Skype…now with video

The end of the semester is upon us, and the Arabic class wanted one more opportunity to speak with Effat College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Previously, we had chatted with them via a Polycom Videoconferencing System. Unfortunately, that was not working for Effat this week, so we tried Skype with video on the PCs.

To see a Flickr slideshow with a few photos of our early morning experiments, click here.

We recorded some of the conversations (both audio and video) using Pamela. Perhaps there was not enough memory in the PC we were using. Perhaps the network was slow. Anyway, the audio with video experience was not as impressive as the audio only experience. There were delays, occaisonal screeching static noises, gummy audio… and the video file that was recorded was totally unusable. However, we recorded (with a free standing DV camera) the images on the screen and have that to share (soon!)

Nonetheless it was incredible to have the opportunity to speak with these kind folks so very very far away.