Thing #3 - Skype

I believe there are many different uses for Skype in the classroom. One that immediately popped to mind, even before I read any posts or articles, is collaboration. I can see students talking with students in other countries using Skype. There is a butterfly migration project on the internet - how wonderful it would be for teachers and students that are participating in the project to Skype each other, share their information and projects with each other, and track the migration of the butterflies by talking to each other.

Personally, I have used Skype as an educator to participate in conferences with other educators. If we as teachers, benefit from face to face interaction, how much more will our students benefit. The other benefit of Skype, there is no cost. This allows teachers to connect their students to experts in their studies. Where a school might not have the money for a teacher to take students on a field trip, an expert could Skype into the classroom and answer questions students might have as well as impart inforamation that could be immensly helpful. Further, experts who can afford to take thirty mins to an hour to talk with a class might not have two or more hours that it would take to drive to the school, do the talk, and then drive back to work. Businesses are much more likely to encourage such interaction if the time away from work can be cut down - Skype does that. A further benefit of this, our students will be using Skype - or something similar - in their own work environment. This only helps to pave the way. This also encourages collaboration and group projects that will also be a large part of our students working lives.