A new online social networking site allows students to exchange class notes via the Internet.

Noteswap.com allows students to post class notes for each other’s perusal. Iowa State is on the list of available schools.

The site was originally started at Louisiana State University in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when classes started before all displaced students were back.

Ryan Grush had the idea for a Web site to get students up to speed on what they were missing. Grush searched for a similar site on Google and was unable to find one.

“I was surprised,” Grush said. “I didn’t come across any sites like it.”

Grush was a reporter for Louisiana State’s Daily Reveille at the time and said he started out looking at it as a story idea. He coordinated with a tech-savvy friend, Daniel Patterson, and launched the Web site in late November.

The site was originally launched for students who were missing all their classes as they made their way back to campus and is not intended to help students cut class.

The site reminds students that no notes are as good as going to class and taking your own notes.

“We want to help students when they can’t go to class, but hopefully, they’re mature enough and wise enough to say ‘Hey, my notes would help me more than somebody else’s,'” said Chandler Cherco, public relations director for NoteSwap.

The Web site allows uploading text documents and scans, so students who take notes by hand aren’t excluded.

Cherco said it’s impossible for students to skip all their classes and coast off the efforts of others – the site requires users to upload notes to be allowed to read other people’s notes.

Although the interface is fairly straightforward, students might look at the effort to upload their notes as not worth it when they could just go to class and take their own.

“It definitely would have to take people who were willing to put the notes online,” said Bennett Swiniarski, senior in chemical engineering. “[But] it sounds like a good idea.”

Grush said 40 percent of users had uploaded notes, and there are more note files than there are registered users. Soon the site will also provide class message boards and professor ratings.

“It’s making a virtual classroom to kind of go hand-in-hand with the sort of experience students expect in class,” he said.

The virtual classroom may not be effective for all class types, however.

“It would be great if you were just talking about big lecture classes,” said Diane Price-Herndl, associate professor of English.

She said her classes were interactive and the Web site couldn’t serve its purpose for similar classes.

Also in the works is textbook posting and comparison.

“You can maybe put your books up on there so you can sell them; you don’t have to sell them to the stores that rip you off,” Cherco said.