Possibilities

While reading through the DeVoss and Porter article, I kept thinking about the way that my current clinical is run here at NIU. We use the Microsoft software Sharepoint, a bundled addition to Office 2003 and 2007. The software is pretty interesting in the sense that it enables users that have the same login to immediately "publish" or save their work to the website created for the users of that particular setup of Sharepoint. No doubt that this was originally intended for business users. Rather than constantly swapping revised memos and business papers through email (which can become damaged or lost), users can log in to their setup site and edit/review anything anyone else with web access and a login id may have posted to the company's site.

This could easily work its way into education, as well, even at the Middle and High School levels. If students were given access to the same "website" (which really isn't a website, but rather a remote login like they would login at their school's library), they could post ideas on a blog set up through the site and also, their papers and assignments as they were to complete them. Essentially, this is what we're doing for my clinical class. As we complete each assignment and save it, we choose a special extension that automatically links and posts it to the Sharepoint site that our Coordinators have access to, cutting out the need for paper and even for emailing.

Now, I know how everyone feels about Microsoft, but I imagine it will not be long before a competitor creates something similar. In fact, as brought up in a previous class, Google Documents is very similar.

Sorry, this is not completely related; it just kept coming to mind as I read through their article.