DISCUSSION FORUM SERVICES
Many schools now have an online portal which contains some sort of bulletin board or listserv for teachers to use with students and parents. However, if your school doesn't have one, you may find this service to be helpful. This free service from Stanford University also allows you to post class schedules and documents as well as send and receive messages.
And you don't have to be a computer programmer or know HTML to use it.
INTERNET CLASSROOM ASSISTANT
http://www.nicenet.org
The Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA) is designed for post-secondary and secondary classrooms, distance learning and collaborative academic projects. Service features include conferencing, scheduling, document sharing, personal messaging, and link sharing.
Setting up a class on the Internet Classroom Assistant takes about 2 minutes. You will be asked to choose a username and password, then a name for your class, some contact information, and that's it. You will be assigned a unique 'key' for your class that you can give to your students so they can create user accounts and access your class.
If you've ever joined a Yahoo egroup, it's very similar, only without the ads and without the resulting spam from Yahoo advertisers, (You don't really believe anything with advertisers is really secure, now do you?) and without the lurkers. The only people who can view your class are your class members with your Class Key.