Yakking it up on YackPack
13 04 2007
My wonderful collaborative partner shared this very cool new tool with me today. Basically, YackPack allows you to set up a private (real-time and asynchronous) audio chat group using only an internet browser. By the time I had arrived at work this morning, Chrissy had a chat widget set up right on our wikispace. So, I registered for an account, created a “pack” and we were audio chatting in a matter of seconds. Considering that she’s in New Zealand and I’m in Malaysia, anything that brings us closer together is fantastic.
Now, I know this sounds a lot like Skype, but I think this is going to provide some huge advantages for us because:
- No additional software or downloads are required. Students can access our YackPack from any computer with an internet connection. Plus it’s directly embedded into our wikispace so there’s no extra web address to remember. How easy!
- In addition to chatting live, you can leave voice messages for any of the users (one, several, or all of them at once). Our 5 hour time difference makes it somewhat difficult to set up Skype conferences, so this will allow us to have “conversations” whenever we have the time. If I wanted to, I could leave a voice message for every student collaborating on this project to receive whenever they log in.
- Students can chat and leave messages with each other individually. So far we’ve only been using 1 Skype account per class - meaning everyone had to be in on the discussion at once. Now we can have many conversations happing in real-time or asynchronously whenever we want.
- The group is entirely private - you have to be logged in and invited to the group to see our “pack.”
- It feels like a community - the visual set-up of the group makes it feel like an actual group - instead of just a list of people.
It’s not perfect though… So far I can tell that I don’t like:
- There seems to be no way to have multiple organizers - it would be much easier if each of us could manage our own class.
- The visual appearance of the “pack” is small - we have so many members that I had to reduce everyone to the outer edges to be able to see them all without overlapping - and I haven’t even added my class yet!
- Even though I love audio chat, it would be nice to have a text chat option embedded in the same window - instead we’ll probably have to use Meebo or another text chat widget.
Even with these minor drawbacks, I would have loved to use this tool for our International Teen Life project or for the 1001 Flat World Tales project - hearing a voice definitely adds that personal touch. I can imagine students narrating bits of their story, asking for feedback and hearing their collaborative partner in Serbia, Canada or the US respond - no concerns over time differences or software. Hello YackPack!
Hi! My name is Kim Cofino. 
Flickr/superkimbo
Facebook/Kim Cofino
Linkedin/Kim Cofino
Twitter/mscofino
YouTube/mscofino
Last.fm/superkimbo
Del.icio.us/superkimbo
GMail/Kim Cofino
coComment/superkimbo
Technorati/superkimbo
MyBlogLog/superkimbo
Blog/Kim Cofino
great site, trying it out to get some closure on a frustrating discussion involving SISs and standards based assessment, thanks for sharing it.
I could not have explained this cool tool (albeit with some disadvantages) better than you have! I’ll just direct everyone to your post! (Grins).
No doubt I’ll be yackpacking to ya later!
Hi Kim
I agree with you, YackPack is a great facility for global communication. We tried it for the Flat Classroom Project to communicate between the international judges however we found bandwidth variations did not make it effective enough to be useful. But, as bandwidth increases and the software itself improves I’m sure this can be overcome.
I was interested to find the new WalkieTalkie widget available and had experience using this via Anne Davis’ blog this week. See her post at http://anne.teachesme.com/2007/04/11/pbwiki-and-yackpack-give-wikis-a-voice-for-education/#comments
We had a lot of echo but this may be useful for classes if they can catch each other in real-time.
Julie
[...] Yakking it up on YackPack [...]
[...] If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already done this step, but I still think it’s the most important one. This is how I got started. Back in August I realized that I needed to start investigating the whole “blogging thing.” I had read Will Richardson’s book over the summer and I knew that he was describing things that I should be doing in my classroom, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get started. When I arrived back in KL in August, I set up my Google Reader account and started reading what other teachers were doing in their classroom. Over time this has become my professional development. I learn about new tools (like YackPack) through reading blogs, I find out about exciting projects, and I get to read about what other teachers do in their classroom. If something seems interesting or appropriate for my students, I will leave a comment or send the author an e-mail. It’s that simple! [...]
Mark,
Yikes, good luck with that
Chrissy,
Thanks! It’s all thanks to you that I even know about YackPack, so you deserve all the credit!
Julie,
Thanks for the link! It’s definitely not perfect yet, but it’s been so helpful to be able to leave “audio e-mails” for the class and for my colleagues.
[...] that requires little to no reading skills. I used it extensively with my middle school classes last year when we collaborated with Chrissy’s class in New Zealand, and loved [...]
[...] used it with my class on our collaborative project with the fabulous Chrissy Hellyer, loved it, preached about it to the masses, and now that it’s somewhat popular, they have decided to charge for their [...]
[...] Bangladesh where our bandwidth I think is affecting the quality. Kim Cofino in her recent post Yakking it up on YackPack gives an excellent overview of the pros and cons of using this online software in a classroom and [...]