It allows teachers to finally break down the walls of time and space that have often separated them from the community they serve, said Jana Tobbe Hickey, distance learning specialist for Jefferson County Schools in Louisville, Ky., a testing site for t he software. The course management part of the software allows schools to create a Web environment for every course, as well as for campus groups or organizations. Professors can post grades, offer exams, hold discussions, and publish assignments and reading material. Each of these sites also contains a calendar, message boards, chat groups, statistics about student participation and more.
Users can also post and respond to classified ads on the site.
The software can be customized to meet the needs of each school and can include features that allow parents to check grades and see if their child arrived at school. For example, Jefferson County Public Schools created professional development communities for teachers where they discuss specific aspects of learning and participate in on-line training. Teachers now put their curricula on line and interact with parents and other community members. Jafari and Mills are founders and officers of the company which will market and sell the software.