Speakerphone

The past four months have seen me working remotely and from home. Not only has it meant more time with the family but it’s meant the technology has been essential to my ability to work, and I’ve put it all to extremely good use. I think I ought to write an update to my EdTechRations … ?

One item I could not be without is a speakerphone for the daily Skype calls I have. I’ve got a Jabra Speak 410 speakerphone and it means I can be natural and comfortable on calls, even walk around the room as we talk. I don’t need a headset which doesn’t limit me to where I can be. It’s compact and light so easily transport where I need to be and it has excellent microphone with no feedback. I’m a convert!

Obviously it’s not practical in an open office where you probably don’t want everyone hearing your conversation, but you can plug in earphones if you want, so I still use a headset for that, but it is fantastic as a conference phone – place it in the middle of the group of you and it picks up your voices from a good distance away, from all angles. You have the ability to mute the microphone if you want to stop sharing your audio (always useful if you want to converse privately before being open), change the volume if it gets too loud or quite (all done through something called the ‘digital signal processing’ technology).

It’s USB based and works easily on my Windows laptop and Mac desktop, integrates seamlessly with both Skype and Skype for Business, as well as nicely for Facetime on the Mac. What’s not to like?

Image source: Jabra website