Педагогические науки/1. Дистанционное образование в высшей школе

Кожухар И.В., студентка магистратуры

Тарнавская Т.В., к. пед. наук, доцент, научный руководитель

Национальный университет биоресурсов и природопользования Украины

Skype for Education

With the increasing penetration of the Internet in our lives, there is a problem with its rational using. One of the efficient programs for education is Skype. Skype is very popular globally due to the fact that it can be used for several things such as long distance meetings with family and friends; business calls; cheap calling through travel; socializing and what we have focused on specifically within the classroom environment.

As Skype is a program that allows you to communicate over the Internet with anybody all around the world, you can get education at a distance. One of advantages of Skype is its affordability because you can make unlimited and totally free calls to anyone anywhere at any time. It has more than 350 million registered users (Unuth, 2012) [1, 2].

It provides the possibility to conduct video conferences, see and be seen, hear and respond. Educators around the world can engage their students in the learning process. While universities can rarely afford expensive equipment Skype helps teachers with a simple, affordable technology to make lessons more vivid and memorable. One of the innovations of Skype is a special platform Skype in the Classroom. It is “a free global community that invites teachers to collaborate on classroom projects where they might use Skype, and share skills and inspiration around specific teaching needs” [3].

Skype is used when you want to talk or work with people remotely, or have a guest speaker talk and interact with your class without physically being there in the room. The guest speaker can be easily displayed to a class via a large monitor or projector and then the group/class can ask him/her questions. Depending on the available facilities it is possible to have a "middle man" that puts the questions to the guest speaker either via microphone or text based chat. Moreover, if the guest speaker does not have access to a computer, he/she can still talk using Skype via Ring 2 Me which lets us set up a local rate phone number that people can dial using a normal telephone and then talk to us in the classroom via Skype.

Skype lets us hold free conference calls and 1-2-1 video calls along with sharing files and an instant messaging chat system. The audio from a Skype conference can be recorded as an MP3 for later listening by using either MP3 my MP3* or Skype Call Recorder. We can also install Callnote and use Evernote – a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving – to record Skype conversations and upload the resulting audio file straight into the Evernote account. Vodburner is designed to record and edit video chats using [4].

Some of the example of how to use Skype in the classroom are given by Jessica Johnson-Wallace, Drew Coleman and Anita Pintimalli [2]:

§ Videoconferencing in the Classroom

§ Video tours of museums or land marks

§ Field trips (If students aren’t able to participate in a field trip due to factors such as budgetary or distance constraints, use Skype to bring the field trip into the classroom)

§ Using Skype to learn foreign languages from native speakers

§ After school help for students needing extra attention

§ Interviews

§ Helping a classmate join the classroom from home

§ Connect special needs students

§ Foreign culture lessons (Skype allows students to see firsthand what people’s homes, schools, clothing, weather, and more looks like. If a festival takes place, Skype can bring it to your classroom too)

§ Skype a class in a different time zone. With Skype, the students got to work at the same time and actually see each other, too

§ Present a performance.

§ Share field trips with others.

So, Skype is free and easy way to open up the classroom, meet new people, talk to experts, share ideas and create amazing learning experiences with people from around the world.

References

1. Unuth, N. (2012.) What is Skype? An Introduction to The Most Popular VoIP Software and Service. Retrieved on March 24th from http://voip.about.com/od/voipsoftware/a/whatisskype.htm

2. Johnson-Wallace, J., Coleman, D., Pintimalli, A. Skype. Retrieved from http://ictacrosscurriculum2012.wikispaces.com/Skype

3. Skype in the classroom // British Council. Retrieved from http://www.britishcouncil.org/argentina-nuestros-proyectos-connecting-classrooms-argentina-skype.htm

4. Skype // Paul's E-Learning Resources. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/technologyenhancedlearning/home/the-resources/skype