How do you say, "I don't speak Lao"?

There's no doubt that educational technology is a boon to teaching English as a Second Language. But let's take it a step further: what about using technology for bilingual education?

We're seeing a lot of students who come to the US illiterate in their native language, usually because of lack of schooling. Yet native language literacy is one of the most important predictors for academic success and for speed of learning English. Kids who are illiterate in their native language take a LOT longer to catch up to English-speaking peers. So why don't we offer more native language literacy classes to English language learners? Usually it's because we don't have qualified staff, and most schools have ELLs with multiple native languages. So what do you do with an English-only teacher and a class with kids who speak Spanish, Russian, Hmong, and Creole?

Enter an ed tech solution!

How about creating a virtual bilingual school for K12 students, facilitated by competent native speakers? Students would have a chance to interact with other native speakers in an academic environment and would develop literacy skills (and content knowledge) that they could then transfer to their study of English. Even if we could offer this for only an hour or two a day, it would be a big help to our students.

There might not be enough speakers of Creole in one school to offer a class, but if you connected several Creole learners from across a state you'd have yourself a nice little program. And within each school there are probably enough ELLs to offer a supervised setting for them to take their virtual classes in the same room at the same time.