Back to School: Explaining Skype

Dear Instructional Technology Professional:

This video explains Skype in non-technical language even a teacher can understand within the two minute student attention span.

The Say It Visually! people are explanation heroes.

tags: skype, overview, introduction, sayitvisually

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Back to School: Storytelling with Skype

Two Waltham, Massachusetts, public schools connected classes for story time in April 2009 over Skype. Jeff Gilbride tells how a Kennedy Middle School class (older 6th grade students) wrote, then read, fairy tales inspired by a third-grade class (younger students) across town at Northeast Elementary School.

This peer service delivery was asymmetric, each side of the conversation performing different roles. This is different than most mutual classroom exchanges where, for example, Spanish and English native speakers spend 30 minutes in each language at the same level. 

Skype brought the two classrooms together without travel costs, parental permissions, and time spent out of the classroom.

Most important, it let two teachers experiment with their curricula, quickly, cheaply, without any new capital investment. Just two Skype webcams running on classroom computers.

tags: skype, education, writing, performing, waltham, massachussets

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Back to School: Learn Guitar on Skype

Meet Antoine Dufour, of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Antoine on MySpace and on CANdYRAT Records. I like Antoine's offer for a global market. Sections on currency, language, payment, and time zones spell out details you'd assume in local transactions.

Antoine Dufour
Skype Guitar Lessons

Private lesson; live on the Skype video conferencing service.
Intended for intermediate to advanced acoustic guitar players

Cost: $75 for one hour lesson ($ in US or CAN)

Requirements:

Skype application (available for free on skype.com);
High-speed internet connection;
Web-cam & Microphone and headphones;
A Paypal account;
Guitar

The lessons:

I'll be teaching parts of my songs, exercises, technique, tricks, extended techniques, open tunings, interpretation, textures and how to incorporate all that in an original composition and answer any question regarding my guitar playing or gear, etc.

The lesson can be in english or french.

How to register?

• Send me an email, with your skype info at: adguitarlessons@gmail.com
• Then, via email, we can schedule a time for the lesson.
• Payment must be received via Paypal one week before the lesson takes place.

Time zone:

• For lesson appointments, you'll have to provide me your time zone information and I'll find out a time to make it work for both of us.
• My time zone is Eastern time (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

Terms:

• I must be informed of any cancellation at least 24h in advance or you'll loose the lesson.
• If I have to cancel, I'll contact you for another appointment.
• If for some reason I can't give you a prepaid lesson, I'll refund you.
• Sometimes, the Internet could be unstable, don't worry; you won't loose your lesson.
• Registration is now open for a limited number of students.

tags: skype, music, education, guitar, youtube, freemium, skypenomics, lessons, tutoring

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Back to School: Language Exchange Communities

Connecting with Native Speakers: Skype™ and Language Exchange Communities, a presentation by Jeremy Robinson (earthtofu on Skype) at the Bringing it Back: New Ideas for the Language Classroom conference at the Monterey Institute of International Studies on April 25, 2008.

Robinson says bringing classrooms together to study each others' language restores culture education, improving the quality of instruction. He demos Skype, shows how to find other classrooms through ePals, and offers a pedagogy.

Robinson suggests classroom language exchange:

• Raises cultural consciousness
• Is meaningful learning
• Contextualizes linguistic input/output
• Has intrinsic motivation
• Offers learner autonomy
• Builds communicative competence
• Integrates language skills

Robinson suggests iTalki among 19 online language learning communities.

He rightly ignores the sunk costs of computing and communications infrastructure. These new capabilities are free or nearly so, and ride atop previous investments.

tags: skype, education, language, training, communities, epals, italki

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Back to School: Learn Banjo by Skype

Introducing Dennis Bailey. "I teach Banjo, Guitar and Mandolin lessons in the Dallas, Texas, area and also online via Skype."

Classic freemium model: free beginner banjo lessons on YouTube let you sample the product and leads you to paid personal instruction.

Contact Dennis via email or Skype chat.

tags: skype, education, tutoring, teaching, lessons, banjo, guitar, mandolin, music, texas, tx, us

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Weekly reading

Using Skype

Using Skype for Pain Management and Treatment of Chronic Pain. A hands-off therapy works just fine via Skype webcam. Alternative Health Journal.

50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom. It's an awesome list by/for teachers. Teaching Degree.org blog.

