left their notes at home or an employee who hasn't completed the preparation work given to them prior to a workshop. Or a learner who cannot complete their final online assessment because of a distraction filled workplace. All of these can be considered barriers to learning. When learners cannot fully participate in a learning activity, they cannot be truly engaged in learning. As you can see, PowerPoint is doing a pretty good job of picking up what I'm saying. There might be the odd misinterpreted word, but overall it's pretty accurate. Now here's where things get really interesting. Let's say you've got one learner whose first language is Polish and another whose first language is Portuguese. And you want to give all of your learners a voiced over PowerPoint for them to work through outside of your session as part of some flip class work. Well, using software such as Screencast-O-Matic, you can record your presentation as you usually would, but now you can take that video recording and embed it back into PowerPoint. The learners could then choose a subtitle language from the list, and there's loads to choose from, and play the video back with their preferred language subtitles. A barrier to learning is anything that prevents learners from fully engaging in their learning. You could even create a screencast again with the subtitles playing and really tailor your videos to the needs and preferences of your learners. So there you have it. Subtitle content to ensure all of your learners have the opportunity to make progress within your sessions. I'll see you next month for another Tuesday Tech Tip.