In Stanly county the Tech Facilitators use Skype to discuss technology problems and troubleshoot software and equipment. It has been a tremendous help.

I agree with Gayle. I haven't used skype with the students at this point but I have used skype with the team that Gayle and I are on with other tech facilitators. I have also gotten my administrator on board and hope that it can start expanding once he starts to find out how useful it can be.

I used skype in a staff meeting so our principal could attend even though she was out of town at the time. It worked really well and the teachers enjoyed using it.

This week, I'm using it to teach a class at one of my assigned schools while I'm at the other one. I'm excited about it.

Skype in Schools. I have used Skype several times in my class. Once during Read Across America (Dr. Suess's birthday) I read a book to another class in another county and they read to us. We then used Google Earth to locate their school. It was a great experience and a virtual field trip without leaving the classroom. I love it...so do the students!!!

I teach kindergarten. When I'm out of school for a workshop or conference or whatever, I skype into my classroom to say hello to my children. I've read to them and they've sang for me. Our media coordinator uses our class to demonstrate the wonders of Skype when she speaks at conferences and does trainings for different groups. Recently we did the Tooty-Ta for the Rotary Club! They were amazed. A couple of the members are in their 80s. Imagine the changes they've seen in their lifetimes.

If you use Skype Chat and you are looking to learn Chinese and Spanish, I know of a skype plug-in that fits the bill. Its learning-while-chatting feature could make language learning fun and interactive. It’s called Moka Chat for Skype and can be downloaded from http://www.moka.com. You just need to install this application, select the language pair you need and then type in the text message and send the translated text to your skype contact. Because it allows you to see both the original and translated text every time a message is sent, you can learn the language faster. It is free during the beta period.

I am in an Australian school and we cannot skype on our school network, however I have skyped from home to talk with my partner teacher in the US. We have a connected classroom project between our schools and the "f2f" contact we get from skype is invaluable. Emailing is OK but to actually speak real time and see each other is priceless! I have "met" her children and students and have answered some questions they had about Australia. We compared celcius and farenheit readings and time differences all in a matter of minutes! Amazing and I can't wait for it to be unblocked to us here. We use a Video Conferencing system within our DET network and use online meeting sites such as flash meeting also in Australian schools to video conference.

We are looking for an interested school that is interested in sharing a book with our k-5 school for Read Across America Day.

Sheri, This souds liek a great opprotunity for my students. We are a fifth garde class in rural Missouri. Just let me know and we can make arrangements.

Sheri: We would be interested in sharing a book with you. How do you celebrate? We gear ours towards Dr. Seuss books. We have a special time set aside for volunteer readers to visit our school and read with the students.

So far, I've only used skype experimentally mostly with family and colleagues. I would like to have my students use it to bring in other students/classes for discussions on topics, or for guest speakers/presenters.

We use Skype regularly to communicate on projects. We also Skype in experts - an author will be skyping in soon to discuss his book. We skype with other teachers to discuss projects and the children skype with other classes. Some of our projects can be found here: http://www.herricks.org/webpages/spcollaborative/technology.cfm?subpage=10338

I got started with help of a teacher in Australia (we are in SC) . He talked to students and to me until we got comfortable with the tools. We have used Skype for project with many classes for poetry month with classes in another state. We did poetry readings all-together and taking turns. If one of my classes did not have an on-line class to recite with, we used a Skype recording of another class. 4th graders Skypes about research project and traded info on Native American research. Skyped with author about her book.
We soon be using Skype to communicate with book author about goals and dreams.

I would love to skype with any author during our Author's club meetings, How do I go about getting in contact with an author to do this? I have used skype to talk to other classrooms in our county. I would also like to join with other schools for Read Across America. We do it on Dr. Seuss's birthday and have professionals from all over the county come in to read to our students. It would be wonderful to share how other areas celebrate. I am in northeast NC.

I also skyped for Read Across America Week and would like to do it again or any other class projects...contact me! my skype name is mea.arthur

As the technology coordinator for a K-12 district, part of my job it to assist staff with the integration of technology into their classroom. Before Christmas, I worked with my most tech phobic teacher connect with a PE instruction in England. He is so excited about the process and impact on his class he is working on continuing the exchange this semester. I also have a high school teacher home on maturity leave. He is using Skype to keep in contact with his classes on a daily basis.

