I use Skype almost every day in my personal and professional life. It's free and easy to use and so personal! My sister and I cook together with our laptops on in our kitchens, chatting while doing our "chores". She's in Melbourne and I'm in Edmonton! My nieces and nephews play imaginary games with me through the computer screen, feeding me imaginary cake or giving me presents!More and more we are integrating Skype into teaching in schools and higher education.
Rather than create my own set of "how to" instructions here, which is time-consuming, I will link to Blogs where others have already done the hard work. Here are two links to follow if you want to learn more about setting up Skype and want to link with others who are already successfully doing this.
The Edublogger has a "how to set up skype" guide, followed by discussions, this is based on higher education settings.
An online e-journey with generation Y tells us about their experiences using Skype in their schools
4 comments:
Its so true - so simple to use even my technophobe dad can use it! The conference and chat facilities are great too.
Thanks for telling your readers about my post on Skype. Hopefully it helps them with getting started using it. I also have been known to cook dinner will talking on my Macbook :)
I've also set up a page on the blog for people to share their contact details if they are interested in connecting with other classrooms.
Hi Sue and Claire, I think that Skype has come along so fast over the past two years. Haven't they kept it simple too, press green to start a call and press red to finish a call and if you feel lonely, call the test skype girl, she's just delightful! I'll sign up on your blog Sue as I might find some more useful connections for my OT teaching here in Canada :-)
Have to agree Anne - Skype has come a long way. Funnily once I was a total Skype person whereas now I switch between it and Gtalk depending on what I'm doing.
Being able to search previous chat conversation makes Gtalk better for chat. While Skpe is my preferred for connecting in classrooms.
Thanks for adding your details to the list. It's growing. Bit slower than normal only because it's Christmas time. Must get back to updating the class blog list as that is big.
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