Skype: the education is just one click away

Skype, as a software for phone calls and communicating with friends, has been well know by people all over the world. It is probably one of the largest on-line communities for people to stay connected. Also, websites that provide online education services, particularly language education, for students and teachers have been introducing skype as one of the main communication tools between teachers and students. This idea has been carried out extremely successfully. 

However, the new program by Skype, Skype in the classroom, which is specifically designed for education, is not well known by people. This program, 'Skype in the classroom' is a free global community that invites teachers to collaborate on class projects where they mgiht use Skype, and share skills and inspiration around specific teaching needs. Teachers can easily join this community after the simple log-in process with the Skype account they already have. Afterwards, they are allowed to post any thing they maybe looking for help about online, and people will be able to see and perhaps respond.

The requests are in the project section. Right now, there are altogether 1941 teachers involved in the community and 28000 projects have been founded. Browsing the project names, you will be surprised to see how diverse the topics may be. It can range all the way from looking for people from Honduras to Skype with and learn about their lifestyle, to finding people to Skype with to understand how the weather condition in a particular region may impact their lives, to 7th grade New Jersey history class teacher interviewing people for the perspectives on the civil war. For each project, the request is specified for class or any individual person; the student ages, category of the subject and the communication language to avoid confusion. 

In summary, the program 'Skype in the classroom' is very helpful and beneficial for teachers looking for help that maybe found online. As a perspective teacher, I strongly encourage any one that might be involved to get look into this program and hopefully benefit from it.