At Blogher, I attended a session on edublogging and one of the session leaders was Barbara Sawhill from Oberlin Language Lab. When I mentioned my experience using SKYPE to connect with some Cambodian bloggers and my kids to hear a native Khmer speaker say some words, she told us about the wonderful language conversation communities popping up around SKYPE, including one where people who want to practice speaking with native speakers are matched.
While catching up on my email, I found this wonderful post from Teacher Sol about how she is using SKYPE to have a world wide conversation. This would have been a great example to share with the Dialogue and Deliberation folks during the workshop I did last week. However, I guess there is a down side to skype, as my colleague Mir points out.
Hi Beth:
Yes, well Skype was originally intended to be used for people to "hook up" and some folks are not really happy that people have "co-opted" it for more legitimate practices.
To contrast what Mir says I have to mention that i had one of my students use the "skype me" mode to find a complete stranger on the border of Mexico and the US with whom she had an extraordinary conversation about immigration issues, abortion...the whole gamut. And not one mention of anything perverted.
(I actually have had more problems with unnecessary interruptions in the giant chat spaces in Skype that your other colleague used than any one on one contacts)
But yes, these tools do require us to think before using and educating ourselves and others along the way.
I am woefully behind on my Blogher follow ups but know that I will have more resources for you soon... but please know if you need anything (Skype related or otherwise...) just let me know!
Barbara
(skype name: barbarasawhill)
Posted by: Barbara Sawhill | August 10, 2006 at 01:27 PM