Anyone using Skype?

[Rachel Brockman]

I work in a K-2 school, and today we used Skype to meet with an author for the first time. Two kindergarten classes are collaborating with me to study alphabet books and then create their own. My students had generated questions questions about their writing, so we Skyped alphabet book author, Michael Shoulders. An absolutely wonderful experience - my 5 year old patrons were conferring with an alphabet book expert! Anyone else using Skype (or other video-conferencing) in conjuntion with your collaboration with teachers?

[Laura Gary-Michel]

I ran upon this website
http://skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com/
on Grandview Elementary School media center's terrific web page. I'm not sure if it will help but it might be good start to find a list of authors that Skype.
I'm hoping to do this at my elementary school this upcoming school year and I have just begun investigating.

Laura

[Rachel Brockman]

Laura - How great is this site? Who are you planning on inviting this year? Thank you so much for sharing it - what a wonderful resource for us!

[Margaret Whalley-Thompson]

Hi Rachel
I am in my second semester of my masters "teacher librarianship" and i am expected to use Skype for some of my assignment work. Unfortunately i am unable to download this onto my school computer or laptop as the site is blocked by our education department. We are using a program called Eluminate. I am not very familiar with this either, have you used it?. I am endeavouring to work my way around the Skype issue. Your recent work with the kindergarten classes sounds exciting.

Margaret Whalley-Thompson

[Rachel Brockman]

Hey Margaret -
I am so sorry about Skype - It is sad that in our need to protect our little ones from the dangers lurking on the Internet, many times we throw the baby out with the bathwater! My schools' technology department makes the Internet completely open to faculty (with a clear understanding of what will happen if we abuse this privalege!) and much more locked down for students. This allows us to utilize a lot of social networking tools for instruction that we would otherwise do without!

I am familiar with Eluminate - but a little bit of a newbie to it. It is much like a virtual classroom where you can show documents, powerpoints, live speakers, etc, and participate in conversations or work collaboratively. A great tool! The host sets up a "classroom" for a meeting, and then sends the URL link to that site to all of the participants. They click on it, and are ready to go.

Here is their website: http://www.elluminate.com/index.jsp They have some great tutorials under the training tab on the left, and a demo video to give you an idea of how it works. The challenge is to find ways to reach beyond your classroom walls with this tool so that your class can work collaboratively with others to learn or create together. I know that many of the members of our Ning use Eluminate. Please let us know what you are able to do with it this year!

[Maggie Verster]

Hi All,

Elluminate is unfortunately not free but you can have up to 3 people in a room free. It is very user friendly for users and presenters. I use wiziq (www.wiziq.com) a free conferencing tool for online conferencing anfd of course, Skype is my immediate lifeline (apart from twitter) to my learners, teachers and subject advisors. I am also in constant contact with my own kids ;-) through skype. Skype is also a great backchannel during talks.....

[Mary E Collins]

Hi all you Skypers,
I will be Skyping this fall with another classroom and need to purchase a webcam.Any suggestions?
Thanks,
MaryBeth

[Barb Odanaka]

Hi MaryBeth,


I've bought a number of webcams and my absolute favorite is the Logitech webcam for notebooks with Carl Zeiss lens. It comes with a little tripod (a bit rickety, but I use a bag of rice or lentils to hold it down). It was about $75 a year ago. Hopefully it's come down since then.

The camera can also be clipped on your screen, but I prefer the tripod set up. I do author visits via Skype and putting the cam on a tripod allows my "guest" to see more of my office, skateboard ramp, etc. :-)

Good luck,

Barb Odanaka
www.skateboardmom.com

[Mike Artell]

Please forgive me if this sounds like shameless self-promotion, but I'm responding to the
questions about Skype-ing with an author/illustrator. I’m a children’s author/illustrator/cartoonist (35+ books)
and each year more than 50 schools invite me to visit and share my books with their students
and teachers and I also give the kids step-by-step instructions for creating their own original
cartoons. My web site (www.mikeartell.com) has complete information about me, my books
and my school visits.

Many schools have told me that budget cuts have limited the number of author visits that
they can afford, so I am doing an increasing number of Skype video chats with schools
across the US.

During my Skype visits, I share some of my books, answer questions from the kids and then I give
everyone step-by-step instructions for creating their own original cartoons. It’s amazing! I teach
the kids how to draw cartoons and they draw along with me. It’s a huge boost to their creative
confidence and there are direct tie-ins to your state educational content standards.

If your school can access the free Skype service (check with your technology people), I can do a
45 minute “live video author/illustrator visit” for $250 - and there’s no travel, lodging and meal expenses.
If you’d like to see a short video of me doing one of these “video chats” with students at an elementary
school, you can search my name "Mike Artell" on Google Video and you'll find a 6 minute
video of me Skype-ing with a school in Oregon.

I'll be happy to chat with anyone who's interested in talking about a Skype visit. You can email me at [e-mail]

Once again, I respect this site and i do not use it to "market" my services. I just wanted to let people who are interested in Skype visits know that there are authors who have experience with the Skype technology and it works great!

[Elisabeth LeBris]

Anyone who has successfully used Skype for author visits, are there any authors that could be recommended that are good presenting in this format? I just read Mike's post which is great but I am looking for other recs from school library colleagues.