Teachers, parents, school administrators, and students themselves all have the challenging assignment of making sure that these marvelous new resources don't go to waste. Wiring classrooms and purchasing new equipment is just the beginning. Students may perform a web search faster and better than their teachers, but they still need to be taught to filter and critically engage with what they read, see, and hear from the multimedia devices they so deftly operate. And school is still the place where they will need to develop the skills they need to function effectively in the world—to read and write, to add and subtract, to understand how nature and societies are organized and where they fit in. Since school will give most students their first experience in a community where people may be very different from themselves, they'll need to learn how to engage in the kind of constructive collaboration that new technologies permit.

Other questions surface: How can educators tap into the vast resources of the Internet to improve instruction in math, science, literacy, and the humanities? What role will teachers play in a high-tech classroom and what training will they need? How much emphasis on technology is too much? What can be done to bridge the digital divide to ensure an equitable education for all?