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--- 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 [log in to unmask] *********************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning Technology (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. 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