The document discusses a mobile app called TRANSIT that aims to improve parent-teacher communication during meetings when there is a language barrier. The app allows both parents and teachers to select common statements and questions in their own language that are then voiced to the other party in their language. It seeks to address the problems that arise during such meetings when one side cannot understand the other and parents feel disempowered due to lack of communication. Mock-ups of the app design are presented as the proposed solution.
4. At parents evening where there is a language barrier, the situation can be taken advantage of by a student/child. It can also leave parents feeling disempowered Problem Statement
Hello and welcome to our presentation. We ’ re from central foundation girls school and today we ’ re going to talk to you about transit
Situation: At least once a year parents evening occurs. In Mile end a majority of the parents speak Bengali and struggle with english. Most teachers although fluent in English cannot speak any Bengali, this results in students translating between the two.
This video illustrate a typical problem that can occur during a parents evening. Please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LPiZqQKYlk to see our situation/problem video 0.56mins long
The problem is that if a teacher and a parent have no way to communicate then they can be taken advantage of by a student/child. This can also leave parents with a low selfesteem because they feel unable to help their children in their schoolwork Current technology solution don ’ t help as Bengali parents dislike technology because it is in English and they do not understand it… So we wanted to see if we could come up with a solution…
Our school is in Tower Hamlets which had a large population of Bangladeshi people living in it and while the second generation can all speak English fluently, most parents lack this ability. From a survey of 20, 100% said they had experienced translation problems with parents several times and that they all also believe better communication can improve parent involvement in education.
Knowing that there was such a high level of people experiencing this problem and that parents don ’ t like technology, we asked.. How can we use mobile technology to improve parent teacher communication?
We decided we would create an app that contains the main English and Bengali phrases that come up during a conversation between parent and teacher. The teacher would be using the app which would mean parents who dislike technology could still benefit.
This is a mock up of how we would like our app to look. As you can tell this is just a foundation for us to build on and over the next few weeks we will be working with professionals on our user interface design. The app will be user friendly however so it is simple to use
This is as example of some pre-recorded phrases that will be built into the app, so a Bengali parent could select what they would like to say to the teacher and the app would translate it into English for them. On the right the teacher would select the English phrase and it would translate it into Bengali for the parent to hear.
We gained traction on our Twitter campaign, pitched at a local event and received press coverage from BBC London