Skypetastic-less

Skype: The new generation of telephones. Almost everyone knows what it is, but I only tried it on my own for the first time this week. The operative words being "on my own."

I remember my family trying to use Skype a long time ago--maybe ten years ago by now. I remember it as an arduous process that didn't work very well. We tried it a few times and then gave up because there were better ways to communicate with family.

I didn't think of it again until I signed up for italki.com to try to polish up my Spanish skills a bit. That was last fall in 2014. However, I didn't cave. Every single person I started a chat conversation with on italki.com wanted to become Skype friends and chat in person, but I was leery. Why would I want complete and total strangers to be able to see and talk to me? I don't know enough about computers to know that they couldn't figure out where exactly I live just from talking computer-to-computer. Plus, I was more interested in improving my writing skills than speaking skills at the moment. Call me paranoid, but I didn't want to download Skype onto my computer.

Fast forward to the present day; I have had to download and use Skype for a class. It's funny because this is the second time that I have been required to do something for a class that I refused to do earlier because I had reservations. Ah, well. Such things happen. But I still don't like the idea of being found by complete strangers.

Yes, that happened. Less than a week after setting up an account on Skype, I got an unsolicited friend request from someone whose last name was Singh. I didn't friend her immediately, but sent a chat message asking her to tell me more about who she was, how I knew her, and, basically, why I should accept her friend request. Her reply? She was bored and was browsing the Skype directory to find someone to talk to. Honestly, it took far too many exchanges for me to brush her off and report her as spam, but I did learn that the more irritated I get, the more formally I write/speak (probably to counter her txt-spk). Stiff, firm politeness is my weapon of choice. I changed my profile picture to an anonymous Paint-produced picture immediately moved on, but, to be honest, I am seriously considering uninstalling Skype after this class because it creeps me out. It won't exit on my computer. It's always on! Even when I am signed out, it is down in my taskbar looking like it's on. Seriously. If I press that little red X in the top right corner of an application, I want it to shut down until I click on it again. The only way I can get rid of it is to right click the icon and choose "Quit Skype." That works, but I feel like it's still waiting for me...

Fortunately, I have had one good experience on Skype. It's probably not enough to make it totally worth it and make me keep the application forever, but Skyping with a classmate by chat and by video call was nice. It was a lot like broadcast classes, which I am really comfortable with. I can imagine that it would be really useful in a school classroom as a way to have relatively inexpensive class visits with authors, but I would prefer to use it for an organizational/academic use because of my current reservations. If it turns out to be a better communication tool for some people, I would reconsider, but for now, it is something I will have to consider more.

So how exactly might Skype be useful in a school setting? For starters (as long as it is NOT on my computer!), it could be a great tool for author/expert visits. Are students working on a complex research or technological presentation and want the help of the experts? By all means, find someone who has created great [documents/PowerPoints/speeches] and get his or her input. Make it into a class Q&A session or pass the teaching torch for a day. Are kids working on publishing or something? See if you can get them to talk to someone who is actually IN publishing--an editor, a cover designer, a publisher, etc. It could be an awesome teaching tool, and it could especially be used for areas that we don't often think of.

Really, author Skype visits are increasingly common, but could we use that idea for different areas? It could be especially fun to get the students' input on what they are not understanding in class or what they want to learn directly from an expert in the field. It could also be a great ending to a career exploration unit. There are myriad possibilities.