WEB SITE KEEPS PARENTS, TEACHERS ON SAME PAGE

It's getting a little easier for Brenda Washington to keep up with her 16-year-old daughter, Emily. Since Emily's chemistry teacher at Thornridge High School in Dolton began using a free World Wide Web site for educators last fall, Washington can simply type her ZIP code into a Web site to learn whether her daughter has homework.

"I try to check it every day or every other day," Washington said of the site, www.schoolnotes.com. "I want to show Emily that I care about her schoolwork and am interested in her progress."

As personal computers and Internet access become more prevalent in homes and at work, teachers are discovering on-line technology as a new way to connect with parents and students.

Ron Bocinsky, president of Georgia-based Data Sense, Inc., wanted to make it easy for teachers to post information on the Internet and for parents or students to obtain updates about schoolwork. He started the SchoolNotes.com site last year and began promoting it in August.

Since then, thousands of teachers, including educators in more than 25 school districts in the Chicago area, have begun using the Web site in a variety of ways.

Anne Durst, a 3rd-grade teacher at Manor Hill Elementary School in Lombard, uses the site to communicate with families interested in educational Web sites. Joe Lynn, an English teacher at Deerfield High School, has found a forum where he can write personal stories in hopes of letting his teenage students get to know him better.

For Emily Washington's teacher, Kathy Kreidler, the Web site is an easy way to distribute information and allow students to keep in touch with her via e-mail or get assignments from home.

"I'm trying to give them another avenue," she said, "another way to communicate what I want."

John Kuglin, an education professor at the University of Montana in Missoula and an adjunct lecturer at Lesley College in Massachusetts, described the SchoolNotes.com site as "a Web site on training wheels."

But some teachers remain wary of the technology.

Jan Ciampi, who teaches Grades 6 through 8 at Summit School in Elgin, introduced teachers to the SchoolNotes.com site in September. Though she updates her site daily, few of her colleagues use it.

"The roadblock I face when I try to get teachers excited about SchoolNotes.com is they see it as just one more thing we're heaping on the teachers," Ciampi said. "It doesn't have to be that way."

Kuglin described the Web site as a great first step for teachers developing a plan to use technology in the classroom.

But "teachers are very leery of having something else on their plates," he said.

Lynn originally planned to use SchoolNotes.com to post assignments for students who forgot their homework, but it turned into much more.

This year, his site resembles a personal journal where Lynn shares stories about his encounter with Michael Jordan at a California hotel and his thoughts on the popular television show "Dawson's Creek."

"I think it's really important for kids to get to know their teachers pretty well," Lynn said.

In Richard Johannsen's technical drawing classes at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, the blackboard remains blank, and instead of passing out assignments at the start of class, students head straight to their computers.

Lukas Speis, a 17-year-old senior, has no other teachers who use the SchoolNotes.com system, but he said it is an easy way to get assignments in and out of school and it does away with the age-old excuse of forgotten homework.

Johannsen, who maintains a detailed department Web site and updates his SchoolNotes.com site daily, has the advantage that his students work on computers during class and most have access to the Internet at home.

Last year at Harper High School in Chicago's West Englewood neighborhood, few of Gary Latman's English students completed the extra credit "Romeo and Juliet" assignments he posted on SchoolNotes.com.

But the lack of use doesn't stem from a lack of interest.

"The kids love the technology," said Latman, who has not used the SchoolNotes.com site this year. But he estimated that fewer than 1 percent of Harper students have Internet access at home. Though the school library has computers with Internet connections, the system has been down since October, he said.

While 80 percent of American families earning more than $100,000 a year own a computer, just 25 percent of families earning $30,000 or less do, according to the International Society for Technology in Education.

But education professors see sites such as SchoolNotes.com as a sign of people developing an Internet lifestyle.

"What this does is it begins to ask us to imagine what school is going to be like in the future," said Larry Freeman, an education professor at Governors State University in University Park.

Lynne Schrum, an education professor at the University of Georgia and president of the International Society for Technology in Education, said computer technology is increasingly being used to facilitate communication among parents, teachers and students.

It can be especially good for parents.

"One of the things I think parents feel guilty about is schools' expectation that they participate in education," Freeman said.

With two parents working and hectic lifestyles, parents often are unavailable when teachers and administrators are in the schools.

"I need to be able to talk to people on the phone when I'm stuck on the highway," Freeman said. "At work, I want to be able to go to a Web site to get information whenever I need it."

Washington has found Kreidler's Web site and e-mail notes helpful in communicating with her sophomore daughter, who, like most teens, isn't always interested in sharing with her parents.

"When she was young, I used to go to school and volunteer," Washington said. "With me working, this gives me the opportunity to be in her business at a distance so she knows I still care. So her school life is not separate from her home life."

For more information, visit the SchoolNotes.com website at http://www.schoolnotes.com