Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness

But the vast majority of the lessons posted on Skype in the Classroom come from teachers who want to Skype with classes abroad to expose their students to different languages and cultures — a necessity in a global economy. Think back to the old-fashioned pen pal, the tradition of writing handwritten letters to someone in another part of the country or the world. Skype in the Classroom adds video to that exchange to give students a much fuller view of pen pals’ worlds.

Teachers may need to buy a webcam and external speakers for their computers to Skype, but the service is free to download, so it seems like a low-cost tool for educators — especially at schools where budget constraints may limit field trips and funding for guest speakers. Twenty-six states are providing less funding per student to schools districts than they did last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Skype has 14 partnerships that help connect teachers with experts at Microsoft (which owns Skype), Penguin Books and the New York Philharmonic, to name a few. NASA’s Digital Learning Network partnered with the Internet phone service last month because web conferencing is dramatically cheaper for teachers to set up than video-conferencing systems, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to Lead Education Specialist Caryn Long and fellow Education Specialist David Alexander. NASA would give out grants to certain schools so that they could purchase the video technology, but Long and Alexander hope their team will be able to reach more students nationwide via Skype, and therefore get more youngsters revved about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) — especially at a time when the STEM workforce is growing faster than the workforce overall. This month, NASA has started offering to teach aeronautics and “pulsar algebra,” which combines math with the study of stars.

Until teachers stop relying on questions that can be answered with details plucked from short-term memory, there isn’t much chance that students will opt for the deep learning approaches.

But it is terribly important that in explicit and concerted ways we make students aware of themselves as learners. We must regularly ask, not only “What are you learning?” but “How are you learning?” We must confront them with the effectiveness (more often ineffectiveness) of their approaches. We must offer alternatives and then challenge students to test the efficacy of those approaches. We can tell them the alternatives work better but they will be convinced if they discover that for themselves.