What can be exchanged

Anything which can reside on a computer in electronic form can be exchanged over the Internet. This includes:

• Text: letters, stories, poems, surveys...
• Graphics: commercial images, digital photos, scanned pictures, graphs.  Examples: Ton toit, mon toit , Postcards Around the World
  
• Sounds: system sounds, other audio files (voice, music).  Example: Alphabet Adventure Gallery, Radio WillowWeb
  
• Movies: animations, video clips,  video documents created by students. Example: Email in Kindergarten. Yes! It's possible
  
• Various Documents: spreadsheets, desktop publishing files, "slide show" presentations...

It is a good idea to keep things simple to start with. If you are a beginner, consider joining or launching a project that requires the exchange of text E-mail messages only. If that is insufficient, keep in mind that information other than text can be exchanged using E-mail, simply attach the file to your message.

There are several ways of exchanging this information:

• In an E-mail message
• As a file attached to an E-mail message
• Posting it on the Web
• Participating in a forum dedicated to the subject at hand
• Live conferencing: chats, audio and video conferencing
• Using a BLOG or a WIKI as tools for publishing writing, images, videos...
  
• Podcasts (Posted on the class BLOG) like the Room 208 Podcast
  
• ...

What do you need to know ?

Sharing information among collaborators seems a simple enough task. But the exchange of files on the Internet may be more complicated than it appears. The software available to each participant may limit the kinds of files they can create and receive.This is the technical issue. Participants may also have varying degrees of computer sophistication. How information is exchanged can therefore be a question of convention among participants.  Using the web to post and run the production (video, podcast, etc.) can be a solution.