For our READ 411 class, we had to meet with our students and perform an assessment to determine the best way that we can help them improve their reading (and also improve our skills to recognize these traits). I chose Lauren, a friend of mine, to be my student for this project.
Lauren and I had been trying to
set up a time to meet for about a week and we had a lot of difficulty finding
mutual free time, so we decided to meet on Skype and set up a video chat
session. This maximized our free time between events (we each were coming from
work and were headed to something else shortly after) and I was able to seize
all of the advantages of meeting in person with the additional challenge of
having a seamless lesson plan and needing to do a lot of preparation.
This proved to be immensely efficient and helpful, which gave me the idea of how this could be brought further into the music classroom. I was thinking about how private teachers could feasibly teach a private lesson to a student over Skype; to prevent any legal issues, it would probably be best to have the parent present during the lesson. This saves a tremendous amount of time and money in traveling and, if the parents of the student see necessary, could record the lesson and refer back to it at a later point to assist in their child's practicing that week.
This could also be very effective to "bring" a guest speaker "into" the classroom. Again, this saves time and money on both ends of the spectrum with all of the benefit.
Skype is awesome for saving me so much money on international calls. There are instrumental teachers who give lessons via Skype (or similar technology) when they're away. It's incredibly convenient.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the whole thing (video and call quality) really depends on your internet connection. But bad circumstances aside, I do agree that it's a wonderful tool for importing some guests into the class room!
This was a great idea, Cassie.
DeleteIn my opinion, it should have been a great experience because it takes away the shyness, awkwardness, and sometimes anxiety of the reader. Although she was your friend, she may have been a little uneasy with reading aloud to you. Communicating on Skype keeps that distance where she would be less intimidated and perform the assignment very well. Now, when you meet in person, the ice would be broken.
In my high school band we hosted a masterclass with Dr. A via distance learning. She helped us with the pieces we were doing, although it was hard to follow her (conducting via internet is awful). Skype is definitely useful, I'm just concerned about the problems it brings up. The internet is a scary place and I believe as a culture we aren't yet ready to handle the responsibility of the power. Skype scares me; words can be misinterpreted, sound quality is poor, delay cuts the lesson time down. However it is indeed cheap and a time-saver. While I am on the "side" of technology when people claim technology is ruining our interpersonal skills, I do believe that things like Skype are making us lazier and less used to seeing people face-to-face and it's evident in students; as Dr A often says, students today often have a sense of entitlement due to our contemporary culture. Things like skype tend to reinforce that image.
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