Synchronous Communications
DI recently discussed different synchronous communications tools.
The ones I find myself using most often are:
- iChat A/V (in and out of (our all Macintosh environment at) work
- Skype (for making phone calls, doing podcast interviews)
- GTalk (within the Gmail interface)
I find a lot of folks don’t like to video-chat. Sometimes I get lazy and can’t type all the stuff out that I’m trying to communicate, or else, using my voice feels more comfortable for the thoughts I have to convey. And sometimes I need more time to think about what I need to say, and e-mail is the better tool.
In my book, I talk about the power of synchronous voice communications as a powerful addition to your teacher’s toolset. I recently watched an “interview” between two people where they used video + audio. I had mixed feelings about the experience.
a) the video chat recorded as video did convey more information than audio alone would have (i.e., I know what both folks looked like, I saw a bit of the one person’s computer/room and where they work), b) The quality of the video capture was not great; I am not sure the extra information influenced the discussion much.
Nevertheless, it was an interesting video covering “lifecasting.” I still think synchronous tools make for a convenient means for time-delayed media, too!