Share your Screen with Skype
February 16th, 2010 | 
Author: Have you ever tried to teach your Mom – via phone – that the google search box is NOT the address bar on her browser? And that the website won’t open if she types the ‘www thing‘ in there. Life cannot get more frustrating than this!
During one – on – one training sessions with clients, I sometimes run into the same type of frustration as I help them learn to maneuver about in their twitter and facebook accounts. Teaching them what to look at, what to click and where to go to find something. Describing the screen and where I want them to click or visit can get frustrating because descriptions of buttons and links don’t always sink in easily.
Lately, I have started using Skype’s Share Screen feature with people to easily be able to show them what I mean. It allows you to chat via Skype with your computer screen visible to the other party – they are not logged in and cannot use your computer, but they can see it and more importantly, your mouse. In my case it allows the other party to see what I am talking about and we make much more effective use of our time and with less frustration.
Skype can be used for text chat, video chat or phone chat as well, in order to use the Share Screen feature, you need to be upgraded to the latest version which has the Share Screen function. Check it out and save yourself some frustration. Of course you may need to walk ‘Mom’ though the download of Skype – but it will be well worth it!
Here’s a quick video on using the share screen function…
and thanks to Grace White of Virtually Amazing for helping us on the screen share video!
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Thanks for bringing Skype share function to my attention. Do you know if the screen share can be recorded like the audio can be so you have a video after the session?
You’re welcome Denise,
Skype does not have the option but there are a couple tools out there that do record skype calls – one being G-Recorder -Though I am not certain it can capture the screen share aspect. I have emailed them to ask. What is does is take the chat and audio and saves them as files directly in your gmail account.
G-recorder sounds cool. I use Pamela to record the audio for client meetings and would love to be able to record screen as well as an alternative to Go to Meeting and it’s expensive monthly fee.
G Recorder sent me a note that it is not a function – but a good idea – so one day maybe… Screen-o-matic can record your voice and the screen, but the audio of the other party on skype does not get catptured.
I’ve had that exact experience with my mom! I need to remove the Google search box from her toolbar because she keeps trying to use it to access web addresses. Also, she’s terrible with facebook and now she hates it. Certain people are not cut out for Web 2.0! I didn’t even bother trying to explain what Skype was when I was at uni.