My partner Naomi and I decided to investigate VoIPs, specifically Skype. I had used Skype a few times before for sharing my children with family across the country. I had never tried it in the classroom. I was especially interested as my school prepares to integrate Chinese into our curriculum. The first surprise was how different my old version was compared to the new version we installed on Naomi's MacBook. Once I updated my version, we were off and running. We had to move my MacBook to the other side of the room to avoid feedback from the mic. One amazing thing we figured out was the ability to attach files and send them back and forth. She sent me a pdf and I sent her a mp3. I can see all kinds of possibilities in the classroom. When we Skype with our sister school in China, I can attach a pdf of the lyrics to a song we can sing together. We can attach photos as well of our communities. The other amazing thing with Skype was the "screen share" option where you can show a photo, a document, whatever without actually sending the file itself. This eases up the upload/download time, plus you may not want the other person to be able to keep the file. It might avoid some copyright problems with lyrics and music files.
Naomi and I were also interested in Facetime, an app for iPad and iPhone. It is supposed to work on MacBooks with 10.6.6 and higher, but mine is only a 10.6.2, so I was unable to try it. I had really wanted to try multiple friends at the same time. That would be helpful for the music teachers in my district because there is very little time to meet together and Facetime could be a way for all of us to share ideas, sing songs, teach dances, etc., all in real time. Skype offers that in the premium version, which costs $4.99 per month.
Hmm, sounds like you have a pretty good argument for a computer upgrade with the facetime option! And it sounds like there are a lot of great opportunities with skype. It's great to get all these new ideas!
ReplyDelete