At Blair Elementary in Wilmington, NC we have used Skype to to conference with a 2nd grade class in Kingston, TN. The students have asked questions about the city they live in and the weather or whatever our students are studying at the time. Third grade students have interviewed a student that was being home schooled in another area of NC. We have also used Skype with a teacher that is out on (pre) maternity leave to visit with her class at school. No doubt this 4th grade class will see the first glimpse of the new baby on Skype! Skype is a great way to communicate with other technology assistants in the county when troubleshooting and sharing technical information.

What great ideas! Thanks Sue for sharing this with me. We have a fifth grade class that is looking to hook up with a class near Rocky Mount, but so far the teachers haven't decided what to do. These are some great ideas.

Would love to do my first Skype with 4 or 5th graders for Read Across America Week! Will contact marthur. Anyone else interested?

Has anyone tried turning a camcorder into a webcam?

My husband Richard Keep and I are award-winning children's book writers/illustrators living in the colonial town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We love the idea of doing school author visits through Skype. Not only will it save the schools the costs usually incurred for hotel and transportation, but it makes it easier on us to stay right here in Mexico! We want to learn how to do this, so we're offering a few free author visits to any of you K-9 teachers or schools who've had experience with Skype in the schools. In addition to a book presentation and Q&A, we'd love to walk students through our streets to meet a few local kids, dogs and vendors, so they get a sense of a real Mexican neighborhood. If you can help us figure it all out, we'd love to spend some time with your classes! Site: www.lindalowery.com Email: lowerykeep@yahoo.com

Mitchell connected via Skype with two schools in California and New Jersey for the Inauguration to discuss our new president and issues/concerns important to students today. It was a great experience and will be connecting with two other schools, North Carolina and Canada, for Read Across America week.

I teach first grade in Birdville ISD (Fort Worth, TX). I use Skype a lot to connect to a classroom in Sugarland, TX. We have played games together to close lesson units. My students really enjoy playing hangman with a class hundreds of miles away. We have also been creating webquest with the classroom in Sugarland and we Skype and share our finished projects.
I have also used Skype to talk to an author about a book they wrote. My students got to see the author and ask her questions. This was very cool!

I used skype today to connect an 8th grade social studies class in Norwood, Nc with a technology class in Michigan. It was great and the kids really enjoyed it.

After I offered a trade last month for free virtual author visits in exchange for some teacher tech training on Skype, we received several school inquiries. We are now up and running and having a ball skyping about our books from Mexico with schools in the U.S., Canada, Ireland and Australia. For you Spanish teachers looking for a Mexican connection, we now have one. My husband Rick and I have just begun a bilingual Skype program at the Biblioteca Publica in San Miguel de Allende, the largest bilingual library in Mexico (www.bibliotecasma.com/) Teachers can set up monthly bilingual discussions with students from 5th through 12th grades. The schools here are not yet ready for Skype, so the Biblioteca board has agreed to run librarian-supervised programs in which teachers and students can discuss Mexican culture/geography/history at times determined by U.S. and Canadian teachers. If you want to develop an ongoing monthly discussion, that would be ideal. We need about 3 weeks lead time for first dates, and you can make arrangements through me, Linda Lowery, at lowerykeep@yahoo.com or ph:773.572.1345. It's all free, of course, and we're thrilled with this opportunity for our local students. Some of their dads are working up north, and this is a wonderful way for them to connect, practice their English, and share what life is like in central Mexico. If you are a "techie", I'm willing to work with you on developing a wiki, voicethread, whatever to start some valuable connections going in conjunction with this new program.

I have used Skype with cohort members in an admin and supervision program I am currently in through John Hopkins University and ISTE. It has been so great to be able to use this tech tool for collaboration. However, I have been trying to get my teachers to use it with their students to establish relationships with other classes in our state and then move onto other states or across the globe. So, I am hoping to be able to start this with Linda Lowery and our middle school book club. I am thinking this would be just the catalyst for change in our school and will encourage others to do this as well. I have a friend in another school division nearby who had Skyped with me about projects in their schools that they want to collaborate on but I haven't been able to get any of our teachers to try this yet. When I asked our librarian about it, she was so excited! So, I am thinking this may be just the opportunity to get this started and am so thankful that Linda Lowery has offered to do this with schools. Our students have not had opportunities to visit much beyond their own world here in Sussex County, Virginia and I feel a Skype visit to Mexico just might be the "hook" to get them interested in learning more from others which will lead to student created projects, etc. which will instill in them those 21st Century skills they need in order to be prepared for the globally competitive world they live in today and in the years to come.