Soldiers head to war, Skype their mothers. "I'll Skype as much as I can. But Mom would like me to call every day, all day long, Skype every day, all day long. It doesn't exactly work that way," joked SPC Forney. Capital News 9, Albany, New York.

The World Mind Network advocates Skyping to improve the world. One conversation at a time.

Paris rolls out free Wi-Fi hotspots. The better to Skype with coffee. Click here to find the free hot spots in Paris.

Too Much Information.

"Skype or not to Skype, that is the question. But answering it invokes a larger conundrum: how to perform triage on the communication technologies that seem to multiply like Tribbles — instant messaging, texting, cellphones, softphones, iChat, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter; how to distinguish among those that will truly enhance intimacy, those that result in T.M.I. and those that, though pitching greater connectedness, in fact further disconnect us from the people we love." New York Times Magazine.

Our community

Call for Papers: Digital ID World, September 2009, Las Vegas.

My rambunctious Call for Speakers at the Emerging Communications Amsterdam to be bold and visionary. 

Congratulations to Ken Camp, communications community leader extraordinaire and a heckofa nice guy, for joining the eComm team.

Charge for online news like SkypeOut does for calls: simple, prepaid, microcharges, no risk. So says James Fallows to Atlantic Monthly.

VoSKY PBX-Skype gateways are certified for Mitel PBX switches. Skype trunking to cut costs. This increases VoSKY's distribution.

Live Web, Real Time . . . Call It What You Will, It’s Gonna Take A While To Get It. Mary Hodder calls for better discovery and effective filters in live search. Mary's one of the early social media thought leaders and a pioneer in real time search.

Jajah connected its 1,000,000,000th call. Billionth. Jajah powers the voice parts of services like Yahoo! Voice, eHarmony, Jangl, Plaxo, Joyent, Callwave, Bitwine, iotum and Chumby. Just think: Skype walked away from this business two years' ago.

The Nokia N97 showed up in US stores last week. Did you find Skype preinstalled? Anyone? Anyone? Not due until Q3, but we can hope.

Skype seems to be running OK in Iran, assuming you can get online.

tags: skype, ecomm, vosky, gateway, jajah, n97, nokia, skypeout, pricing

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

wiki: Skype in Schools

Skype in Schools is a directory of teacher and educational technologists, their want-ads to find other schools to talk with over Skype, and shared experiences about using Skype in schools. It's becoming a great resource. Is your school Skyping yet?

tags: skype, education, schools, wiki

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Around The World with 80 Schools

Kids will learn geography, and maybe a little more about people, using Skype this year. Silvia Tolisano's Around The World with 80 Schools project will help her primary school visit briefly with other schools around the globe over Skype. Short calls to say hello and introduce yourselves. Your school can sign up on the Langwitches blog.

Such a great way to learn it's a big world, people are different and the same, it's a flat world with access only a click away, not everyone speaks English, languages are barriers you must overcome to be a part of the world, time zones matter in a flat world, and seasons differ.

Ms. Tolisano is also known for her great elementary school blogging curriculum.

tags: skype, florida, geography, language, langwitches, blogging, education, edutech

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Weekend reading

What Can Skype Do For Graduate Students? on the The Graduate Student Survival Blog. Save money is the first concern. I chipped in ten more things grad students can do with Skype: #10: Robots.

The Skype survival guide by David Tang of VoSKY Technologies makes the case for Skype trunking, adding Skype gateways to PBXs. 987 Hotels (Prague, Barcelona) uses VoSKY's 9040 Exchange gateway. 

Is Our Internet Future in Danger? InfoWorld's Gruman and Kaneshige say it is, that demand for video is quickly outstripping the world supply of bandwidth. Doc Searls urges America to go Forward with Fiber: An Infrastructure Investment Plan for the New Administration. Doc makes a strong case that we can expand capacity far beyond

Korea's Cyworld virtual community gives up on North America. Culture barriers.

Google Reader Implements Feed Translation. Brilliant. Can't believe Skype still has not built in IM translation like Don Kennedy's Universal Language Real-Time Message Translator. Moka is jumping into this space with its own Moka Chat Skype Plug-in.

Super Mario Galaxy is absolutely brilliant writes Jaanus Kase.

Wish for Skype on Please Fix the iPhone.

