Bill jokes that he began using technology in his classroom for a very simple reason: his students had trouble reading his handwriting on the chalkboard. He started putting together presentations using his computer at first just for legibility - but he soon discovered other benefits to this technique.

First of all, it was a great boon to students who had been absent; catching up on what had been covered that day was just a matter of taking a look at the day's presentation. But Bill also found that he could build links to interactive and online content into his presentations easily, giving him a richer set of resources to draw from.

This year, his students completed a WebQuest about the civil rights movement in the United States. Each student assumed the role of a leader in the movement - Malcolm X, for example, or Thurgood Marshall - who was faced with a situation where the government was not enforcing its own laws. Using research gathered on the Internet, students built a case for how their civil rights leader would have responded and why.

On Internet resources:
"In social studies, so much emphasis is on reading and the synthesis of original documents. The Internet gives teachers a way to collect those resources and put them in a context so they make sense."