I was very excited and relieved to have a snow day but also disappointed because I was looking forward to attending an in-person teacher presentation by Dr. Alec Couros called Harnessing the Power of AI in K-12 Education: Opportunities and Challenges. But then, one of the wonderful opportunities of technology – the Zoom call – brought this speaker to interested teachers after all! Dr. Couros had so much to say about AI – mostly the positives and exciting opportunities that it has the power to bring. But one of the sites he mentioned – HeyGen Labs – really caught my attention because of its ability to translate video to many languages. I immediately thought that welcome videos in various languages would be a great thing to post to welcome the newcomer learners of English to my class. So, I gave it a try.

HeyGen Labs Experiment

Although this program looks great, without a paid subscription you have to use credits of which you do get some free to try. So, I made a super short welcome video as a test. It sat in line to be translated to Korean, queuing at 1025 which took about an hour. As I experimented with translating my video to other languages I noticed that the time in the queue depended on the time of day – some times busier than other I suppose. Also I could only create one per day with my free credits, so it took some time to get videos for all of the languages I have in my class. Here are a few examples and the feedback I got when I showed my students….

Original Video in English: – the feedback I got from family and students included: ‘That doesn’t look like you!’ – I think it was because I was wearing different glasses from usual.

Korean AI Translation: – feedback included: ‘That’s not your real voice’, and ‘the last line isn’t translated properly – it sounds like you are studying as a student yourself’.

Mandarin AI Translation: feedback included: ‘Yes, that’s amazing, you are speaking Mandarin, the translation is clear’ and ‘that looks much older than you’ (Happy to hear I usually look younger!)

Arabic AI Translation: feedback included: ‘How did you do that??’ and ‘When did you learn Arabic?’ – I had to re-explain for them to understand that I wasn’t really speaking.

Portuguese AI Translation: feedback included: ‘Yes, you are speaking my language! What is this program?’

I still have a few more languages to test, I love seeing the light in my students’ eyes and the smiles when they see me ‘speaking’ their languages. So, although I don’t know that this would ever replace learning a language completely, it feels like an attempt to honor a little of someone else’s culture – like trying their food or asking about their hometown.

What Else….

I discovered that each day you can earn more credits on HeyGen, so next I created an avatar welcome with a bitmoji I love to use. I couldn’t think of what to record on the spot to use my true voice, so I typed the welcome message and here is what was produced:

It sounds pretty smooth for text to speech!

Wait There’s More….

Then, while playing with the avatars, I asked it to create one based on the criteria: green eyes, greying brown short hair, black rimmed glasses, 46 year old female. And this is what I got, not sure I’m loving it…I feel like she is closer to 60….think I’ll stick with bitmoji!

Conclusions….

As fun as this is, I’ve run out of time to play. But wow! Initial thoughts in the name of education:

-students who have a speech challenge can type what they want said and produce a video in their language or another, with different gender, tone, and accents available

-a new multi-modal way to interact with a ‘pen-pal’ from another country

-not sure if it is on the website but if it could translate to sign language that would be great for accessibility in a classroom

-recorded videos work great for a flipped classroom

-the avatar feature could enhance student engagement and make lessons interactive

And I’m sure there are so many other ways this could be educationally beneficial. I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg! A versatile tool that can support language learning, accessibility, and global collaboration, I recommend checking it out.