Skype and Google Hangout

Skype is a great tool for communicating with other schools and students.  We have used it to set up language interaction with schools in China and Australia.  The pictures here are of a few of my students when we were Skyping with students in Guangzhou, China.

Here are a few ways we used Skype in the language classroom and it may give you some ideas to how you could integrate it into your teaching.

Situation 1: Overseas Skype contact
1. We had several connections with schools in China.  One school in Guangzhou was very enthusiastic to Skype with our students.
2. The sessions were planned for 30 - 40 minutes, but we rarely reached half that time in pure conversation time.
3. Sessions were planned to be split between English and Chinese, 10 minutes of each, then if there was time left over, there was free time to talk about content outside of the session objectives.  For session outline, see the Narrlakes link below to my Skype resources.
Reflection
Overall, even though the network dropped out regularly, I believed the amount of engagement, enthusiasm and time spent communicating in Chinese was beneficial for my students.  As China is only 2 hours behind Australian time, times to Skype were not that difficult, although sometimes we had to change to lunch times if timetables clashed, we still had a pretty good strike rate nonetheless.

Situation 2: Local Skype contact
1. We started the local Skype program differently.  First step was finding a school to Skype in Sydney.  As there are many schools who teach Chinese, this was not difficult.
2. After initial contact was made with the teacher of the other school, we started off with finding Skype/Pen pals for our students, setting up Skype accounts, applying for the regular Skype incursion with the school administration and then the letter writing.  The reason we wrote first is so the students felt they already knew their Skype/pen pal and also practice the content of the first Skype session.
3. The sessions were planned similar to Situation 1 points 2 and 3 above.
Reflection
The setting up with the local school was much easier, although the timetable clashed once we changed to a new school year.  The letter writing definitely was an improvement in getting the students prepared and feeling more comfortable with talking with their peers as they had practiced their language beforehand.

Here is a slideshow of a presentation I made at a staff meeting of how Skype was integrated into the classroom.


Laptops, iPads and other mobile devices have brought real life language learning into the classroom.  Here is my link to a short Skype movie I made, no Academy Award nominee, but it will give you a short snapshot of how engaged the students are. Some advantages and disadvantages are;

Advantages
- real time and real life communication
- students are motivated
- Language exchange and practice is valuable
- comes at the best price...free

Disadvantages
- can be time consuming setting up Skype sessions, liaising with the IT staff, the other school's teacher and students, setting up content etc.
- Wireless is unreliable with Skype, especially with up to 15 people Skyping at the same time with people thousands of kilometres away.   With the connection dropping out often, lots of time is lost, so out of a 40 minute session, perhaps only 10 - 15 minutes of talk time can be completed.

                                       

For my lesson ideas and activities on Skype, please go to my Narralakes webpage.



Although I have not used Google Hangouts in the classroom, I have used it on a professional and social level and love using it.  It is a great tool and has more functions than Skype in the way you can refer to different screens to show images or diagrams.  I believe there is much of my Skype activities that you could transfer over to Google Hangouts.