E-Mail

     E-mail is the fastest, easiest, most trouble-free method ever devised for communicating with every stakeholder in the educational process. If you can type, you can e-mail. Think of the possibilities:

Students - Questions that are too embarrassing to ask in class can be posed privately by students. Assignments can be clarified, guidance provided, feedback given, grades discussed. 

Parents - You can notify parents of individual student issues directly, privately, and instantly. Notices of open classroom nights can be sent to hundreds of people with a few keystrokes. Parental involvement is facilitated because you no longer have to wait for a school open house to have one-on-one conference with parents.

School and District - Information can flow in both directions much more quickly and with fewer errors and misunderstandings. 

Newsgroups, Wikis, Blogs, and Chat

     These are various online tools for fostering discussion and building learning communities. There are many applications of these technologies, not the least of which is their use by students who are excluded from normal classroom participation. Everyone can benefit from the ability to collaborate in learning.

Classroom and Teacher Web Sites

     Before the school year even starts you can post everything everyone needs to know about the upcoming school year, such as assignment calendars, your expectations, grading criteria, and anything else you wish you could tell everyone at once. The information is accessible at any time, from anywhere with Internet access. Web sites are easy to design and post, and services like Teacherweb.com, MyClass.net, Scholastic.com and several others provide all the design tools and hosting services at minimal cost. Getting yourself and your class online is literally as easy as ABC, and most of these services offer templates that let you give each of the stakeholders access to just what they need.

Teleconferencing

     What we used to refer to as "conference call" has grown into something you would never recognize. Voice calls can be established with participants in widely different locations, and the addition of video (making it a video teleconference or VTC) gives the contact a whole new context. Commonly available applications like Go2meeting allows people to share presentations online, and entire seminars (webinars) can be attended sitting at your home computer in your jammies. Full-motion web cameras (webcams) can be had for as little at $30, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gives you basically free long distance to go with them. Sick or disabled students can join the class activities, your students can meet their counterparts around the world face-to-face, you can communicate so much without making people come to you.

Electronic Newsletters

     Distributing information on a mass electronic basis ensures that the information is reaching the intended recipient. You have all experienced instances in which letters sent home with students are forgotten as soon as they're stuffed into the backpack. Electronic distribution avoids those problems.

Student Information System (SIS)

     Student Information Systems give parents access to assignments and grades, behavioral notes, and even allow parents to conduct business with the school online. These systems are usually implemented district-wide, but the usefulness of the information depends on consistent use by teachers.

Classroom Management Tools

     Assignments are completed on computers, so why not make the whole process electronic? Services such as those offered at Gaggle.net provide two way communication tools, calendars, blogs, and digital lockers for ongoing and completed student work. When you write it down you minimize the chance of error, and you can easily revise things as conditions change.