Group items tagged

"VoIP, or voice over IP, can save you a lot of money. Services like Skype offer free calls overseas to other computers and really cheap rates to overseas phones. That's all well and good, but frequently using such services results in complaints on the other end about poor VoIP audio quality. If you find yourself in this situation, don't panic: in all likelihood this is a problem you can solve easily. You just need to tweak your home network, and your computer, to use VoIP to its fullest potential."

Help fix skype issues

Skype is a free downloadable software that lets you do voice and video calls combined with instant messaging for free. The possibilities of Skype to flatten your classroom are endless.

"Classroom author visits can happen via Skype (here's a list of those who do this for free)"

Classroom author visits can happen via Skype (here's a list of those who do this for free)

This week I've been working with our librarian and our Grade 3 teachers to prepare our students for a skype call with the poet Kenn Nesbitt on Friday. The students are working on the How We Express Ourselves unit of inqury which is focusing on poetry and song.

I've collated the best apps for recording Skype in this list. While some of the applications are free, most of them require you to shell out a few bucks. The list is split into separate sections for Windows and Mac.

With that in mind, this is a list of authors who offer free 20-minute Q and A sessions with classes and book clubs that have finished reading one of their books. As an author, I offer free Skype chats for the following titles:

This page has been set up to help you make connections with classes in other countries who are interesting in having Skype conversations with other classes. You can contact each person by clicking on their name or using the information they've shared.

Around the World with 80 Schools started in January 2009 and is an ongoing project. The challenge is to connect your students with 80 schools from around the world via Skype (a free video conferencing tool). Once completed, you will be inducted into the Hall of Fame of "Skyping Certified Educator" :)

Livebinder owns all the internet it seems! This is another great Skype in the classroom livebinder, if the answer is not in here, your question really was naff.

"Silvia Tolisano who wrote the great Skype section of The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators recently had a great post on her blog that all elementary school teachers interested in digital storytelling should check out. In Creating a Techno-Tale in iMovie Silvia outlines and gives directions for using iMovie to record a book-style movie in which students use their voices to narrate the story. You can read and download all of the directions from Silvia's blog."

Skype +

Let me know what you think! This year, we would like to find even more primary sources in every country that our learners choose to investigate. Rather than a formal class structure, it would be great to see them in small groups talking via Skype to as many people as possible. We'd love to have them engaging with students in other countries and continuing to connect with them after the initial interviews. It would be great to see them work collaboratively on Google Maps to which they add photos, information, questions and new learning. Hopefully they will use their class blogs to reflect on what they learn and to record their wonderings, so that people 'out there' can respond.