One of those unwritten rules of distance education states that you absolutely can’t get through a semester without receiving a document that you can’t open. It’s inevitable, for instance, that you have at least one student in your class using MS Word 2007 (.docx format) or even Wordperfect (.wpd) while you are using MS Word 2003 (.doc format). Of course, this is not an insurmountable problem, but it does take more time…
Fortunately, there is an easy way to deal with this situation: Zamzar. The number of files this free online service can convert is amazing. Not only will you be able to convert those .docx, .wpd, .wps, or .doc files to something you can read, you will also be able to convert various image, audio, and video files easily.
If you are an online teacher, this is one tool you should definitely add to your teacher tool kit. 
