Skype helps you communicate with people worldwide and save on voice calls. Skype can be used to build and maintain business relationships, or allow colleagues to collaborate and work more closely with each other when in virtual teams.
Skye is also great for working mothers and fathers who travel frequently for business. I personally have recently been using skype to connect with my sister and niece who are in Germany for the next few months. Skyping with children can be difficult. Here are some tips that I've learned from my experience, and others in my office have shared with me.
Skye is also great for working mothers and fathers who travel frequently for business. I personally have recently been using skype to connect with my sister and niece who are in Germany for the next few months. Skyping with children can be difficult. Here are some tips that I've learned from my experience, and others in my office have shared with me.
Skyping with children
- Pick your moment: Kids don’t like to engage if they are hungry, tired or otherwise engaged, and time zone differences will be something to consider here. Watching TV or eating breakfast is far more important that staring into a camera.
- Prep them: Get them excited and build the moment. And prep the grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles too. Explain that the children may not sit and talk like adults, make sure they listen as well as talk, so they don’t drown out little voices. Set all the equipment up first and do a trial run just before to check it’s all working. Pre-schoolers have no patience with tech that doesn’t just work.
- Involve them in planning: little kids will be much more likely to engage if they are talking about something that is important to them that day/week (a picture they have drawn, new shoes they got for school) and especially if they have chosen the topic themselves. If they are not communicating verbal yet try using a toy. I kept one of my nieces rattles so I would help keep her attention on the camera.
- Keep it short, sweet and often: Better to chat for five or ten minutes a week, than try to have long conversation for half an hour.
- Show them how it all works: point out where the camera is, set up the mic, even put a photo of the grandparents (or Mickey Mouse, or their favourite toy) above / around the camera so they talk to that and make eye contact, rather than at the screen.
- Keep ‘em busy: If they aren’t ready to talk directly to the camera, set it all up so they are busy playing or drawing at the table, and let the grandparents watch them do that. This takes the pressure of them to ‘talk…now’
