Skype, The Savior of the Tipping Point?

For my PLN Response I did a response to Mr. Fisch's article "H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point" What this article talks about is how some students are you Skype to stay up to date with there assignments and class work while they are home sick. When I read this article it made me think mainly about myself because when I was sick I went to check what I missed on that day. But then I read the article again and started thinking deeper. When I was sick I just went onto the school website and checked the little bit of work I missed and that was the end of it. These kids have been out for days or possibly even a week or so with stuff like swine flu or different flu’s like it. These kids had tons of work to make up so instead of checking the school website they go to Skype to try to talk to there teachers about the work they missed. When I thought about it, this seemed like a lot more affective method of getting to your teacher than going on the website. Think about it; what if your teacher hasn’t updated there page yet or doesn’t have all of the work they did in class on it. Then what? With Skype you can easily just send a message or even IM your teacher to find the work. So this might just save you from a zero or something.

Later in the article, Mr. Fisch talks about how if H1N1 gets any worse and if the outbreak could cause a lot more absences in schools, if people will start posting instructions on the Internet on what to do and how to stay healthy. This kind of goes back to Skype. When you think about it Skype and other social networks would be great places to post these instructions. Almost every teenager these days either has a Myspace or a Facebook, so what better way to get people to know what to do? This could be something that could save us from the tipping point of this epidemic. And I’m sure that people would read it because nobody wants to get sick. Posting something like a way to avoid getting H1N1 or any sickness on a social network would get the attention of kids a lot faster than Yahoo or on the News. These are my thoughts on Mr. Fisch's article "H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point."