Last summer at NECC in San Antonio, TX, we listened to the keynote
on the second day and were inspired to go beyond what we were already
doing in education. The keynote was a pair of teachers from Canada who
were not necessarily comfortable with technology but they were burning
out in their classrooms. They learned about Skype and about iEarn and were refreshed! Their classroom activities were renewed as was their spirit!
What they were talking about is the latest buzz word in education,
global connections. Teachers are connecting with other classrooms
around the world! The tool of choice seems to be Skype. Skype
is a free download. With this program you can instant message but you
can also make audio and video calls to another computer for FREE! You
can also make audio calls to landlines and cellphones for a small fee. Skype is also a tool that you can use on any platform; Mac, PC, or Linux.
How do you find schools to share such a connection? One of the most
important issues is having a purpose in your connection. You want to
make sure this is a learning experience for students. Using iEarn,
schools can find projects to participate in or post their own project.
The projects come in all shapes and sizes. There are projects from the
US and some from Pakistan.
What equipment will you need? You will need a computer with an
Internet connection. You will also need speakers and a microphone. If
you are going to do a video conference, you will need to have a camera.
Many of the Mac's come with built-in cameras which work very well. Web cams are not very expensive and can be picked up at your local Wal-Mart, Target, or KMart.
Keep in mind, you get what you pay for in a web cam. If you have a
regular video camera, you can plug that in and use it as a web cam!
That adds the zoom and pan actions into your video conference.
This is really an exciting tool for education. Even here at the ESU, we are using Skype to answer teacher questions and other tools such as Adobe Connect Pro
to do workshops and trouble shoot technical issues. Go home today and
try these ideas for yourself! Some of you may be able to try this right
away with kids but many of us need to try it for ourselves first. It is
a great tool to visit those grandkids or children. Use Skype to find a college friend and visit with them. See what YOU think...
Here is a link to the presentation I did yesterday for the
Library/Media Specialists group on global connections! It contains more
links to other sites such as iEarn! http://tinyurl.com/globetips