Thing # 12: There Is More to Google Than Meets the Eye

I have Google's search engine and Scholar countless of times, but I have not tried its Translate tool. Typically, I am pretty wary of translating websites because they tend to translate word for word and completely miss the context of the original text. Translating is not easy when there can be underlying meanings to what is written. To try it out, I thought it would be funny to have APSU's 23 Things website translated into Spanish. Like I said, I have not used this tool before today, so I was curious as to how the process would work. It was easy. All I had to do was copy the website address and paste it into the left text box. Then, I had to indicate which language the original text was. After that, on the right side of the window I selected the language I wanted it to be translated into. The last thing I had to do was click the blue translate button and wait a few seconds for the results. Surprisingly, Google Translate did a pretty good job in its translation.  I found only a few minor grammatical errors after scanning the first page of the site. The overall context was still there and it was easy to read. I will use this tool again. I will have to say that in teaching Spanish, I am wary of my students using translating sites because they will come to rely on them too much when composing sentences and not try to figure it out for themselves. I'll have to think about this some more. I do not want to completely avoid the pink elephant in the room.

The other Google tool I explored was Google Books. I love to read and am looking for some new books to read for leisure. I explored the site and found some books I was interested in that were samples. I added those to my library. I am excited about trying out sample books. I have never read one before. I did have problems once I selected some books to find out more about them. For some reason, the site kept loading for more than four minutes. I got impatient and went back to my search. This happened for more than four or five books. I'll look for those books some other time. It would be a good to use Google Books in my classroom if my students had a Nexus tablet so they could access Google Books in class. I know someone that has a Nexus tablet and I found out about this possibility from them.