Mail-order brides on Skype. hmm.

tags: skype, education, vosky, fiber, bandwidth, cyworld, korea, google, iphone, apple

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oom pah pah

by David Yack

(is this a good thing?)

(the world is getting smaller)

Monday reading

Gear

Cute. Minoru from Novo 3D stereoscopic webcam, works with Skype. Anthropomorphism intended. They may be competing with IPEVO at the CES I-Stage in Vegas this weekend.

CNET reviews the Sony PSP 3000 (black). Skype inside.

Nokia N810 WiMAX starts shipping in the US. Skype inside.

Business

3 orders a campaign for the new Skypephone S2 from glue London. Glue explains their approach. Online ads "Poke" and "Beard." 

Pike & Fischer predicts US may have 25 million Vonage-like households by 2010.

7300 Family Mart stores are selling Skype credit tokens throughout Japan.

Joonathan Mägi, Skype web front end team lead, now leads Edicy user interface development. More vested Skype alumni finding startup homes. CORRECTION: "web front end team lead", not "UI designer"

Freedom

UK Home Secretary to roll back privacy, blames Internet phone calls like Skype for crippled fight against terrorism

Life

Charleston, West Virginia, high school teacher Skypes her AP English class from home while recovering from injury.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist lists Skype as one of five ways to use your PC to save money.

Slate's Barack Obama & John McCain Crank-Call Generator.

Dan Benjamin explains How to Record a Podcast with People in Multiple Locations. In short, talk on Skype, but record locally and mix together in post-production. Hardware recommendations for podcasters.

Communicating in military families. Skype one option among many.

Mikogo: free desktop sharing with Skype

Mikogo spun off in July 2007, from BeamYourScreen.com, a Mannheim, Germany, company. Since then, fifty thousand users registered for free desktop sharing.

They publish a Mikogo Skype extra, a small plug-in program, so you can start screen sharing sessions from within Skype, using Skype contacts. Nearly ten thousand downloads of the extra.

People use Mikogo for poker training and other live distance education. Companies use Mikogo for technical support, using the remote controlled desktop and file transfers. Sales people host presentations. Small companies and freelance workers are the early adopters.

Features:

• Up to ten participants in a meeting
• Switch presenter
• Access remote keyboard and mouse
• Pause/resume session
• Select applications
• 256-bit AES end-to-end encryption
• File transfers up to 200 MBs within a session

More features are available for a BeamYourScreen subscription. Up to twenty participants, whiteboard, recording and playback, live support. Their browser viewer is pure dhtml without ActiveX, Java or Flash required.

P.S. The giraffe is named Mikogo too.

tags: skype, mikogo, screensharing, extras, software, giraffe

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Monday reading: New PR firm, eduSkype, Emergency dialing, Sex Video, Dating, Multiparty Video

Text 100 became one of Skype's PR firms. Text 100 is a much larger firm than 3 Monkeys Communications, dropped after just five months. Text 100 has presence in North America (new New York office opening last May), EMEA, and APAC (ten years in Japan). They already serve clients eBay, PayPal, Nokia, Cisco, and IBM. via PR Week UK.

♦

Education and music was the topic on the MusTech.Net podcast. Skype's Ian Robin guest starred on last week's show. Distance learning, language instruction, music education, music performance. Ian is an alum of Skype partner Vosky.

♦

Tom Keating's "Vonage slams Skype for not following emergency rules" is a simple and thorough explanation of UK Ofcom's rules, how they apply and don't apply to Skype, who claims what, and where policy conflicts with technology. 

• Clear labeling for UK VoIP by June, March 2007
• Who's In Charge Here? Carrier Battles for Revenue Sustenance, June 2007
• Will It Take UK's Ofcom To Make Canadian SkypeIn Numbers Available?, December 2007

♦

Deadspin's "Kendra Wilkinson Will Skype Your Brains Out" delights in a Playboy Playmate's experience that Skype video is better than phone sex. So that's what all the Skype High Quality Video fuss is about!

♦

Michael Pennington's Wazzum is making turn-key software for dating services. Project "Orange" should launch next month. Key feature? Launching Skype video calls. Saves hosts from paying for video bandwidth.

