--- Forwarded message from Duncan Charters ---

>From: Duncan Charters <[log in to unmask]>
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information    Forum
<[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: LLTI #9608.1 Using Skype in the classroom


We recently started an exchange for our Spanish students at Principia College
with a partner school in Uruguay, whose principal has just completed a quarter
as visiting professor on our campus. The way this works is summed up in the
following quote from an article on this idea, which was developed originally at
Marquette University by Janet Banhidi when she was on the faculty there:

<<Banhidi set up elanguage exchangesi with students in other countries. One
example she gave was of a student in her Marquette Spanish class that was
Skyping for 50 minutes with an English student in Colombia. Each call was 25
minutes in English and 25 in Spanish.
iInstead of four days of Spanish, I taught three classes and made one day a lab
day for students to do the exchange,i said Banhidi, iand it was a success. When
one of my students told me she had been communicating with her Colombian friend
outside of class via Skype, I knew this was valuable. Now I had students
practicing their Spanish outside the classroom with a native speaker!i>>
<<http://www.flyovergeeks.com/2011/01/educatorcity-foreign-language-teachers-wel
come/>> 



Even though on our campus we have native speakers who teach small groups at all
levels of Spanish for half an hour a week, students get even more excited about
the skyping experience because they are talking with real live students who are
currently living their own culture. Although our college students partner with
high school students in Uruguay, the age difference doesn't seem to be an
issue. They find a wide range of mutual interests in sports, music, films, pop
stars, cultural customs, etc. They are also happy to spend half their time on
Skype helping their partners talk in English, and that is educational too (the
whole experience supports the "comparisons" of the ACTFL 5 Cs). They switch
languages half way through the session. 

For the sessions to be productive, they do need to be planned and guided so
that students are doing specific learning, not just chatting, though that is
also part of what they enjoy and benefit from. We brought in Janet Banhidi to
give our faculty a one-day workshop, and that got everyone thinking about how
they would like to use Skype in their classes, answered our questions, and made
sure we got off on the right track. For us at least, that was well worth while
(her contact address is <[log in to unmask]>).

We found that if this was done from a lab (we have the ReLANpro, which supports
this activity: see <<http://www.ascdirect-usa.com>> and click on IPAC), we
needed to be sure that there is sufficient bandwidth on both ends. Our partner
school had to upgrade a couple to times until they were at the highest possible
speed available to them in Solymar, Uruguay, and even then, you can't have a
whole class video-skyping with individual partners at the same time because of
the bandwidth issue. We did get video class-to-class to work, and two of their
teachers taught a grammar point our students were having trouble with by acting
it out in a situation, which was fun for everyone. So we do audio skyping from
the lab in a class session when each student has an individual partner, with
students using their own Skype accounts, but out of class if they continue the
conversations one-on-one they can do video and see their partners. Even though
theoretically Skype is not supposed to take too much bandwidth in video, we
didn't find that practical, even with the newest version (you do need to keep
on the upgrade path if you install Skype, so your technical people should be
ready to do this since each upgrade typically brings an improvement in
quality).

Our students generally didn't have trouble understanding each other, but Skype
isn't always completely clear and conditions may vary, so each experience is
not entirely predictable, even though most often it works just fine with
adequate upload and download speed. Systems such as Adobe Connect, Elluminate,
and Wimba should give better quality video and sound, but they are usually
expensive and out of reach for a project like this. There are other free
alternatives to Skype, but we found that technical people around the world have
more confidence that they can work with Skype and it's a "known quantity", so
most people prefer it.

There are now many websites that allow students to connect up with partners,
and even teachers with other schools. One has to be careful about school
regulations on both ends because of liability issues. If parents find their
children communicating "inappropriately" with a partner originally provided by
their school, they feel entitled to protest to school authorities. For that
reason our Uruguayan school wanted to keep this activity within monitored
classes, so we had to tell our students that they needed to be sure that any
out-of-class conversations had the parents' approval. If students just look for
their own partners, there can be other issues, including unfortunately Internet
exploitation, so teachers do need to be alert and plan carefully, making sure
that everything has been duly considered and that they are not creating issues
for their administration and then themselves. Yet skyping is an excellent way
for teachers to address the "communities" area of the ACTFL 5 Cs, which
teachers have found to be the most challenging one to include in their
students' experience.

Just one other thing that is a good idea. If you have a lab with webcams and
software that supports everything, it's really helpful for students to practice
on each other before throwing them at partners abroad. That way, the teacher
can insist that they take the exercise seriously or they won't have the
opportunity. And if you don't plan to connect up with classes abroad, then
consider using Skype among students in the class. They can connect out of class
time, and if their conversations are scripted or carefully guided so that they
need the conversation to report back to the teacher, that can work quite well
and gets the students into some active homework that they enjoy, so that is
productive. Of course this can also be set up with local community members,
even retired people who have the computer connection and the interest in
helping students with their native language. One of the best partnerships I
heard of was with a man in his eighties, who because of his life experience was
fascinating to the students, so it doesn't necessarily have to be confined to
the same age group.

Those are some of the considerations from our experience, so I hope other
people will share theirs since this can certainly happen in many different
ways. 



Duncan

Duncan Charters, Ph.D.

Faculty Coordinator, Language Center

Chair, Department of Languages and Cultures

Principia College, Elsah, IL 62028-9799

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