At Points of Light Institute we deliberately focus on issues that are relevant to volunteer support. The Four E’s: Education, Environment, Emergency relief, and Economic development, focus on the support of people coming together to take voluntary action. For the rest of this week our blog will be discussing Education topics to coincide with NBC’s Education theme for Education Nation.

September 19-22nd at the Social Good Summit in NYC, Education was also a highly discussed topic of interest.  An intriguing new initiative was described in the Skype session, called “The Transformational Power of Skype in the Classroom” in which technology is being utilized to create better classrooms.

Skype in the classroom was created in response to – and in consultation with – the growing number of teachers using Skype to help their students learn. It's designed to help like-minded teachers find each other, collaborate on projects and share inspiration and resources. On Wednesday at the Social Good Summit, Skype CEO Tony Bates said,

“We really felt that it was time to take this to the next level ... moving from grassroots Skype in the classroom to an initiative driven by Skype.”

Thanks to Skype in the Classroom, more than 16,000 teachers worldwide are using Skype to help their students learn better.

Using the Skype platform, teachers can create profiles that describe their classes and teaching interests. They can also search a directory of teachers from all over the world by student age range, language and subject. The “project” tab helps teachers find partner classrooms for projects and ideas.

With this new technology teachers can connect with their counterparts from all over the world.

Interested in hearing more? Follow updates via @skypeclassroom.

Join Skype in the classroom today.

What do you think about this new initiative? Have you had good experiences with Skype in the Classroom? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments.