Thinking of Online Classes as Distributed Teams...

ReadWriteWeb published a nice review of 4 Essential Apps for Distributed Teams. This was intriguing to me as it felt like I was reading a best practices for online learning. If our "connection" improves satisfaction and success, and "connection" is essential to good team development, these are worth a look. The four apps are:

1. Instant Messaging and Chat;
2. Wiki;
3. Task Tracking (Keeping tack of work); and
4. Web Conferencing (synchronous classroom experiences).

All of these are available in Web 2.0 implementations, or are included in most Course Management Systems (ours being Desire2Learn). In addition to the options noted by RWW, other options include:

1. Meebo (for instant messaging)
2. D2L has a chat room
3. pbworks for wiki's
4. Elluminate (for "web conferencing"...free Vrooms for up to 3 people are free)