COETAIL--Skype, the Essential Synchronous Communication Tool

As a writer and longtime teacher of writing, naturally when I read through the 21 categories in 21 Things for the 21st Century Educator, my eye immediately travels to the communication tools, #4 of the list of 21 Things. Within the communication tools is Skype.

Skype has become an essential tool to me as a teacher, author, learner, event organizer, parent, daughter and sister. Skype is also a common tool for student collaboration in our household. Whereas I spent hours on the phone doing homework with classmates as a student, now students do homework and projects together via Skype (and Facebook and various chat tools).  For me, Skype is perhaps the single most important tech tool besides my keyboard. Stefana Broadbent refers to Skype in her Ted Talk on social transformation How the Internet Enables Intimacy and shares some of the many ways people use Skype to connect with others.

Here are just some of the ways I have used Skype:
meetings with colleaguesmeetings with editors and writing mentorsmake-up classes for students who missed classcreating events for authors, illustrators and translators featuring guest speakers from outside Japanmaking author visits to schools in other countries--from my office to their classroomsconnecting with distant family memberscelebrations--birthday dinners, family reunions, holidaysparenting our children and connecting with my husband when I'm out of the countrykeeping in touch with our son throughout university and from various countriescrisis monitoring when our son was being evacuated during the Egyptian revolution of 2011crisis monitoring during the Japan earthquake of 2011deathbed vigil for my father--in which the nursing home enabled wifi for us so that I could join my family members around my father's bed as he took his last breathsFor the last five years, Skype has played a key role in my life.

Thanks to Skype an Author Network, I have made a number of classroom visits via Skype. Next week I will be doing another author Skype visit--this one to two classes of fourth graders in Wisconsin. They'll be asking me questions about my picture book The Wakame Gatherers and I'll be able to show them locally harvested wakame. Alas, I cannot give these children, many of whom have never seen the sea, a taste of wakame, but with some props and some peaks outside my study window, I can bring children from the middle of the U.S. a bit closer to Japan and the ocean.

For my author Skype visits, I often include PowerPoint presentations that I send ahead to teachers so that in addition to talking to the students and fielding questions, I can narrate a presentation with photos. I'm also hoping to develop some videos of me reading excerpts from my novels, poems and stories, and videos of locations relevant to my books, to combine with my Skype talks.

Skype is a powerful tool that provides for intimacy and direct communication. For educators, Skype enables students everywhere to speak with creators--authors, designers, dancers, artists--and specialists from any field. These virtual visits further motivate students and, in the case of author visits, definitely help cultivate readers. Read about World Read Aloud Day and all that Skype enabled in this post--Author Visits? A Remote Possibility: Using Skype is Fun and Affordable--by author/educator Kate Messner.

Going forward, I hope to broaden my ways of using Skype as an educational tool and would love to hear ideas from others.