New Product-www.yourclass.com

Yahoo! recently launched Yahoo Education (education.yahoo.com), a free online service that hopes to put an end to the old "Whoops; I left it in my locker" excuse. Aimed at the middle school, high school, and college levels, the service lets educators create customized Web sites for each course that they teach. Teachers can extend the traditional classroom by posting course materials, distributing handouts, and collecting homework assignments online. The teacher requires a password to edit his or her site's content. Teachers using the service can even post links to suggested reading materials on other Web sites in a bookmark area or run online polls to get feedback from their students. "Ultimately, this virtual classroom creates a free and simplified way for teachers to extend communication with students outside the classroom without using limited school resources," says Yahoo Public Relations Manager Dean Jutilla. Teachers and students just need Internet access and a free Yahoo e-mail address to use it.

Yahoo! is advertiser supported, and the ads on the site might disturb some parents and teachers. Still, the company has a convincing track record of making a profit, so unlike many other education sites that have tried and failed with similar services, it has a good chance of surviving. Yahoo! has made it easy for teachers to use the new service. Educators simply input course info into a number of fields and then Yahoo software creates the individual Web sites.