Skype homework
“A family of immigrant workers from Kosovo living in Switzerland has installed a big computer screen in their living room, for example, and almost every morning they have breakfast with their grandmother back home, via a webcam. It is migrants, rather than geeks, who have emerged as the “most aggressive†adopters of new communications tools, says Ms Broadbent. Dispersed families with strong ties and limited resources have taken to voice-over-internet services, IM and webcams, all of which are cheap or free. They also go online to get news or to download music from home. In the case of a Spanish family living in Switzerland, the daughter often does her homework with her aunt—but over a free Skype video-link, since the aunt lives in Spain.”
From Home Truths about Telecoms in the Economist, via Seb Schmoller’s mailing list. Now, why not doing some tutorials this way? We need to find some way of making Skype like systems available within FE Colleges for teachers to use with remote students.