Instant Messenger / Video Email /Skype

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Teachers from the Trenches: Please share with us how you use Instant Messenger clients, Video Email like Eyejot or YackPack or GabMail, and Skype tools inside or out of your classroom .

TECS 390 students: Your reflection should include how you envision using these tools in your own classroom someday. THINK!!!! (see document in Moodle on Online Communication for assignment details.

[Täna Gustafson]

I have spent a lot of time thinking about video email and skype. I do not really understand skype so I'm going to have to continue doing some research. Any tips or ideas would be great!

Of the sites that we were told to explore I liked YackPack the best. This is might be due to the fact that we have used flash meeting for this course and I really enjoyed that. YackPack would be a great way to communicate with students, parents, administrators and just anyone. I would use this in my classroom to keep in touch with many people and to help keep track of projects that my class is working on.

I'm very glad that I was introduced to these. Thank you!

[Michal]

I use Skype regularly to chat with my principal and/or superintendant. Much more effective than trying to chase them down! I originally installed it with the intentions of holding online training sessions with my staff since one of our attendance centers is 20 miles away, but having seen Mark's description of WiZiQ I find that may suit my needs better! As for Instant Messenger - I don't even have it installed on my machines any longer.

[Angela Zordel]

I ended up using eyejot to record my video email. I thought all the links were really interesting. I liked yackpack but was unable to get my web came to be enabled. This technology would be great to use with students. Teachers could give feedback to his students on their work as well as grade their work. Thsi technology is a great way to collaborate with other educators about projects. Also a great way to collaborate with parents. I think it would be great to record a video of phonograms and use this video in the classroom when teaching students the correct sounds of phonograms.

[Bret Derr]

I sent a video email using moviemaker and it was pretty cool. I will try getting into the video conference tomorrow night.

I can see using video for a conference with parents that can't make it to the school at a certain time or with students in the eventing to help with an assignment. Using video to continued education classes would be cheaper and more convenient.

The movie maker video was pretty easy to use. I have looked at the others and they all look pretty neat. I suppose it will depend on what other people you want to talk to are using.

[Kristine Hepner]

Video emails are very cool. I can definitely see myself using these tools in the future, especially eyejot, it is very easy to use. I think that I could use video email when explaining something or giving directions to a student that has to miss class. I think that Instant messaging is a great way to be able to talk with students outside of the classroom; maybe assist them with homework or talk with parents. I think that teachers will also benefit from talking to other teachers with instant messaging. Teacher communication, I think is very important. I also think that Skype is a great tool for online classes, we used it last semester in Tecs 290, it was very easy and it was a great way for the class to talk with each other and share their ideas.

[Philip Franklin]

Up to now, I haven't used IMs in class with students and haven't been able to clearly envision a sound use. Distance education, however, is another story. But in a classroom, everyone would do better, generally, by communicating the old fashioned way. I suppose that the "instantaneous" features might lend themselves to games or to different competitive activities from time to time, but I haven't yet come up with anything resembling sustained learning. On the other hand, I have read of an interesting use of Twiiter for language learners here.: you can track the use of an expression and get responses sent to you. Perhaps each student could track the use of a different vocabulary item to try to get a picture of how the word is actually used -- however, various corpora are better suited for this, I think. I signed up to track the term "literacy, " but evidently no one has used it yet.

[Ashley Sperry]

I really like YackPack! It seems like it would be very beneficial for students and teachers. I think that students would benefit greatly from this becuase you can receive instant feedback on assignments. This would be neat to use with other schools in other states or even across the world and communicate with them and maybe even do a project with them. If there were questions you could just get on YackPack and start asking your questions. Since it said that it saved all converstaions it would be helpful to go back in if you had a question and see if someone has already answered the question. I feel like the more technology and communication we can get between students would help them succeed when they get out into the real world with all the technology

[mjstettinger]

I thought the video email was one of the coolest things I have ever done. I used the windows video maker, and I thought it was incredibly easy to use. I think that video conferencing is a really great tool that can be used for many different purposes, whether it is video conferencing for student teaching, conferences with other teacher, etc. My favorite thing we have done so far though has to be the video emails. I really like the video emails for personal use, because I have already used it to show my dad how to play quite a few songs on guitar for our band. Video emails are a great, easy tool to use. I am also looking forward to exploring some of the other programs in greater detail.

[Kara King]

I thought this tool was amazing. You feel kind of goofy just talking while you are looking at yourself, but I think this would be an amazing thing to use, especially for a pen pal sort of thing. The only thing that I saw on there was the 5 minute limit. But I'm sure that this would be plenty of time for the younger aged students to ask questions that they wanted. I think this would be a really neat way for students to see different things. If you are doing a pen pal deal, you can see the classroom of your pen pal and many different things. I also think this could be a really cool tool to have for students who missed a day of school for some reason. They could get on the computer and have a video e-mail explaining the assignments throughout the day. This could also be a cool way for the students to communicate with their parents. Instead of calling your parents from school, you could send them a personal e-mail telling them your accomplishment for the day. I can only imagine the different things you can do with this new tool!

[Avi Kempinski]

this "pen pal sort of thing" is exactly what I'm looking for to use in my German Conversation class this semester. Ideally, each student would have a pen pal in a German-speaking country, and conduct a correspondence over the semester. Using video email would work even be better. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[carolyn Walker]

I am pretty new to all these tools on the computer. My daughter is more adapt at using msn messenger and the computer than I am. I have to admit though I am having fun learning all these new ways of communicating with the world. Since this has been fun to explore the many tools that are available on the computer. I imagine there are many lessons a teacher could do using them. One thing that has come to my attention is the fact that students who find reading books boring or are struggling with reading might find instant messenges fun to use. I'm not sure how to incooperate this into a reading lesson, but it might be interesting to see if this could help struggling readers in some way. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Jacque]

I decided to use Eyejot to send my video email. I liked how with this website you are actually sending a video compared to Yack Pack where all the person receiving the message sees is the standard picture of you and then just hears your voice recording. I think that this is wonderful technology that will definitely enhance education as we know it. I think that video emails could be a great way to bond with students not only during the school year, but also before and after the school year ends. I also think that this would also be a great way to bond with the parents of the students in your class. It would make school to home communication much more personal in my opinion. I also think that this would be a great tool to evolve pen pals. It would be so cool to have a school in another city, state, or even county partner with you and do video messages between classes or individual students. I think that it would be a great learning activity. I also think that this would be a great way to communicate with others in your building, whether it is other teachers, your principal, or even your superintendent. It is a great way to communicate and share ideas.

I also think that having an MSN messenger account would be a great way to answer your students’ questions when school is not in session. It would be nice to help the students in the evenings or on the weekends, or even over break if needed. It would also be a great way for parents to communicate with you too. Obviously, you may want to have a separate email address for this, but I think it would be great.