Skype in the Classroom

Very efficient in communication, face and voice!

My students were absolutely THRILLED every time we did Mystery Skype. They loved asking and answering questions about their state, city, and school. Mystery Skype provided a real-life way for my kids to connect with other classrooms around the world. Through Mystery Skype, my students got to see inside other classrooms and hear about the cultures of other students. Even after hanging up from our session, we would have great conversations around things such as accents, weather, and other classroom management. :) The only challenging part to this was finding teachers who were willing to Mystery Skype. I took to Twitter and found teachers there. There are teachers listed on Skype who say they are willing to Mystery Skype, but did not return requests or messages. Another tricky thing is accounting for time zones. When trying to set up a Skype with a class in another state, I had to keep in my mind that while my students were back from lunch in the afternoon, another class might be getting out for the day. If you can keep your sanity over schedules and finding other classrooms to Skype with, it is WELL worth your time! I highly recommend Mystery Skypeing!

This is great once you find the reason to use it! Skype alone is nothing and has no pedagogical merit, you have to create the situation to make it a powerful tool. Find another classroom, just type "Skype Pen Pals" into google, and talk to them through Skype before exchanging letters. When a staff member goes on vacation or if an ex-staff member goes to China, give them a call with your students. If you find an interesting person in a field your students are studying, send them an e-mail and see if they'll jump on Skype with you! This is a great "world expanding" and "background knowledge building" tool, once you create the use case for it. Any critique I would give Skype, not helping more in finding "Skype pals" or not connecting you to experts automatically is null and void once you visit https://education.skype.com/ where they will help you engage your classroom from the bottom up. One gripe, which isn't on Skype, is that you do need proper bandwidth to make this work, choppy calls are engagement killers for students, you can either try and get your school to upgrade your bandwidth, plug in your computer hardline, or try just a voice call with no video (as a last resort, since the video is super engaging). Also plan your "Skype dates" with other teachers, so the whole school isn't making video calls at the same time.