Thing 3

I began reading some of the articles about video calls and it looked really interesting. We actually have the technology for these kinds of calls now. Wow! I downloaded the software and went through it a bit. I know a few people on Skype and it would be great to talk to them over the internet. I don't have a web cam so I'll have to see about purchasing one so I can try this out.
On that note, I wonder if school will have all the equipment to make something like this a reality.
As far as using this in classrooms, I can see this having great potential in middle and high school. I read the manual from the high school in Lake Placid and it talks about potential problems with the connections, etc. That makes me nervous. 3rd graders aren't very patient when computer problems arise and they aren't good about trouble shooting yet. Way back when, we used to have a video conferencing program where you could take your class to the library and view a program and talk to the presenters. It didn't always work and the setup was often frustrating because we were at the mercy of the phone line and the connection. This feels like that, however I'm always willing to try new things and this just looks so cool. So, my husband is downloading Skype on his Mac because he does web casts for a living. He's excited to connect to his colleagues who are also on Skype to see how it all works. I'm planning to work with him, because his computer has a web cam built in and he has headphones that work for his computer, and see what the user potential can be. It looks great and it's easy to find contacts. Let's see where that takes us.