In Virginia’s Albemarle County district, Fisher encourages her teachers to use Skype and other collaboration tools because she believes there is no equivalent for giving students an audience for their work. She compares it to a team sport, in which the Skype activity is game day, and other days of class spent in preparation are like after-school practices.
“The fact that there’s a game on Friday night ramps up practice on Monday afternoon,” says Fisher. “When you look at what the Web allows us to do, every kid in your classroom can have a worldwide audience. That’s true for writing, and that’s true for some of these oral-presentation types of things,” such as videoconferencing.
Roland Gesthuizen on 12 Apr 11Good news for teachers looking to collaborate with their colleagues in other parts of the world. Skype has a new free service just for educators called Skype in the classroom, "a free global community created in response to, and in consultation with, the growing number of teachers" using the tool to help students learn.
