WEEK 2: GADGETS & WEB 2.0
I was very intrigued this week in class when our professor introduced us to Skype which allows you to talk with video to anyone in the world for free. Our instructor showed us how it worked by communicating with her daughter who was on the other side of the planet. For a free program, I was surprised how clear the picture was and that there wasn’t much of a delay on the arrival of the sound. I see numerous possibilities for this program in my personal and professional life.
In my personal life I could us it to talk to my father who works in Ecuador. He is a geologist and works from a remote location and phone calls are not a luxury that he has, but he does have internet access! He is gone for two months at a time and has limited contact with the family. It would be great to try this so that we can feel better connected to him when he is away and know that he is safe. I am sure that my mom would appreciate ‘seeing’ her husband more than once every two months. My sister has also recently moved away and is going to have a baby soon, so Skype would allow the whole family to keep in contact much easier when the new baby arrives and would allow my dad access to his new grandson as well.
At school, I would love to use this program so that my students could talk to scientists from other countries. I myself almost went to Antarctica for a semester to do biology research before teaching, but unfortunately things didn’t work out. I still regret not being able to go so that I could share those experiences with my students, so it would be great if they could interact and get first hand accounts of what it is like down there from local scientists. Another thing that I would like my biology students to ‘experience’ is a human cadaver dissection. Many of my middle school students cannot handle the horrible smell and it gets expensive taking 150 students on such a field trip. If I could find a doctor or medical student who would be willing to show my students part of a ‘live’ dissection in progress without the smell (and risk of fainting), then Skype would be perfect for that! I am excited to think about what other applications that Skype would be appropriate for in my classroom; it only took me a few minutes to brainstorm these ideas so the possibilities are numerous.
Heather, I first have to compliment on your header pics, just beautiful. I am happy you find personal as well as educational benefits to using Skype. Please remind me to show how to record a Skype conversation next class, this would answer some of the time constraints we face and still let students benefit from far away experts. They could prepare questions and get answers even if not real time. Good discussion! Alison