Skype Play

Hyped about Skype - Ivy House School wins MOVE Day

Nigel Carter, Director of Education and Business Development, MOVE Europe

When MOVE Europe was seeking prizes earlier this year for our annual National MOVE Day, we were delighted to receive the support of Skype and the contribution of Skype gadgets for the winning school.

The MOVE Programme - run by MOVE Europe, a small UK based charity - is an activity-based program that teaches the skills of sitting, standing, walking and transferring to the very best of each child's ability. National MOVE Day celebrates the achievements made by children improving their functional mobility on the MOVE Program over the last year. Each child works towards their own and their family's goals, whether it be to lift their head independently for 30 seconds, or to walk a short distance with only their hand held for support, for example.

This past Friday I took a trip to Ivy House Special School in Derby, winners of National MOVE Day, in order to present them with their prizes. It promised to be a fun day out of the office and it sure was - children love getting prizes and the trophy went down especially well.

But it was the FREETALK Buddy Cams and headsets, which had been kindly donated by Skype that went down best with the teachers. The Headteacher told me the webcams will allow the school to video call other schools that use MOVE in the UK and Europe. For the teachers it will mean they can share resources, experiences and problems with other teachers. The pupils will be able to speak to other SEN kids and share their achievement - kind of like modern day pen pals. She also told me that using Skype and the webcams in this way would help with Ofsted inspections - as they are always looking for evidence that a school has increased its community and social cohesion.

Schools up and down the UK took part in MOVE Day and the theme this year was Pirates. Ivy House School fought off tough competition to win - its day of celebration saw pupils and staff dressed-up as Pirates and included the best Pirate Ship cake ever seen by the judges. Their day also featured sword fighting, walk-the-plank and treasure hunt activities. The day ended with a Pirate themed Café attended by parents.

Huge congratulations to Ivy House School on winning MOVE Day 2011 and thanks to Skype for its support.

To help children like those at Ivy House School to live the healthiest and happiest lives possible by accessing the MOVE Programme, you can donate to the charity at -www.justgiving.com/move1 or for further information on the MOVE Programme please see move-europe.org.uk or contact move@move-europe.org.uk

How humanitarian organisations like UNHCR are using Skype

In under a year significant progress has been made with the rollout of Skype's bespoke low-bandwidth solution for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The introduction of Skype has had a positive impact on the lives of many employees who were previously disconnected from their families and friends whilst working in 'hardship' locations around the world.

A joint article has been published in Forced Migration Review - the world's most widely read magazine on refugee, internal displacement and statelessness issues - discussing the partnership between Skype, UNHCR and the Government of Luxembourg, and how the bespoke technology might be adapted for use by other humanitarian organisations.

Meanwhile, UNHCR employee Simplice Kpadnji share's his story of how Skype video calling has made a difference to his well-being and that of his family:

"My family lives in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. I see them every 8 weeks" says Simplice. "Between visits, I use Skype to communicate with them, especially with my children who are 3 and 4. I call them everyday at 8pm."

Simplice with one of his two children

Simplice has been working for UNHCR for more than 8 years. Over a year ago he moved to Goma, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to take up a new role as Public Information Officer. His main responsibility is to provide information on refugees to the media and public.

Since his arrival, Simplice has experienced considerable challenges common to many UNHCR employees in field locations. He has worked in difficult situations and spent long periods of time away from his family.

Being able to talk to his family every single day is very important to Simplice. "It is really fantastic. Sometimes we stay online for one or two hours. My children can talk to me and ask me questions like what I have done during the day. They enjoy it very much. They also talk about their activities and their friends. Through Skype, I see them playing and joking around. It is so important to us. I really feel like I am at home."

This is a feeling shared by Simplice's wife: "Since we do not have you [Simplice] here, Skype gives us the feeling that you are always with us, even if you are far away."

The effect this daily interaction has on Simplice is both wonderful and immediate: "After talking to them, I feel calm, happy and comfortable, knowing they are feeling well and being able to discuss with them."

Skype became even more important when Côte d'Ivoire fell back into civil war earlier this year. "It was so stressful knowing that I was here in Goma and that my family was far from me. I tried to make them come to Nairobi but the airport was closed and they could not travel. However, we managed to keep in touch through Skype. The situation in Abidjan was so difficult but, thanks to Skype, I could know that my family was fine and safe. At one point I was calling every hour."

Simplice remembers this occasion with gratitude and emotion. "It was really great to have Skype at this very sensitive time."

Peace One Day use Skype to help mobilise the youth of the world

The world has just celebrated Peace Day 2011; you'll be pleased to know that it was a huge success. And this year we heard some wonderful stories of how Skype has been used amongst students as part of their Peace Day celebrations.

