Today I was reading a post over at +Vicki Davis‘ great Cool Cat Teacher blog and noticed a pop out on the right hand side that prompted me to to “leave a voicemail” for her.  I was on my iPhone at the time so I clicked on it, recorded a simple message for her, entered my email address and name and clicked send.

Then I was intrigued to learn more about this cool little app that facilitated this rather humanized connection between Vicki and I. I’ve learned a lot from the Cool Cat Teacher over the years — on her blog, on Twitter, and in online keynotes she has presented — so it was especially nice to be able to share a hello and thank you with Vicki with my personal voice.

I ended up signing up for a free account with SpeakPipe, and downloading the free iOS app.  Then I followed the steps for embedding the widget on my own blog that allows my readers to leave me voicemails from their mobile phones or computers (without needing an account at SpeakPipe).

SpeakPipe has free and premium accounts (which may be reviewed here).  With my free account, I can send up to 20 voicemails per month, up to 90 seconds each. Users may message me by clicking on the widget on my blog (which can be installed on any webpage that accepts html code — yes, even an LMS) or go directly to my personalized SpeakPipe voicemail page at https://www.speakpipe.com/Mpb.

I took the liberty of adding the link to my customized SpeakPipe voicemail page to my new humanized syllabus, which I wrote about in this post.  It’s a super option for online educators and students!

Loving the new humanized online communication options available to educators today!