Picture students in a science class studying local rainfall and flooding patterns, collecting information from the Internet provided by weather stations.
In another class, students are discussing Native American history with an expert on the East Coast via satellite feeds.
In a third classroom, teachers are participating in a phonics lesson led by an instructor in a school hundreds of miles away.
Technology has the power to teach, motivate, captivate and transform a classroom into a training ground for the next generation of artists, entrepreneurs and leaders.
Still, California ranks 45th in the nation in student access to computers. The state has a reputation as the technology capital of the world, yet just one computer capable of running current software or linking to a wide-area network is available for use by every 73 students in California schools.
So, as students in this state make their way from the classroom to the workplace, they are less prepared than most other students in the nation to meet the demands of the information age.
How can we let this happen when, by 2000, an estimated 60 percent of all jobs in the United States will require a working knowledge of information technologies?
We can't.
And lawmakers are finally realizing this.
In early January, Gov. Wilson proposed a four-year, $1 billion Digital High School Initiative to bring as many as 1 million computers to high school classrooms.
The governor's long-term goal approaches state superintendent Delaine Eastin's California Education Technology Task Force's recent recommendation: Make at least one computer available for every four students.
Experts agree that bringing technology into the classroom improves student achievement.
A 1995 survey of more than 100 academic studies indicated that technology-based instruction had significantly improved student performance in English, math, history, social science and natural science.
We need to bring technology to children as early as possible.
Most literacy research indicates that children who don't learn to read in the first grade almost invariably remain poor readers--and, therefore, poor academic achievers.
A few California schools have managed to leverage enough grant money and donations from the business community to purchase computers, and even equip themselves with fiber-optic, satellite or cable communications. This is especially critical because of the state's emphasis on reducing class size.
Thousands of new teachers, many of whom have little or no classroom experience, will be needed to staff these additional classrooms.
With technology, individual schools can begin to explore the potential of distance learning and advanced telecommunications as a way to teach students and train teachers. School districts throughout the nation are using technology to bring both multimedia lessons to children and live training and staff development to teachers via satellite and networked computers.
A report from Quality Education Data noted that from 1981 to 1995, states that provided classrooms with technology ranked at the top nationwide in academic achievement.
But as California fails to provide all students with technology, its children lag behind students in 44 other states, as well as worldwide.
Bridging the gap between where we are now and where we want to be will take a commitment from everyone: students, who need to discover both how to learn and what to learn; businesses, which require a constant stream of smart employees; and communities, which consume the goods and services manufactured and provided by graduates of the state's schools.
Barbara O'Conner is director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento. She is also co-chairwoman of the statewide Education Technology Task Force.