John is the chairman of the science department at Northwestern High, which has roughly 2,600 students. His introduction to technology has been a gradual one. He started off using email in grad school, then became a member of several listservs - online discussion groups whose dialogue is conducted through group emails. "I've had some fantastic conversations on those," he says.

One of the biggest transitions for him in the classroom, though, has been using an LCD projector to present resources he finds online to his students. It's been a subtle change that has had many ramifications. "We used to have have slide projectors," he explains. "The slides were big and captivating. And then we went to TV screens - most teachers stopped using slides. I felt images on this small screen had much less impact. But with PowerPoint presentations and the images available on the Web, it's fantastic. I have this huge bank of engaging images, rich in color and content - this is a new capability for teachers."

In John's microbiology class this year, students divided into groups to research a new disease - mad cow disease, for instance, or the West Nile virus - on the Internet. They then presented their research to the rest of the class using PowerPoint. Putting together presentations like these is "part of their repertoire of skills," John says.

On the directness of the Internet:
"Two weeks ago in the Washington Post science section, there was an ad for protein folding at Rensselaer. I wanted to show the kids pictures of protein folding, so we went to a scientist's Web site and saw what he was doing."