Once completed the exam is electronically graded and the results sent to the teacher's e-mail box. How about providing those same students with an interactive worksheet when completed, is again received in the teacher's e-mail box? Or how about an interactive assessment which the teacher designs, but instead of having the results e-mailed to the teacher, only the student knows how well he has learned the concepts, because he has been provided with immediate feedback to his responses.

All of these types of activities assume you have a server to which you can upload all of your lessons, activities, and or materials. Nothing is further from the truth. You can have all the same type of interaction with all of your materials on a floppy disc, zip disc, hard drive, or CD-ROM. You just need to make sure you use a computer which has Internet access, and you have designed into the lessons appropriate links. There are exceptions to this method, such as the HTML FORMs processed by Response-O-Matic. Those forms must be resident on a server.

Sounds radical, not really. These tools are available for use by teachers and the public today, developed by the generosity of individuals and companies. Don't want to use the freely accessible software tools, then there are companies that specialize in providing these types of management tools.

On-line learning, if structured properly has the capacity to radically change the way instruction is provided. Something to think about. How would using just these three types of tools change the way teachers provide instruction in the classroom: for the child who is sick at home, the child who is unable to attend school for other reasons, or the child who got called out of the classroom during a critical time?