I am yet another computer crap teacher from yet another huge inner-city school. Rather than recount yet another boring and pointless-because-it-is-just-another-personal-experience, I will tell you what a know for certain.

Adoption of computer technology is a personal choice for families because game consoles are now as expensive as cheap computers. Scrounging broken computers and fixing them is not a productive use of your time. They have been commoditized.

Students will have unrestricted Internet access in classrooms whether schools want it or not. Right now, the screens are a bit too small to use for extended periods. But audio and video are pretty much ubiquitous.

The job is to shape student's usage rather than react to it.

I have moved our class management system (Moodle) to a server outside the school firewall. Now the kids have access from home and everybody is a lot happier.

It may be a waste of time to teach students how to use technology in Math class, but it is essential to understand search technology, critical thinking about content, evaluation of sources, and social behavior as much as which buttons to push.

Any school should be able to afford to put in Internet appliances that are fanless, diskless boxes with wireless cards and external power supplies. Why? Because the cost isn't significantly different from a couple of sets of textbooks. The real problem is not a technology problem, it is a people problem. As Negroponte says, OLPC isn't a technology project. The U.S. school system is only very slightly different from others, but not by much.

On one hand you have parents, on the other, the school personnel to convince.

My solution is to provide something attractive that will attract teacher interest first, student interest second, and administrator interest last.