The future is here! Forget your flying cars and robot secretaries – this week, author Tommy Donbavand has been teaching in a school 270 miles away, via computer!
Instead of driving from his home in Lancashire to Kent and back to run his creative writing classes, Tommy has been linking up with year 8 pupils at Holmesdale Technology College over the Internet each day.
Using Skype (a free Internet telephony and video conference program), Tommy has been teaching pupils at the opposite end of the country how to come up with unique story ideas, develop three-dimensional characters and plan a three-act plot. And he hasn’t had to charge a penny in travel expenses!
As you can see in the image below, grabbed from Tommy's computer screen during one of his sessions, he gets to see the class in front of him and – at their end – he is projected on a screen on the wall (very Big Brother!) This is the view Tommy gets – the pupils filling the window and him in a box in the corner. They, of course, see the opposite.
The whole thing is still a learning process and, as with any new endeavour, there are pros and cons.
It is, however, HUGELY EXCITING, and Tommy intends to set up many more of these sessions. If any other schools are interested in linking up with Tommy in this way – from wherever you are in the world – please drop him a line.
There’s no end to where we could go with this kind of event – in fact, the Skype’s the limit!