Just a bit of background information on Skype (found at their website):
Skype is a free program that enables individuals and businesses to communicate with others for free! Some of its features are:
-Voice and video calls to anyone else on Skype
-Conference calls with three or more people
-Instant messaging, file transfer and screen sharing
-Talk face-to-face with friends, family and colleagues.
-Share a smile, blow a kiss, explain an idea or just gaze longingly
It all began in 2003 and during busy times can have up to 23 million 'online' users all at the same time!
So how can this tool be effectively used within a classroom?
After doing some research I came across this website of '50 Awesome Ways to use Skype in the Classroom': they have some very interesting stories about how teachers used Skype within their classroom. However the majority of the ways can be summed up into two points:
- Communicating with other schools, students, children either overseas or within Australia (yet in a different climate area) (e.g. sister schools overseas, Brisbane school could skype a coastal school in NSW).
- Communicating with members a communities around the world or locally that can help assist with the students learning within the particular topic being taught at the time (e.g. When implementing a unit on farming, the class could skype a farm to ask questions about the job, crop etc)
While these ideas are fantastic and the students would be very engaged and interested, the teacher would need to find a suitable guestspeakers/interviewee's and arrange a date and time that would suit students, teacher and guest.
I personally love the idea of using Skype within the classroom during appropriate, relevant topics and I look forward to implementing my ideas in the future.
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