Educators prepare to ride wave.

Educators prepare to ride wave. EVEN THOUGH GOOGLE WAVE WILL NOT BE released until later this year,it is already making, well, waves. The forthcoming application combineselements such as e-mail, instant messaging, and wikis and allowscollaboration around hosted conversations called waves. Although GoogleWave is not strictly an educational application, educators are bloggingabout it enthusiastically--despite the fact that its release date hasnot even been announced. The title of one such blog posting, "The Google Wave WillChange Education Forever," by Joe Corbett, online community managerfor the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), is anindication of the potential some see in Google Wave. Corbett isespecially excited about Google Wave's "on the fly"translation feature and the opportunities it makes possible forreal-time collaboration. In a subsequent posting he writes, "Ithink having many users collaborating on the same project/document atthe same time in multiple languages across multiple platforms opens thedoor for some amazing cross-cultural learning."