Video Conferences

I think video conference has great potential, especially in foreign language and ESL classrooms. The reason they can be so beneficial is that language learners benefit so much from speaking and listening to others speak. This is a great way to bring a guest speaker into the classroom, without the scheduling and hassle that generally accompanies the process. Speakers can appear from any part of the world, which live guest speakers cannot (usually).

The drawback of this tool is that it may be difficult for some students to use, as exemplified by our demonstration on Tuesday. The teacher may need to guide students through the process several times before they are comfortable doing it on their own. Another possibility would be to use video conferencing in the classroom only, and not independently.