Ways+to+Communicate

The world of technology provides a whole new world of opportunities to connect and collaborate with schools around the world. No longer are we limited to the postal service or the occasional phone call, but a wide variety of ways (both instant and not) to talk with schools in other countries.

The old standby and most common is the use of email. While not necessarily the flashiest or most exciting way to communicate, email discussions between classrooms (class-to-class, teacher-to-teacher, and student-to-student) are readily available and require the least amount of training necessary. Aside from the difficulties of younger students learning to type (which can be overcome by voice recognition software), there would be very little technical difficulties in cultivating an email exchange between two people or two classes. The limitation obviously is the inability to attach anything more than text, photo, or short audio without significant training or technical difficulty. Because the system is entirely message-based, there users can send and respond to emails at a convenient time for them and do not have to coordinate a time to meet, which is helpful especially when there is a significant time zone difference. Examples include ISP-provided email, GMail, Yahoo Mail, or Apple's MobileME service.
 * Email**

At one step up from email, instant messenger and chat programs provide the opportunity for real-time exchanges online. Similar to email, very little technical knowledge or training is needed to complete an instant messenger or chat conversation, but these conversations are limited to text generally. It can be more difficult to share files such as audio or video through IM or Chat programs than regular email. Examples include Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, or Facebook Chat.
 * Instant Messenger/Chat**

The next best thing to being in the same room, a video chat conversation online provides the opportunity to talk face-to-face with a person in real-time online. This provides the ability to see facial expressions, mannerisms, hear vocal accents, and other parts of speech not available during text chatting or sometimes even just a phone call. The disadvantage to a video chat is the fact that you must schedule a time to meet online and are a little more reliant on video and audio equipment and software. Examples include Skype, Google Video Chat, or Apple FaceTime.
 * Video Chat**

Moving back to text, wikis are an excellent way to collaborate amongst multiple parties online. Individuals or groups from anyplace in the world can log into the Wiki and edit pages on it to best meet their needs. They are designed more as peer-to-peer websites, meaning that while there is a master over the entire website, there's less guidance from a "manager" about what the wiki should look like. Contributors can upload links, files, add tables and put up widgets. Wikis can be a great asset for collaborators because they don't require people to be logged in at the same time and there are little barriers to contribution, but they're also difficult to manage because anyone with permission can edit, so reliance on outside means of communication to generate the wiki is often needed. Generally a lot of places set up their own hosted Wikis as a subset of a particular program or website, but one free example is WikiSpaces.
 * Wikis**

Blogs have a similar functionality to Wikis, but the purpose is entirely different. Blogs are designed for one or two people to post "articles" on things of interest. There is generally a specific topic for a blog, but it's not designed as much as a collaborative resource as a Wiki is. Blogs are great when two individuals want to co-author a website, but not very helpful for working together on things because posts are generally not co-written. Examples include Blogger, Wordpress, and a host of other blog services available for free.
 * Blogs**

An excellent option for contacting other schools is the use of video sharing sites. With video sharing, collaborators get the benefit of seeing the other collaborators as well as their surroundings without the need for scheduling meeting times. This can also be helpful when sharing information because of the fact that audio and video often provides for an easy way to share information. The disadvantages with video sharing is the fact that most likely outside means of communication in addition to video sharing will be necessary to further an online collaboration, plus the capabilities to record and edit video along with the training to do this. The most popular example is YouTube, but several others such as TeacherTube exist as well.
 * Video Sharing**

Services that allow you to share documents between collaborators are very handy. Options abound using both online document editors as well as working on files offline and then uploading them are both readily available. The nice thing about these sites is that you can preserve original formatting of documents without much difficulty and often editors can use controls that are pretty common across document editing software. The disadvantage to these programs is that, again, you most likely will need some kind of outside communication in order to collaborate. Examples include Google Docs and DropBox.
 * Document Hosting Services**

A great way to share information, podcasts are very similar to online video sharing except there's no audio. This can be handy if bandwidth is a limiting factor because it allows for hearing a person while still maintaining reasonable file sizes. You must have access to audio recording equipment and editing software, however the software is readily available for free. You must also have a place to host the audio file if not being sent through a podcasting service. A great example of this is Apple iTunes.
 * Podcasting**

One of the most recent options and an excellent way to communicate and collaborate is through social networking. These services provide a wealth of options from simple short messages to almost full websites. While collaboration with files is not that easy with these services, the ability to contact someone and have a conversation is almost limitless. Plus, the addition of "tagging" particular topics or interests with posts makes finding new contacts with similar topics or interests extremely easy. Plus, these services often include private messaging as well, if a more private conversation is needed. Downfalls to these services is only to find the best service for a group's particular needs. Examples include Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
 * Social Networking**

Photo sharing services provide the opportunity to share digital photography with other users. While one can't always include audio or video with the image, photo sharing does allow for collaborating on things that are easier seen than described, such as objects or locations. Photo sharing services can provide a way to "tag" photos as well with particular topics, allowing people to find owners of pictures with similar interests or who have been to similar places. Again with this particular service, one would need to find other ways outside of the service to collaborate on things. Examples of this include Flickr, Photobucket and Snapfish.
 * Photo Sharing Services**