Face-to-face across continents - a Skype in the classroom project:
The Uruguayan American School of Montevideo held a Skype video call with Mr. Dave Lefkowitz and his World Studies class in Oregon. The discussions focused on the meanings and definitions of what peace meant to them individually, how to promote peace in their lives, and shared their favourite peace quotes and agents of change in this area.

It was a great way to build a bridge of peaceful intent between two countries and the beginning of what will surely be a lasting and peaceful friendship! They even saw and heard from Pakistani students as they joined the conversation too. The excitement of parties from all over the world engaging in this day of peace was inspiring. See some of the project feedback here.

Peace One Day's Global Truce countdown:
For Peace Day 2012, Peace One Day is calling for and working towards a Global Truce - a day of ceasefire and non-violence observed by all sectors of society globally. POD hopes this will be the largest reduction in global violence in recorded history, both domestically and internationally.

Global Truce 2012 Introduction Film

Over the next 12 months, Jeremy Gilley, founder of Peace One Day is going to be speaking with young people around the world and asking them to join Peace One Day in calling for a Global Truce on Peace Day 2012. Will your students be next to speak with him?

Jeremy has already planned Skype video calls with students in Ghana, Mongolia, Monaco, Denmark, Norway and Egypt. That's in November alone; imagine how many students he will be reaching out to in the next 11 months!

Jeremy is hoping to reach schools in the 193 UN member states before Sept ember 21st 2012. To get your classroom involved contact Peace One Day Education through their Skype in the classroom profile or email skypetalks@peaceoneday.org to register your interest in a video call over Skype, and start planning your very own Global Truce 2012 campaign. Don't forget that you can check out the Peace One Day Global Education Resources to help get your students started; we hope the brand new Global Truce 2012 and Sport for Truce lesson plans will provide you with some inspiring ideas.

Will you be part of the biggest call for peace the world has ever seen? You can sign up to the Global Truce 2012 at www.peaceoneday.org, follow @PeaceOneDay on twitter, and 'like' the Peace One Day Facebook page, to show your support.

UNHCR dad sees his twin daughters and wife on Skype video everyday

Our partnership with UNHCR announced in November 2010 is having a positive effect on the relationships and well-being of many UNHCR employees. Here's one story.

"As far as I am concerned, Skype is the main mode of communication to keep in touch with my family. Everyday I call them using Skype" says Haridass Sriram.

Sriram joined UNHCR in 2003, working as a national staff member for almost 6 years in his home country, Sri Lanka. He then spent a further two years in Afghanistan before starting his current post as field protection officer in Aweil, South Sudan, last April. "Thanks to Skype, I can see my two twins who are now 4 and a half months old and talk to my wife everyday." Sriram's wife, Dhuwarakha, who used to work for UNHCR in Afghanistan, is now back home in Sri Lanka with their daughters.

Sriram's twin girls in Sri Lanka get to check-in with their daddy in Sudan over Skype video everyday.

Aweil, Sriram's new duty station, is a so-called hardship location, which means that staff members who volunteer to work there have to take the difficult decision to live apart from their families. "When I arrived in Aweil we had no accommodation," recalls Sriram. Now we use containers both as an office and a place to live. Medical facilities are very limited, as well as the supplies available from the market."

Sriram at work with refugees in Sudan.

However, the biggest challenge in living in Aweil is the limited access to means of communication. "There is very limited mobile coverage and phone calls are very expensive," acknowledges Sriram. Since the installation of Skype, however, this difficulty has been largely removed. "Skype is free of charge and the line is much clearer. It allows me to communicate with my wife. She brings the babies in front of the camera more or less every single day. It also allows them to see how I am doing."

Sriram sums up the situation in a laugh: "If not for Skype, my wife would have left me by now!" She herself confirms that "now that my husband has moved to Sudan, means of communication are less available and calls are so expensive, Skype is the best way of communicating for us. We chat together and I show him the babies through the webcam, so he does not miss out on them growing up. It is really important for our relationship."

Dreaming of the 21st Century Skype Classroom

Sometimes, as I strain my eyes to see or hear young students from around the world on my laptop, I dream of the ideal Skype classroom of the future.

Haiti students learn English over Skype video with volunteer students thanks to Teach the World Online

In this classroom, a teacher would no longer stand before rows of students as they did in the one room schoolhouses of the 19th century. Nor would masses of students swarm back and forth throughout the day in crowded, factory style buildings where little is learned and even less is remembered.

