Using SKYPE/VOIP for WIL

[Margaret Stewart]

I am planning to use Skype in semester 2 of 2008 in lieu of face-to-face meetings I usually have with my students while they are on their 40 week industry placements. I will report on what I find eg access problems, employer objections or concerns, student perceptions etc. Has anyone out there done this before? I am keen to find a group to talk to about this, as I work on this project. I used Skype in China earlier this year and while technically it had its moments, overall it was a great tool for training.

Cheers
Margaret

[Margaret Stewart]

Simon - I just advised a few people about this - see below. Will try to stay in contact but the number of co-delivered and compressed courses I am delivering is making spare time impossible to find.

SKYPE PROJECT & CERT IV FRONTLINE
I have had to abandon for this year my proposed project regarding communicating with students on work placement using Skype.

I will still use Skype if I can with students, outside their work hours, but I do not have the time to do research according to protocols, or even information gathering.

TAFE teaching semesters are now 18 weeks, and I have 12 different courses to teach this semester.; lucky I’m not full-time.

I will work on finding a partner to help for next year.

Margaret Stewart

[Simon Brown]

Hi Margaret, that must be disappointing for you, however it's best to postpone the project if you're overburdened - as you have done. I'm looking forward to when you can take it up again.

[Margaret Stewart]

Simon

Did you mention hat you were a Twitter fan? Someone did... this is from Pandia Post, a good update on search engines. It's good also as it only gets sent to me every quarter. I got feedbcak on why my applicaiotn for Emerging Technology did not get fiunded. 1. They gad 25 applicaiotn and planned to only fund 4-6. Second, they see Skype as not quite leding edge. It's been around for a while. But my Uni will fund something next year.

Cheers

Margaret

Search Twitter in real time
Summize is a search engine that searches Twitter in real time. At first I thought this was a really bad idea. Instant access to a lot of useless information. But Summize is actually a lot of fun and has some real life applications.

If you find Twitter useful, you will enjoy Summize. And I do: Twitter can be a source of data for the anthropology of the present moment. I sometimes lurk on Twitter’s public timeline, amazed to have a glimpse of the lives of people all around the globe and what they are doing right now. But in addition to being fascinating, it’s confusing and very, very fragmented.

With Summize, you can search for a topic like Firefox 3.0 or the UEFA EURO2008 football championship. There are plenty of buzz options here for anyone interested in anything: Politics, music, sports… And when there’s breaking news, this will be a great way to stay on top of it.

You can choose to show results in any language or to extract tweets in Arabic, Dutch, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Thai.

All search results are available via standard Atom and JSON feeds, for use in readers and mashups.

Summize Labs are working on prototypes that harness conversations within blogs and reviews.

[Simon Brown]

Hi Margaret,

I'm sorry to hear about your funding hiccup - I hope you are successful next year.

Thanks for the tip about Twitter and Summize - I find both tools useful. I'm skytrystsjoy in Twitter. Do you have a Twitter account? It seems silly at first, but it is an elegant tool. Jump in! Follow me, and follow my friends too.

Twitter Summize is good when I need to find friends' Twitter replies and I've only got my phone - I search for my own user name.

I found Addictomatic the other day. It's another good tool for searching news reports and blog updates by topic.

Kind Regards,

Simon