Education

With more computers than ever ready to be booted up in classrooms across the country, our schools should be turning out thousands of Bill Gates clones. Not so fast. It seems half the screens are dark because the geeks who backed this rush to get computers in schools forgot one key element–training the teachers. Education Week magazine has just completed a comprehensive report on technology in schools that shows teachers don’t know what to do with all that RAM. Almost 50% don’t use computers at all in teaching, and only 61% percent use the Internet. And the educational software that’s out there doesn’t provide much promise: 70% of high school teachers said finding useful products is nearly impossible, and the software-savvy give materials that are usable a grade C or lower.

–By Sally B. Donnelly/Washington