Wouldn’t it be great if there were a free, easy-to-use tool that would allow you to create an online schedule of assignments for your students, serve as a turn-in point for those assignments, and let you have discussions with your classes?  Guess what!  There is.  Nicenet’s Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA) site does all of that and a bit more.  The ICA has been around for 10 years now, and provides many features commonly seen in expensive commercial packages.

A teacher is able to create an online presence for each of their classes and create an assignment calendar (with reminders) for their students.  These assignments can then be turned in via the ICA.  The ICA also gives the teacher the opportunity to created threaded discussion boards to dialogue with students online.  The teacher receives an unique keycode for each class to share with students to control access.

Strengths:

• Powerful calendar system
• Ease of use
• Share documents
• Share URLs

Weaknesses:

• Cannot upload files; all documents must be entered as text or pasted from existing document files
• Student assignments are the same
• Teacher has little control over student accounts

The ICA would be a great tool for any teacher who wants to create online assignment calendars for their students.  Even if you made no use of the other features, this would still make the ICA worthwhile.  The addition of threaded discussions and online assignment turn-ins (even though limited) are nice extra features.  The cost can’t be beat (free) and, while there is a required registration, the site collects only the information you choose to give it (email and name are NOT required).

If any of these features are appealing to you, I encourage you to check out Nicenet’s Internet Classroom Assistant.