Cheryl has been teaching fifth-grade science, social studies, and language arts for four years at Harford Hills Elementary. In the past, she has used technology to assist her teaching in small ways. "I have a Dell in my classroom hooked up to a TV monitor, so that children can see what's on the screen," she explains. "When we do brainstorming types of things, we use Inspiration. We can use the rapid-fire feature in order for the students' ideas to appear quickly."

This year, she's working on integrating technology more deeply into her teaching. Cheryl has become a member of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education's advance team. She's learning how to build a Tech Tour where her students will learn about the types of resources used in colonial production by doing guided research on the Internet.

She believes that technology is intrinsically interesting to her students. "They like hands-on activities," she says. "They like to be constantly touching, constantly looking."

On using computers to aid brainstorming:
"One thing I learned the hard way was to model. I had in my mind exactly what I wanted to do, but the students had no idea. Learning to save templates and have students work on them is really helpful, because at least then they have some kind of form, or guideline instead of starting from scratch."