If ISDN is too slow -- and T-1 lines too costly -- for your district's wide-area network, Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) technology may be just what you've been waiting for. SDSL promises to fill the bandwidth gap betwen ISDN and T-1, delivering from 160 Kbps to 1.168 Mbps throughput over plain old copper telephone wires. For $649, Copper Mountain's Red Rocket 201-30x SDSL Access Router can transform a school's existing telephone line into a full-time, virtual extension of your district's physical computer network. It's also a guaranteed conversation-starter.

Like Star Trek's fictional Tricorder, Knowledge Revolution's eProbe is a mobile laboratory -- except this one plugs into Apple's super-portable student laptop, the eMate 300. With the eProbe, students can collect data indoors or outdoors, and then analyze it visually on the eMate by generating graphs and tables. Whether in a classroom, at home, or at a nearby

pond, the eProbe is just the ticket for hands-on, inquiry-based science. For $389, the eProbe General Science Discovery Kit comes with software, 25 science activities, and probes to measure levels of light, temperature, and voltage. Using optional probes, students can also measure pH, barometric pressure, dissolved oxygen, relative humidity, and more. The eMate, available separately from Apple, goes for $799.

NETSchools Corp.'s technology solution doesn't skimp on ingredients. Every student gets a kid-proof, rugged laptop with industry-standard Windows 95 software. In the classroom, the laptops connect wirelessly to a powerful server and a high-speed Internet connection using ceiling-mounted infrared links. At home, kids use the laptops' built-in modem to dial into the school server's modem pool. To top it off, the NETSchools Solution includes customized professional development for technical and instructional staff, as well as software to manage the whole shebang. So what's for dessert?