Technology is a little more important here because it's empowering for the kids and the staff.
Kids can access schedules, homework assignments, and save their own files in a digital locker for retrieval from any Internet browser. I think it helps out a lot. We have our own personal folders on the servers so we can access them from everywhere instead of carrying around floppy disks and losing them. The Alaska district also has a video-conferencing system that last year allowed two students to take classes remotely. Otherwise, they would have faced an hourlong commute every day to school.