♦

It's been more than a year since Philippe launched ooVoo's six-way video calling, a year that included an upgrade to high resolution video, Windows only. Apple iChat has had multiparty video for years, Mac only. Meanwhile, Skype just teases...

tags: skype, video, sex, dating, apple, ichat, wazzum, playboy, playmate, "Kendra Wilkinson", kendra, wilkinson, text100, text 100, mustech, ofcom, uk

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Raving faculty

Wesley Fryer: What Skype means to me

On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, a digital storyteller, a technologist, and an innovator in bringing the three together. He is an alumnus of AT&T, lives in Oklahoma City, and is completing his doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech University. Wes started Moving at the Speed of Creativity, his edutech blog, the month before Skype's second birthday in 2005.

Skype is one of the most valuable communication tools I have. Every week I now meet with different educators around the United States, and sometimes in different parts of the world, using Skype. As a co-convener for the free K-12 Online Conference it is impossible to imagine my life without Skype. Skype is the lifeline which connects us as conveners for our weekly meetings as well as many others in our K12Online learning communities.

In addition to these professional uses of Skype, I frequently use it to videochat with my family when I am traveling, and to connect my own children with their grandparents who live in other states.

Skype is one of the most powerful, transformative technology tools I've ever used. I can't imagine living my life and doing my work now without Skype.

tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, oklahoma, ok, us, edutech, education, k12online, community

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Midweek Skypeland news roundup

Expressivo text-to-speech reader plug-in for Skype. $49. Comes in female US-English, male and female Polish, and female Romanian.

Kara DioGuardi, new American Idol judge

Howard Greenfield interviewed me for ZDNet Asia on The Talkification of the Web. (Should I trademark "talkification"?)

UAE ISP du still blocks Skype, writes PC Magazine's Midddle and Near East edition. The Emirates has an effective duopoly with Etisalat the other ISP. Both du and Etisalat now block Skype as mandated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, per Gulfnews.

The Yahoo! Messenger team hosted their first open chat workshop with users, part of a monthly educational Q&A series.

LinkedIn's company directory is up and running. White and yellow pages meet social proximity. Now add talk.

Jaxtr is promoting their low international rates. Using public data, Jaxtr says they are cheaper than Jajah, EQO, Mig33, SkypeOut, Truphone, and Rebtel in calls to the UK, Indonesia, Germany, Canada, Mexico, China, France and Pakistan. Often 10% to 50% less. Not sure how this compares to Skype's global or regional flat rates.

Marc Andreesen funds Qik. Qik streams live video from mobile phones to the web.

Music composers talk with concert performers and audience via Skype video.

Off topic: Kara DioGuardi to judge American Idol. Barack Obama's Daughters Wanted Jonas Brothers, Not Their Dad, Onstage At DNC. And the Red Sox acquire Kotsay from Braves. 

tags: skype, expressivo, uae, du, etisalat, blocking, censorship, privacy, freedom, TRA, yahoo, yahoomessenger, linkedin, whitepages, yellowpages, directories, jaxtr, prices, rates, competition, qik, video, music, education, americanidol, barakobama, jonasbrothers, redsox

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Language Skypenomics: Myngle is a market for students and teachers

Myngle picked up €800k in first round funding last week. Language teachers offer their services through the site, students shop for teachers, they pay through Myngle, study through Skype. Co-founders include alumni of eBay, Berlitz, Razorfish and Proctor & Gamble.

Teachers set market prices, publish hours when they are available (Myngle takes care of time zone arithmetic). Students shop and sign up for lessons.

Myngle augments instruction. Teachers can use a whiteboard during a class. They can record podcasts for students to study before or after class. And they can design quizzes to warm up or reinforce a lesson.

Teachers can share curriculum and best practices within Myngle. A touch of community.

Language schools can also sign up, selling their service through Myngle. Sales and fees are administered through the school instead of the instructor.

It's not free. "Myngle charges 18% commission per lesson when you start teaching. This fee is charged for use of Myngle's platform and services, PayPal fees and includes VAT." Payment is immediate. Contrast this with Skype's Prime terms (30% commission, 15% VAT, 120 days to get paid, $30/hour minimum bill rate).

So, just to be clear, Myngle and the instructors are making the market, use free Skype to deliver service, and pay via PayPal. Skype is free.

Language and culture are the ultimate barriers to online communication. Solving those problems is a massive opportunity, with many competitors.

tags: skype, myngle, language, prime, elearning, learning, education, training, tutoring, school, schools, instruction, skypenomics

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