Faculty to Faculty: Skype
I am not in the habit of promoting specific products, but once in a while I find something so useful that I can’t help spreading the word. Such is the case with Skype.
If you’ve been using the Internet for a significant period of time, you’ll recall that from the very start applications emerged that would allow individuals to talk to each other from computer to computer across the network. Over time, Voice over IP (VoIP) applications have evolved into what I think of as a Swiss knife of voice communications (although it will also do video). I can now not only talk computer to computer, but also computer to phone (landline) and vice versa, hold multi conferences, forward calls and more. Basically, you can think of this tool as bridging computers and landlines for voice communication.
As is the case with any tool, it’s not a long list of the features that matter. To me it comes to two things, what I use it for and how much it costs. This tool allows voice conferences of surprising quality with participants around the world at little or no cost (when someone is connected from a land line there is a small cost associated). This is especially useful when dealing with peers at institutions that do not have high quality videoconferencing equipment. It also allows me to join meetings at UF while I travel so I can remain connected. Because of the land line interface capability, if there is a speaker phone or a computer in the room, I’m in the meeting. This of course also allows discussions with my students. I can bring a group together into a conference for discussion of a given topic if they have a landline, cell phone or networked computer.
Finally, the originating computer can be a PDA. So I don’t have to carry my laptop to use this tool, all I need is a Wi-Fi connection. I can’t wait to try it when Wi-Fi services are provided in air travel, just for kicks.
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Tags: Instructional Design, Teaching Online
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Posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009.