My dream-world classroom would be more like a TV production studio, with perfect lighting, no external sounds and circular or at least U shaped seating. The teacher would wander among the students always ready to start a power-point program, a video or a slide show synced to the day's lesson plan from one of several monitors throughout the room. A visiting teacher, a puppeteer, a magician or interesting person would appear for a short message via Skype video to involve the students in verbal answers or perhaps even a texted response over group IM.

There would be no need to discipline bored students because there would be too much going on, with all five senses being bombarded with sights, touches, sounds, and even smells, all coordinated with the theme of the day's lesson. Learning would be....yes, entertainment. Synaptic responses in the pre-frontal lobe of each student's brain would be firing at top speed because the neural path ways would be open and receptive to the new information being presented in this ideal classroom. Their participation in all of these experiences would be constant. Interactivity would be the classroom mantra, whether it be encouraged face to face, online or both. Blended learning would be seamless, constant and effective.

The success of my ideal classroom would not be judged by computerized testing and terrified teachers struggling to prep their students for upcoming exams. The students in this classroom would be judged by their ability to think and reason within the confines of
a well-crafted essay, verbal response or even debate among fellow students. They would know the art of reading a book and assessing its' contents. They would know how to communicate through film, music and theater as well as words. A myriad of skills and knowledge would be imbued in their minds because they had learned to love the experience of learning in a classroom devoted to providing them with the skills needed for survival and success in a modern world.

Love to chat? Celebrate International Women's Day

To support International Women's Day Skype is helpingUNHCR raise awareness of women in need.

Women around the world are doing some amazing work that often goes unnoticed and uncelebrated. One example being UNHCR worker Roberta Russo in Somalia.
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Interview with Roberto Russo, Somalia

Show your support for women everywhere by going to the UNHCR website celebrating International Women's Day. Help to share these stories by spreading the word with your friends and family on Facebook or Twitter.

Challenges of Teaching via Skype in Haiti

"Jean Pierre, can you please read your homework on the days of the week?" Cara Sampson calls into a laptop webcam from her home in Fishers, Indiana. The young Haitian boy in Port Au Prince looks down at the floor as his teacher's face glows from the laptop screen in a hot semi-dark schoolroom, located in the middle of a tent city where 55,000 refugees have now been living for more than a year.

Cara asks again, "Jean Pierre, can you please read your homework?" The boy stares at the pretty white face on the monitor, hesitates and then looks down again in silence. "All right, perhaps later," Cara says kindly. 'How about Kimberly, are you there?" Kimberly can you come up and read your dictation?" Slowly, the 15-year-old girl with black hair woven into neat braids, steps forward, looks in silence for a moment, and then begins a halting sentence. "On Monday, I go to the market. On Tuesday I cook rice."

Children in Haiti being taught English over Skype video

This is the scene that recently repeated itself time and again during the first week of a new class conducted by Teach The World Online in the former Petoinville Golf Club in Haiti's Capital. We were trying to teach young boys and girls via Skype video who have been so destabilized by events of the past year that they could scarcely talk. Our job was to gain their trust and offer them an education in a world which has brought them nothing but misery and pain for the past year. I was spending the month in Haiti specifically to make sure Teach The World Online succeeded while my co-founder, Jurate Kazickas "skyped" me each morning to discuss the project.

After several delays, we finally began teaching at the Petoinville refugee camp where thousands of children sit idly day after day with nothing to do. During the first few classes I tried to balance a terrible fear that this wasn't going to work with a desperate hope that we could help these traumatised children. Occasionally, I jumped up to give advice through our webcam microphone to Cara and our classroom assistant Haitian teacher, Dimitri Napoleon, on how to work the multi-media and interactive devices we had created for teaching on the internet.

"Ask them to come forward two at a time and introduce themselves," I called to Cara in Indiana and Dimitri, who sat at the front of the room working the laptop and translating instructions into Creole when necessary. Speaking slowly and with clarity, Cara soon had the children introducing themselves to each other. Quickly, they began to forget their fears, their self-consciousness. A few began to laugh.

Then Cara called for Dimitri to play a YouTube video associated with the day's lesson about food and going to the market. It was a silly video called "Yummy In The Tummy," but the students began laughing and singing, even memorizing the words, "I like apples" or "I like carrots". Neural pathways were opening up. Learning was underway. These Haitian refugee children had finally began the long journey to receive a quality education via a new and most exciting educational delivery system.

To find our more visit Teach the World Online.

Elie Wiesel, David Axelrod, and special guests talk politics via Skype at the Conference of Nobel Laureates at 92Y

Last week, Skype had the privilege of once again joining forces with 92nd Street Y to facilitate powerful conversations among some of the world’s foremost intellectuals and business leaders. Specifically, The Conference of Nobel Laureates, hosted by 92Y and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, used Skype video calling technology during the day-long discussions on world issues.

