College network administrators haven’t always been psyched about Skype: The popular program, which lets users make phone calls over the Internet, can be a real bandwidth hog and, arguably, a security threat.
But some professors who teach courses online are growing quite fond of the software, as Tom Regan notes in a column for The Christian Science Monitor. Skype has proved particularly useful in Web-based foreign-language courses because the tool lets students get instant feedback from native speakers. Conversing with live instructors is surely a better way to learn a language than speaking along with CD’s or cassettes, Mr. Regan writes.
Yu-Hsiu Lee, a Chinese instructor at Indiana University at Bloomington, offers more details on Skype’s educational value in a post on Skype Journal. —Brock Read
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