(IDG) -- To track the progress of the Iditarod dogsled race across Alaska, 11-year-old Rachael Todd and her classmates in sun-drenched Oviedo, Florida, log onto the Internet daily for news, then move homemade model sleds to the racers' new positions.

From the urban streets of Union City, New Jersey, Francesca Amato, 17, e-mails her teacher to get help with a math problem the high school senior doesn't quite understand.

In Philadelphia, second-graders at the Cook-Wissahickon Elementary school use a computer and design lab to research the local deer problem and create solutions.

From one end of the country to the other, schools are rising to the challenge of bringing technology into the classroom and trying to figure out what to do with it once it's there. In this brave new high-tech world, art teachers can take students on a digital trip to the Louvre in Paris for a look at the Mona Lisa, young musicians can compose symphonies on a computer keyboard, and science classes can access up-to-the-minute NASA data for a project.

For most baby boomers, a state-of-the-art classroom meant an overhead projector, a public-address system and a television set wheeled in occasionally for an educational program. Now take a look at schools in Red Hook, New York, where every teacher has a laptop computer and every classroom has access to the World Wide Web.

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Because the school district wanted entire classes to be able to use the computers at one time, it invested in laptops, which are easily shared among classes on the same floor.

With a large monitor stationed in each room, teachers use a remote control to access video, satellite, cable and laser- disc technology from the school district's media distribution center without leaving their students. "The system delivers information where and when it's needed, and we get the most value for the dollars spent," says Edward Zajac Jr., assistant to the superintendent of schools.

Many believe schools like Red Hook's are the future of education. President Bill Clinton's Technology Literacy Challenge calls for every classroom in the nation to be equipped with modern multimedia computers and get hooked up to the Internet by 2001.

Many schools are on their way to meeting these goals. In the 1996-97 school year, 6.3 million computers were used for instruction in U.S. public schools, a whopping 186-percent increase from just five years earlier, according to the most recent figures from Market Data Retrieval, which surveys schools on technology use.

And more computers means fewer kids sharing each one--an average of 7.3 students per computer in 199697, compared with 19.2 students per terminal just five years earlier, according to Market Data Retrieval.

Internet access--the ticket to the information superhighway--is also growing rapidly. Last fall, 78 percent of public schools had at least one computer hooked up to the Internet, as did 27 percent of classrooms, up from only 3 percent of classrooms in 1994, according to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). There's still far to go, however, before students in every classroom can surf the Net.

While the increase in computer and Internet connections is good news, access to technology varies wildly by state, school and even grade. And having lots of computers doesn't necessarily mean having good computers. Many schools that gladly accepted used computers find themselves stuck with old machines that are slow, cost more to maintain and can run only outdated software programs.

The only way to know what's happening on the technology front in your child's school is to ask the technology coordinator or principal some basic questions, such as: How many students are there per computer? Are students using computers in groups or individually? How much time do students spend using high-tech tools? Are the computers new enough to run the latest software programs? Are the computers located in the classroom, where technology can be incorporated into lessons easily, or lined up in a computer lab for occasional use?

But simply having space-age equipment in the classroom isn't enough. The real issue, experts say, is what schools are doing with the technology. If students are simply learning basic word processing skills--still writing reports by hand and then using computers to type them up or to add a pretty cover--or practicing rote math problems using "drill and kill" software programs, high tech may be a pricey waste of resources.

"If you bring in these technologies and don't think ahead to how they'll be used to promote learning and the acquisition of skills, then the only thing that will change in school is the electric bill," warns David Thornburg, director of the Thornburg Center, a firm in California that studies technology trends in education.

"Parents need to ask what computers are used for and what the goals are," advises Martha Stone Wiske, codirector of the Educational Technology Center at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. "I see lots of cases where schools bought technology equipment but haven't figured out sensible ways to make use of it."

And don't count on computers to replace the basics. For instance, Stone Wiske says using a word processor not only helps students organize their writing and express themselves more vividly but also takes the drudgery out of revising their work. But, she warns, "Kids may write more with a computer, not better, if we don't teach them how to write."

Another factor is how comfortable teachers--particularly those who went to college before the technology revolution--are with using high-tech equipment. Although the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education has set new technology standards for teacher-training programs, a DOE survey found that only 20 percent of current teachers use computers regularly for instruction.

And not all educators are convinced of technology's benefits. Indeed, there's no evidence that the use of high-tech gizmos alone will perk up student performance, raise test scores or prepare more kids for the Ivy League, some of the traditional measures of student success, says Barbara Means of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a research firm in Menlo Park, California. And given the high cost of buying and maintaining technology--which will cost schools upwards of $5 billion this year--why should we even care whether kids are using computers in the classroom?

Debbie Goldberg lives in Pennsylvania and writes about education frequently.