My husband came to the United States in 1989 to pursue a Master’s Degree. He is the only member of his family that lives in the US. Decidedly conservative with his finances, he was splurging each month spending about $150.00 in order to communicate with his family by traditional long distance means.
Then came AOL dial-up at about $29.99 a month, then came….well, let’s just fast forward to VOIP. Now, thanks to Voice Over Internet Protocol, my husband can video chat with his family as long, and as often as he likes, and it is free! How is this possible?
Until fairly recently (say 5 years ago), people had to rely on PSTN or Public Switched Telephone to carry short and long distance calls. VOIP provides a means for taking analog audio signals and converting them into digital signals. Those signals are then sent over the internet rather than over traditional phone lines. So, although individuals pay a fee for their internet connection they are able to bypass the phone companies (and their surcharges) and essentially place long distance phone calls for free. All you need is the software (which you can get online for free) a good internet connection, headset or microphone and speakers, a sound card, and….someone to talk to! With VOIP technology you can make calls from home, calls from work, while you are on vacation, on business trips…almost anywhere. As long as you have your laptop and a connection, you're all set to go.
Many school districts and businesses are using VOIP technology in hopes of saving money. Just recently (as in last week) our district replaced all its telephones with IP phones as we begin a district wide transition to VOIP. The phone looks like any other phone you would expect to see in a business environment. The difference is that instead of connecting to a wall jack connector as you would with an analog phone, the phone has an Ethernet connector. In other words, it plugs directly into a router. No special software in a computer required. The software is in the handset of the phone.
SKYPE is probably the best known VOIP service, but many competitors now exist offering to handle long distance and international calls for less: simplecall, via talk, pingo, u VOIP it, VOIPcheap, and VOIP stunt to name a few. Google is supposed to be entering the VOIP market this year which will probably mean big changes for the technology. This is good for the consumer as it will cause competition among VOIP providers driving the cost down even further.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see where VOIP takes its place in the classroom. With the potential to gather with people all over the world, rather than in the confines of a classroom, the potential for enhanced teaching and learning is virtually limitless. To give you a perfect example…my five year old nephew, who lives in Istanbul, is teaching my daughter, in DeKalb and m, in Aurora, how to speak Turkish!
Evet, teknoloji iyi!
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ReplyDeleteWow...there are actually people outside of class reading these blogs. Cool....I think.
ReplyDeleteit's a bot...or, er, rather, a human being placing "adds" for links they are paid to spread around.
ReplyDeleteanyway, julia...your posts would be a lot more useful and specific if you would make sure you include links (see the syllabus).
VOIP is definitely cool. And I bet you couldn't describe it as well as you just did before you had TIE 532. :-)
Great description and lesson about VOIP. I remember that your district was doing that from the networking class.
ReplyDeleteMy district did this about two years ago. There seems to be more outages than with regular telephone service, but that is to be expected. Since the service runs through a server in the MDF room, when there are issues there we loose service.
However, I know it saves a lot of cash. Every phone in the district can be accesed by the four digit extension and costs nothing.
As for those bots, several of them bombard my Smart board Ning site and create fake profiles and post ads. I just suspend them when I come across them. But it is annoying. They are out here on blog land too. Pity really. Which is a good arguement for moderating comments.
I love the use of VOIP technologies for the classroom. Specifically we have used Skype in some pretty innovative ways and I think it is pretty exciting!
ReplyDeleteA third grade classroom used Skype to connect with another classroom in another district to write a story collaboratively.
A fourth grade classroom Skyped with their teacher's Grandmother in Florida to learn about her immigration experience.
A fifth grade classroom used this technology to talk with their teacher's friend who was exploring the Arctic Circle.
We are also currently planning on using Skype when one of our fifth grade teachers travels to Africa to help build a school. We will turn his experience into a learning experience for all of his students as well!
Pretty cool possibilities if you ask me....
Plus, Skype keeps me in the loop when I am on maternity leave as I can still attend meetings via Skype!