Video Conferencing

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Skype, but there are also lots of other free video conferencing websites that you can integrate into your classrooms.  Soon, our district will be launching a similar site to Skype through WebEx/Spark.  This will allow you to more easily communicate with colleagues, students, and parents.  Edumemic gives some reasons why you might want to consider using video conferencing in your classroom:
  1. Use it to collaborate with other classrooms:  Whether it's another classroom across the district or across the world, use a video conference to connect with other students that have a different background.  Think about what you could do in foreign language or with a classroom that's studying the same novel.  
  2. Use it to conduct expert interviews:  Authors, philanthropists, historians, you name it.  Set up a video conference with them.  It's more convenient than finding a time that works for everyone and maybe even cheaper!  Use it as a Q & A session or just have the expert talk about their work.  
  3. Enable participation for students outside the classroom:  Teachers can either video conference live for sick kiddos or those out of town, or record the discussion to be viewed later.
  4. Use it for tutoring:  Obviously this one would be up to the teacher's discretion.  If there is a really sick student that needs help catching up, or a student that would just really benefit from some extra TLC, video conferencing makes that simple.
  5. Enable collaboration for group projects:  Students can use this idea of conferencing amongst themselves if they are working as a group/team.  Having everyone in one place to ask questions and brainstorm is easier than trying to coordinate an in-person meeting or to communicate via text or email.
To assess some of these ideas, students can summarize what they learned and heard throughout the conference.  Get creative!  Let the students tell you what they'd like to chat about and with whom.

Some recommended video conferencing sites:
Our district is slowly starting to use the two Cisco sites.  Stay tuned for more information!

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