First of all, I’d like to express my thankfulness for allowing me to collaborate with this blog. I work for Asociación Familia Padre Fabretto (
Fabretto centers are located mostly in rural or semi-rural areas; therefore, having them connected to the Internet has been very useful for managing operations as well as providing a venue for having access to educational resources such as information on school gardens, which have been in Fabretto’s programs for some years now. Thanks to The Growing Connection, FAO, and other organizations, our centers have been able to extend their support to nearby public schools, as well, by sharing their experiences on school gardens, and its impact on students on issues related to food security. Moreover, one of my personal satisfactions has been seeing students documenting their experiences, first through their teachers and facilitators, and later through their own discovery and use of technology. As it has been seen in the past years, Internet has revolutionized our ways to communicate with easier, faster, and richer experiences. Nowadays, there are many tools available that help us stay in touch and learn from people, services, or machines: communication tools (Skype, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger), social tools (Facebook, MySpace, etc), Blogs/content creation (like this one), photo sharing (Flicker, Picasa, etc.), Wikipedia. Even more, "cloud computing" is allowing users to use services through the Internet, and reduce their dependence on software installed on a personal computer. For example, this document was created through the Word Processor that comes with Google Apps, free, and totally online. In this context, Skype has been a very useful tool for our students and teachers to communicate among them. I'd like to share with you our experience with Skype in
First, for those of you that are unfamiliar with Skype, let me share with you a little bit about it. Skype is one of the communications tools (Yahoo Messenger, etc.) that are useful for chatting, talking, making phone calls, exchanging messages, call/chat conferencing, etc. with people who also use the same program. It is relatively easy to locate people by name, or email address. Moreover, Skype can be extended with other shared applications such as games, white-board sharing, etc.
You may download Skype from here. If you are a non-Windows user, please notice that on the right side of the screen, you will be able to download Skype versions for Mac, Linux, etc. After you have downloaded Skype, double click on the file you downloaded and proceed with its installation. It is a pretty straight forward process, until you are asked to register, and create a user name, password, contact email, etc. After this process has been completed, you may proceed to log in to the network and add your contacts. In general, if you have any questions about how to use Skype, please go to http://www.skype.com/help/guides/ for Skype’s online help.
Please be aware that the Internet can be a dangerous place, therefore, pay close attention to the recommendations Skype and other sites make about security related issues:
- Skype recommended information on security: http://share.skype.com/sites/security/
- Online security: http://www.getsafeonline.org/
- Security on a personal computer: http://www.cert.org/homeusers/HomeComputerSecurity/
- Security on Skype: http://www.skype.com/security/security/
One special section is the one about setting your Skype privacy levels. I would recommend that you only accept chats or calls from people in your “contacts” list. In addition, be aware that if you set your mode to SkypeMe, then, you privacy settings will be disabled, and anyone will be able to call you or chat with you, without your express permission. Not to worry you, only list personal information in you profile [File, Profile] that you feel comfortable sharing with other people in Internet. Moreover, you do not even have to fill in your profile.
Chatting is one of the ways to communicate with people by opening a new Window where the chat takes place. One of the nice features of chatting in Skype is that one may leave messages for “off-line” contacts, or retrieve a history of chats that have occurred… this can be useful for follow up conversations, or just to take notes about what was discussed during the chat. In addition, you may also add other contacts to your chat, and initiate a chat conference with more than one party.
With Skype, you can also call another Skype user, for free, or make calls to a conventional land-line or mobile phone, provided that you have bought time [click on Account, Buy Skype Credit]. Similarly to chatting, you may invite other contacts while having a conversation with somebody, and begin a conference (maximum of 9 concurrent participants). In addition, besides sharing chat and voice, if you, or your contacts, happen to have a Webcams or a similar device, you may also see each other through video in your Skype session. It is important to point out that as you may add more participants to your conferences, you may also send them contact information, files, or even dismiss or re-invite that person if his/her connection gets lost.
I invite you to explore Skype’s additional features. This can be seen by clicking on [Tools, More, Get Extras] in the Skype menu ( ). A couple of tools that I found useful were the SketchPad and the WhiteBoard Sharing, available under the Collaboration tab section, which can be useful to discuss concepts, visually. For example, I was able to discuss concepts using these tools with a colleague, some 300 km away. As words were not enough to explain an idea, through this visual aid, we were able to share our own vision of what would be a particular solution to a problem then.
