Thing 15: Things like Skype

I use Skype to chat with my mom and some friends at home.  I actually just used the video feature the other day to show my mom the room I just painted and some decorating that I did over the weekend.  Since she lives in Colorado we don't get to see each other very often.  So this was the best way for me to show her what was going on at my house.  I also use it to chat with my friend who lives in Indiana and see his beautiful 1 year old daughter.

Recently I found out that we are allowed to use Skype at work, which surprises me.  Next year since half of my team will be inside and half will be outside I think it might be a great way for us to communicate with each other since we won't be able to poke our heads out in the hall anymore to chat.  We wouldn't necessarily use the video feature, instead we could use the chat feature.

One way that I think Skype could be used in the classroom is to do video conferences with it.  If you have a friend at another school in the district or even a pen pal in another state Skype could be an easy way for two classrooms to communicate with each other.  

One thing that I also use that is like Skype is FaceTime on my iPhone and I have used it on my computer.  The only thing that is limiting about FaceTime is that you can only talk to people with Mac products.  But the other day two people in my graduate class were talking about a program called Tango.  The difference between Tango and FaceTime is that Tango allows you to call people with different devices.