Educators have been pioneering new communications with Skype.

Take Prof. Sugata Mitra, a technology education professor at Newcastle University in the UK, whose research inspired by the Academy Award-winning movie, "Slumdog Millionaire." Hes now using having Brit grannies read fairy tales to kids in the slums in India--on Skype. The kids pick up a Brit accent that may help them find jobs and get out of the slums.

Back in January, Silvia Tolisano, the "langwitches" teacher at San Jose Episcopal Day School in Jacksonville, Fla., told me of her plans to take her school "Around the World with 80 Schools" in six months.

She gave me a progress report five days ago: "Adventure is continuing. Not as fast as I was hoping. We are on our 23rd connection. This week, we will connect with Argentina. I am trying to schedule another marathon during the first week of June, since I am conducting a week long Tech Camp at my school and hopefully be able to connect with European and possibly with a South African country at that point.

"It is wonderful to see other schools starting to gain momentum too. A 5th grade class in Bangkok, Thailand is close to their 20th connection. It was a wonderful opportunity to be 'on the other side' of the screen when I was visiting their classroom physically during my Spring Break. I was able to witness and participate while they were making a connection with Japan that morning."

Now, writing from India, educator Jim Moulton reports:

"Though my cell phone's functionality has been terrible, Skype has been nearly flawless. I have called Oregon, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, and Chandigarh, India. True, when the wireless connection becomes a little funky, I dropped a call or two. But overall, Skype has been great.

"If you are a Skype user already, none of this will surprise you. But if you aren't, I think you'll be glad to learn about it. Skype is free software that enables users to make telephone calls via the Internet. It is free when making calls to other users of the service, and so are calls to toll free numbers. Calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made, but for a fee. Skype also offers instant messaging, file transfer, and videoconferencing.

"Yup, that's right -- voice calls to any Internet-connected computer are free. Videoconferencing to other Internet-connected computers is also free. And, as I have become oh so aware of on this trip, calls to any land line in the world can be made for a very small fee.

"My cell phone carrier had told me I would be charged $2.99 per minute for calls made while in India. 'OK,' I thought, 'I'm going to be gone for over three weeks, so it will be worth it to stay in touch with home.' But I have been talking a lot with friends and family for the last few days -- once I gave up on the cell phone -- and I've used up about $6 of Skype credit in my account. And that is for the calls to landlines. I've also had several other video chats that have been free."
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The new Unlimited Country Skype subscription can help out here.

Moulton added: "So, what might you and your students do with Skype? I have heard of cases in which an ill student was able to stay connected to her teacher and classmates via Skype, returning to school caught up, instead of behind. In January 2009, the School Library Journal published this article, which suggested using Skype to allow authors to virtually visit your classroom. And, being a librarian, the writer also included a nice task list to help you get started with Skype. I have to believe this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Because of its profoundly simple power to connect people to people in a variety of ways at an extremely low cost, I know many other great things have to be happening as well."