Changing languages in your digital classroom can be a really fun way to practice your students’ language skills. For example, if lessons and online learning usually happen in Italian, why not give your group a little challenge by switching COOL to English during their English class?
Learning a new language is fun and exciting, and it even enhances student performance across the curriculum. Of course, having the ability to switch languages is not only beneficial – it can also make students who are new to your class’s working language feel welcome and adapt more easily.
Perhaps your school has welcomed students from the Ukraine? In that case, giving those students the possibility to participate in lessons in the language they know can make a big difference!
In the following steps, we’ll show you how to switch to Ukrainian (or another language) in your COOL space via the Chrome browser. You can perform these steps for individual students on their devices or even change the language settings for the whole group at once.
How to switch languages in Chrome
If you use Chrome or work on Chromebooks, you can display all the settings and menus plus your entire COOL Platform in your preferred language. In this case, we want to switch to Ukrainian. So how do we do that?
- Open the web browser on your Chromebook and click on the three dots in the top right corner. You’re now in the Settings menu.
Halfway down the menu, click on ‘Advanced’. You will see ‘Languages’ appear.
- Click on ‘Languages’ to open the menu for setting the language you want to display in your browser. At the top, you’ll see a drop-down menu indicating that your browser is currently displayed in the default language selected for your school.
By opening this menu, you will see a number of options for other languages. But Ukrainian isn’t listed! Now what? If your desired language isn’t listed, click on ‘Add languages’. This will take you to the full collection of languages available for Chrome. Quite a list!
Please note: While Chrome supports 47 languages, COOL is only available in the following 8 languages: English, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Euskara (Basque), Suomi and Ukrainian. If you choose a different language, your Chrome browser will display in that language, but COOL will continue to run in your default language.
- Either scroll through the list to find Ukrainian, or search for ‘Ukrainian’ in the top right corner. Once you’ve found it, select Ukrainian and click ‘Add’. Now Ukrainian is listed in your language options.
- Next, click on the three gray dots to the right of your desired language to open a new menu.
There, check ‘Display Google Chrome in this language’. This will move Ukrainian to the top of your list of languages and you will be notified that Ukrainian will be used for Google Chrome. For your changes to take effect, Google Chrome needs to be restarted.
🎉 Congratulations! You have successfully set Ukrainian as a language in Chrome. Both the Chrome browser and COOL are now displayed in Ukrainian and your student or group is all set to start learning in this new language!
But… How do I change my Chrome language back?
Want to take a break from Ukrainian? Then it’s helpful to know how to switch back. The nice thing about Chrome is that the order of the menu options doesn’t change, even if the language is different!
No matter what language you choose, ‘Advanced’ and ‘Languages’ are still in the same place in your settings menu. The icon (a globe with meridians) is also still the same. This makes it a little easier to find your way back and saves you from having to constantly copy and paste the text into Google Translate.
Since the order of options hasn’t changed, even though you’ve changed the language, this means that Ukrainian is now at the top of the list of languages and your original language is just below it as the second option.
So to switch back to your original language:
→ Click on the three gray dots to the right of the second option in your language settings. A menu will pop up where you can select the box where you see ‘Google Chrome’ written in the Latin alphabet.
→ Click on the button with the blue text to restart Chrome for your desired change to take effect.
Et voilà! Chrome is back in your original language – and so is the COOL Platform. Promised.
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