Skype in Schools

[Josh Allen]

Just a heads up to everyone that there is a wiki being started called Skype in Schools. They are working on a nationwide directory of teachers that would like to connect via Skype. I see Beth is currently the only Nebraska person signed up. I'll be mentioning it to our district tech people next week, but encourage everyone to sign up or at least check it out. I still am looking for other Nebraska 4th grade teachers interested in connecting with other 4th grade classrooms. I've got a couple teachers in my district who could use someone to connect with. The conversations so far have been more introductory, but we are moving forward! Have your 4th grade teachers email me if they are interested.

[Barb Gilman]

NETA 2009 had a presentation given by western Nebraska teachers using Skype within their district where schools are separated by many miles. They did a weather report. I would love to hook up with these teachers or other teachers for a fall mini unit on weather. Wouldn't that be cool for our students to see how the weather changes across our state?

[Josh Allen]

That would be great! Do you remember who it was? I also that Stephanie Hamilton's discussion about student fact checking each other on Wikipedia would be something you could do via Skype. So many great ideas!

Barb Gilman said:

NETA 2009 had a presentation given by western Nebraska teachers using Skype within their district where schools are separated by many miles. They did a weather report. I would love to hook up with these teachers or other teachers for a fall mini unit on weather. Wouldn't that be cool for our students to see how the weather changes across our state?

[Molly Aschoff]

The two schools involved were Ainsworth Public school and Valentine Community Schools. I was not involved with this it was primarily 4th grade but I could put you in touch with the teachers! We love using skype!

Josh Allen said:

That would be great! Do you remember who it was? I also that Stephanie Hamilton's discussion about student fact checking each other on Wikipedia would be something you could do via Skype. So many great ideas!

Barb Gilman said:

NETA 2009 had a presentation given by western Nebraska teachers using Skype within their district where schools are separated by many miles. They did a weather report. I would love to hook up with these teachers or other teachers for a fall mini unit on weather. Wouldn't that be cool for our students to see how the weather changes across our state?

[Josh Allen]

Molly- that would be outstanding! If you could forward them our website: http://sites.google.com/site/connectnebraska/ My email is on the website.
Thanks for checking in!

[kplacek]

Do you have any issues with Bandwith while using Skype? I have interested teachers - but a worried tech staff that this will really clog up our bandwith 'pipe'....would LOVE to hear how your schools handle this!

[Josh Allen]

We do find it works best when plugged into an Ethernet outlet, but other than that, we still run it through the filter and it works well. When we do live broadcasting of sporting events via Ustream, we use a static IP address to bypass the filter, but not with Skype.

kplacek said:

Do you have any issues with Bandwith while using Skype? I have interested teachers - but a worried tech staff that this will really clog up our bandwith 'pipe'....would LOVE to hear how your schools handle this!