This morning I helped a student conduct a college interview via Skype. It was supposed to be through Yahoo Messenger, but we couldn't get the video to work (probably firewall related on our end) so I asked the college admissions officer if she would consider downloading and installing Skype. She hadn't heard of Skype but said, "Sure, let's try it." Four minutes later she called me on Skype and they conducted the interview with full audio and video.
It saved the student a plane trip and waiting longer to find out about college admission. I got to see/hear her get accepted to her first choice school.
Too. Cool.
Karl -- I'll be sharing this with my colleagues and our school's college counselor later today. Terribly impressed by your mentoring process with this student and the admissions officer to make this happen. Feels like an "of course" moment, now, but love that this may be a first consideration for 99.9% of us in terms of using Skype in this manner!
ReplyDeleteBravo Karl! This is a memory that this student will share forever. I recently heard someone say that the role of teachers is to make memories (might have been Stager) and you were part of a great one today.
ReplyDeleteHaving the freedom to spontaneously use helpful tools is so important!
ReplyDeleteWe're tentatively using Skype but having a little difficulty getting "full" approval for it at our campuses, as our CTC attests in his post about your twitter!
http://techxas.edublogs.org/2008/03/06/skypejust-in-time/
Your post really proves the power of sharing. When we're able to take helpful examples to our own staff, then it gives us more ways to demonstrate how useful a tool can be to our students, who are the point, after all :)
Thanks!
That is great. But when are schools going to lax the firewall to allow access to the newer tools, or should I say when is the firewall going to be smarter in what it blocks.
ReplyDeleteAwesome! A lot of students from our county (Loudoun) go to CNU. How great that they were willing to work with you and also great that you have the flexibility to make it happen. We have incredible firewall issues and filtering issues which make it very tough to do things on the fly. Congrats on a great job.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the world is flat.
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