Write, Create, and Collaborate Online

If you’re still attaching Word documents to emails, sending them back and forth between you and the superintendent, business official or principals you represent, you’re bogged down in emails and attachments. And which version is the right one? With online writing and collaborating software like Google Docs and Writewith, you can work collaboratively on any document from any computer. You can simply go into your mutual Google Docs folder and work. And most online software applications permit you both to see and track any revisions. The best way to illustrate how Google Docs works is with this video from the clever folks at Commoncraft.com:

Catch the Train Before it Leaves the Station

If you’re a school official reluctant to enter the Internet’s Web 2.0 revolution, perhaps this video by Professor Mike Wesch of Kansas State University will persuade you to climb onto this train before it’s too late.

I Have Gas…

Another Web 2.0 innovation, for those of us infuriated about endlessly rising gas prices. provides you with the latest gas prices at your neighborhood gas stations. You simply enter your zip code or hometown, and a list and a map pops up with the lowest to highest gas prices and the locations of local service stations. When I used it today, gas prices in my region ranged from a low of $3.30 to a high of $3.79, for Regular gas. That’s quite a difference, and for anyone penny-pinching the gas thing these days, this website (and others like it) is a godsend. Because it’s a Web 2.0 site, it depends on “user-generated” content, meaning real-time and updated contributions from its members. So far, gaswatch has 163,000 “member spotters,” and 409,000 prices were entered onto the website this week.

Gaswatch also identifies those prices that are less than 12 hours old with a green gas tank, prices less than 24 hours old with an orange rank, and prices that are more than 24 hours old with a red tank.