Skype

=__Skype__=

Skype is a great tool to use to contact other classroom in the school or in other school, via video chat. Briar and I (Kelly) have been using it to buddy read between our classrooms. One of my Yr 7&8 students chooses a book to share with Briar's Yr 3&4s and rings them at a time we have discussed. They read the book to the class and then ask the students inference questions about the text that they have written before hand. Here's how to use Sype:

__Skype Basics:__
You will need to download Skype onto your computer and create an account, which can all be done at @http://www.skype.com/intl/en/home

This is my Skype window and as you can see it has me at the top to say that I am signed in. On the left hand side there is a list of contacts that I have added the right hand part of the window is for video calling.

__Adding a Contact:__
Click on 'New' (on Left hand-side) and 'New Contact' The add a new contact window will come up You can search for people by their Skype name, full name or email. Once you type in their search name/email then click 'find'. It will give you a list of people with similar names, but when searching by email it should only give you 1. Click on the contact you want and click 'Add Contact'. It will ask you to send a message to the person, just type something in so the person getting the message will know wh you are.

It will give you a small message to say that until the person confirms you they will look like they are offline. Offline is Grey and Online is Green You can close the window after this or add another contact.

__Making a Call:__
Click on a contact and there information will come up on the top of the page

To call click on the call button - to call without video or Video Call to call with video from your webcam

Down the bottom it has the option to Type a Message, which is like a typed conversation. __Great for making sure that the class is ready for you to call them.__ It will make a list of your conversation and a time stamp of when the message was sent/recieved: You just type in the box and press enter or the blue post button on the right side.

__Other things that you need to know:__
When someone logs in you will get a little message on the bottom right of your computer screen to say they are signed in. To open Skype you can double click the little green icon (kinda round with a tick in middle) in your quick launch tool bar. As seen above.