During the closed-door talks on October 6, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren engaged in dialogue with Professor Wiesel and over 20 other participants. Coming in loud and clear via Skype video call, Ambassador Oren contributed his unique insights to a forum on Iran and the Middle East. With excellent audio and visual quality, the New York-based leaders talked with Oren as though he were in the room with them.

Later that evening, Elie Wiesel and David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama, engaged in a candid and compelling conversation in front of a packed audience at 92Y. Skype removed geographical barriers, allowing award-winning students from across the country to ask live questions of Wiesel and Axelrod.

Skype continues to not only enable the world’s conversations, but to do so on a global scale. We encourage you to join us and learn more, by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

Opening up the Conversation at the 2010 Nobel Laureates Conference

Powerful change often starts with conversations. At Skype, we are proud that our software is used to enable conversations that lead to the betterment of humankind. We saw that last week when Skype video calling was used to connect individuals from Africa, Europe, even other U.S. states, into the very important conversations taking place at 92nd Street Y about achieving the Millennium Development Goals at the Social Good Summit presented by Mashable, 92Y and the U.N. Foundation.

Thus, we are honored that through our partnership with 92Y we can continue bringing individuals into important conversations that lead to powerful changes, as will happen next week, October 5 - 6, during the 2010 Conference of Nobel Laureates. Presented by 92Y and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, in partnership with Skype, the conference in New York City brings together Nobel Prize winners and business leaders for an intergenerational, multi-disciplinary discussion of pressing world issues and changes in corporate leadership.

Participating in the conference will be Professor Wiesel (Peace, 1986), Mario Molina (Chemistry, 1995), Roy Glauber (Physics, 2005) and Edmund Phelps (Economics, 2006) and leading entrepreneurs and advocates for change, including Arianna Huffington, Irshad Manji and The Economist's Matthew Bishop among others. Skype video calling software will be used to bring selected guests who could not be at the conference into the private conversations that the laureates and business leaders will conduct throughout the day, as well as the public conversation that Professor Wiesel will have with David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to President Obama and the chief architect of Obama's 2008 campaign.

We are excited about the potentially world-changing conversations that will take place during the Conference of Nobel Laureates. We are also thrilled that Skype has the opportunity to play a central role in broadening these conversations beyond just those individuals physically present.

For more information or to join the public event that will conclude the conference, please visit the 92Y website.

Doing Good: Addressing the Millennium Development Goals

Did you know that in sub-Saharan Africa, 30 per cent of young children are not in school? Or that 33 million people in the world have AIDS and it takes only 40 cents per day to pay for HIV/AIDS drug treatment in Africa? How about the fact that almost 2 out of 10 girls aged 15-19 in Niger have given birth?

Most of us are unaware of these facts, but they are indeed a reality in our world and are driving factors behind the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which provide concrete, numerical benchmarks for tackling extreme poverty in its many dimensions.

This week, Skype is proud to have played a central role in addressing these goals, by helping to open up the social good conversation during UN Week. Working with the 92Y, UN Foundation and Oxfam, we brought in experts from around the world to talk with bloggers and panelists live at the Digital Media Lounge about what can be done to achieve the MDGs.

As part of Oxfam’s daily Breakfast with the World discussions, individuals working to address the MDGs candidly discussed the need to continue pressing forward towards solutions and resolutions. For example, Dr Esther Tallah of UNITAID and Dr Angelina Dawa of Abuntu for Development shared their thoughts on the maternal and child health crisis in Africa via Skype video calls from Cameroon and Kenya, respectively. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Dr Esther Brimmer, was also able to join the conversation via Skype video call, to discuss the importance of addressing women and children’s health issues on a global scale.

In another discussion, Mamadou Biteye, regional director of Oxfam West Africa, joined via Skype call from Senegal to shed light on the role climate change can play in complicating the achievement of MDG Goal 1, eradicating extreme hunger and poverty and the need to develop long-term strategies for impacting hunger. Ben Pickering then joined in from Oxfam Islamabad to discuss the devastation flooding in Pakistan has caused and the need to provide economic support to aid in long term recovery.

This has been an incredibly inspiring week and we are proud that our software could play a key role in making UN Week events accessible to people all over the world. However, there is still a great deal of work to be done. We hope you too are inspired, and will take personal action to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. For more information, we urge you to visit the UN Development Program website, where you can learn about all eight MDGs and determine which one(s) for which you want to help do good.