Heike Philp

17 Reasons why Skype is simply not enough

Juli 28th, 2009 Posted in Virtual Classroom, Skype, Live Online Event, LANCELOT, Live Online Conference, Live Online Learning

Truly speaking, Skype is unbeatable and it can do all that a virtual classroom also can do. Teachers can share links with their learners, screenshare, conference and the sound quality is unmatched. So why bother with virtual classrooms if Skype is so versatile, why trouble yourself with technology that is still unstable and even fragile as we have seen this evening during the ETCon conference?

Very appropriate therefore Kirsten Winkler’s provocative theme of the first ETCon “Lesson Slides and Virtual Classrooms - do we really need them?” and she really did play the devil’s advocate tonight sparking a great debate.

Despite Kirsten’s best efforts, those in favor of virtual classroom came up with a grand 17 good reasons of why Skype is simply not enough. Here they are…

1) Annotations help visualization
Images are great teaching aids and annotating them in real-time on a whiteboard can really drive the learning experience. (Comment by Harman of WizIQ)

2) More control
For better or for worse, in a virtual classroom the teacher has more control over what students look at and sees how they interact with their peers, the chat and with the learning material.
(Stephen Jones)

3) Professionalism
Using Skype seems to mix business with personal use, hence using a virtual classroom lifts the professional image.
(AmericanTeacher)

4) Greater availability
Some countries ban Skype (i.e. UAE), some learners prefer MSN or Yahoo and many companies do not allow Skype for security reasons.
(Giselle Santos, AmericanTeacher, Heike Philp)

5) Conferences
Conference like the ETCon would not have been possible on Skype.
(unknown)

6) Plan B as in ‘back-up’
Internet communication technology is fragile and it is advised to always have two of everything. So, it is good to use MSN AND Skype or Skype AND Virtual Classroom. If one fails, one can use the other.
(Heike Philp)

7) Skype is like using a hammer
‘If all you can use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ Many like Skype because they don’t know about virtual classrooms or do not know how to use it.
(MissShonah)

8′) Course structure
Slides communicate to the learners a course structure whereas Skype lessons may end up to be mere conversation lessons.
(Elisa Delaini of Myngle)

9) Multi-Modality
Speaking and listening, reading and writing and all of it all at once, this engages all of the learners’ senses. For example: some take notes of what others are discussing in a dialogue, this dialogue may be prompted by visuals or text which maybe annotated by others, and so on.
(Heike Philp)

10) Full contact rich media environment and it is sociable too
(Kevin of DimDim)

11) Teachers are leaders
If we do not master the technology, how will our students? Many of our learners use webconferencing on a regular basis and they are glad to learn this technology with us.
(Heike Philp)

12) Personal and professional development
Virtual classroom provide a challenge to grow professionally. We are advancing from one-to-one Skype lessons to group tuition in a virtual classroom. After virtual classroom, there will be virtual worlds, after virtual worlds ….
(Heike Philp)

13) Language teaching is by-an-large text-based
Language teaching requires a measure of text and the whiteboard is ideal for this.
Unfortunately most of the teaching material teachers have is in Word format. Word however uses the ‘old’ portrait format of books or pages in a folder. PowerPoint came about because of the typical shape of a computer screen. Why the Computer screens are in landscape format nobody knows but this happens to be the dominant format in a virtual classroom. This is the reason why we need slides. Many teachers have never used PowerPoint and now feel as if they have to redo all of their teaching material.
Did you know that you can convert a Word document into PowerPoint with a single click? Next time, in Word, look under the File menu and try ‘Send to MS PowerPoint’. It might look a little messy, but it is there.
(Heike Philp)

14) Virtual Classrooms will be with us a loooooong time
They already have been around for a long time (WebEx was founded in 1995) and they will be around for a long time to come. This is why it is worth investing time and effort into mastering them.
(Heike Philp)

15) A virtual classroom opens a world of learning
Just imagine virtual classrooms will become standard and from the comfort of your home you can now learn any course you wish. You as a teacher, what kind of course would you want to take? Would you perhaps take a Master program at a University? Would DELTA be your goal? Maybe a course in NLP, a programming language, a course at Harvard or a course in music or film production? Whatever your dream course looks like, the mere thought of these courses being conducted in a virtual classroom spells choice, right? Would we not also wish for this to be the case? Would we not wish for this University to be so ‘modern’ and offer their courses live online? Maybe this viewpoint helps us to understand the great potential of virtual classrooms for us and for our learners.
(Heike Philp)

16) Virtual classrooms are sociable
They can connect learners with learners and learners with experts across continents during rich learning conversations.

17) Virtual classrooms can enrich a local event
A simulcast can add richness to a local conference or a local classroom (in schools or universities).

What a fabulous collaborative effort. With the best of my intentions, I only ever came up with 10 reasons and this has literally blown me away. Thank you very much indeed for this fabulous list! Thanks to all for sharing.