I have enjoyed reading all of your ideas on how you are using Skype in Schools and look forward to reading more! Keep them coming so I can share! :-)

Anita Harris

My school is new to skypeing and I have a question. Do you find you have to skype close to your time zones....how do you make it work when it is night time somewhere and it is daytime my time>=) silly question ...I assume you blog??? As I said ...new to this.....

Happy Friday All! Just wanted to share a short classroom story with you. Our second grade classroom read the story "Mice and Beans" last week. It's a story about a grandmother planning a party for her granddaughter's upcoming birthday. As she plans for the party each day, she seems to forget if she has done certain things along the way (set out mice traps, missing candles, etc...) All along the mice in her house are actually doing all of these things without her knowledge!
A funny story, which also incorporates some Spanish words. These words intrigued my students to want to learn more (Spanish), so we Skyped with a 5th grade classroom in Phoenix, Arizona. Each one of my students posed a word in English while the fifth graders translated the words in Spanish! It was a really great experience for both classrooms, to get to see and hear others from different parts of the country.

My students had their first Skype experience this week. My 3rd and 4th grade students got to talk with a high school senior at one of the schools in our area. It was an impromptu thing that was set up only a few hours earlier, but the students really enjoyed it. We are working with another class in our area to maybe co-teach some lessons for boht of our classes. We are starting small but hope to expand out too!

I volunteer on the board of directors at the Biblioteca Publica Library, a non profit bilingual library, located in central Mexico in a town named San Miguel de Allende. The library is the largest bilingual library in Mexico, outside of Mexico City. (www.bibliotecasma.com) We hosted our first Skype session between high school students in San Miguel de Allende and a school in Hamden, Connecticut. For our first event it went well. The Mexican students were a bit shy as most have not been in front of a webcam, although they were enjoying the experience and our friends in the Hamden School appeared to be enjoying themselves as well. The Skype sessions we hope will become regular events and form a part of our cultural and education program for youth and teens. I wanted to thank Linda Lowery for putting me in contact Henry at the Hamden School.

I first want to say that I love this wiki! The first time I heard about skype was at the NCETC and since then it has completely changed our school. All of our classrooms are set up for skype. We just have a telephone system where we can only call to the front office. This has given us an opportunity to communicate classroom to classroom. It has been wonderful. Teachers can instantly let me know if something is not working in their classroom or to see if a library book is available. It adds an extra safety measure to our trailers because if someone comes in to their room unwanted, their telephones to the office are right beside their doors and they have another way to let someone know that their is someone in their room. We use to have a TA watch a class so a teacher could observe another teacher and now that class can skype in and watch the lesson without the teacher leaving the room. For years we had wanted a weekly news show but we had14 trailers that were not connected to out cable system. Now we create the news show in Movie Maker and skype the show to all the classrooms so they can download the file and watch it. We just did a map project with our 3rd grade classes and connected with five 3rd grade classes from all over the United States. We were able to find those classrooms using this wiki. Our students knew that we were connecting with a class, but didn't know where they were located. They had to ask questions and use laptops to narrow down where that class was located. After they figured our where they were located, they asked them questions to find out similarities and differences to how they live. Thank you to all of our schools who participated with us!! If you have any need to work with an elementary classroom, please contact me. Our school is very willing to have more 21 century learning experiences.

On 5/13/09 our Advanced Placement Biology students held a videoconference with Sean B. Carroll, who last month was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Wisconsin-Madision, and works at the forefront of the emerging branch of science known as "evo-devo" (evolutionary developmental biology). AP Biology students recently finished a blogging activity revolving around his book, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. The students asked questions related to the book and his work in general. This is the second straight year AP Biology students have been able to hear from a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I was able to Skype in one of my third grade students, who because of medical complications, was out of my classroom for 1/2 of the year. We Skyped him into Math a majority of the time, but he also peer conferenced during poetry, participated in a book club, and was Skyped in to our class play for a night performance. The parents loved seeing this technology being used, and the children just loved it. I am going to plan on having a Skype Visitor of the Week to share a book or some other curriculum connection. I am hoping that working parents will be able to share their time with us!