Fifteen new personal computers line the student lab at Campbell-Tintah School in Campbell, Minn., and the kindergarten class was busy at work Monday morning using "Headsprout," an online phonics-based reading program.

Kids wear headphones to listen to the words and sound them out, then read aloud from a printout after the session is finished. The learning software is one of many new features the school is employing to help keep students abreast of the fast-paced world of technology.

"The future is programming," said Richard Osman, the technology coordinator and business teacher. To further his point, Osman recalled a story about an entertainment software company that recently installed a billboard. The advertisement read: char msg [ ] ={ 78,111,119,32,72,114,105,110,103, 8 };, which means "Now Hiring."

"This is all that was written on there," he said. "Hundreds of people a day go by and don't even know what it says. They're looking for that one person that knows."

Superintendent Lee Kulland is particularly proud of the new "AirLiner" hardware the school acquired, a wireless slate that enables a teacher to move anywhere in the room while teaching and the students to interact with information from their seats.

"Instead of the machine dictating us, we're able to dictate the machine," said Osman.

"The power is in the hands of the kids."

Though SMART Boards, or interactive electronic whiteboards, have been used in the district for years, Osman feels the AirLiner is more beneficial to students and cost effective. With the AirLiner, students are not required to be in front of the classroom and may feel more eager to take on the challenge of learning. SMART Boards also cost roughly $2,800 and tend to be a bit more difficult to program, while the AirLiner is only $400 and the software is included.

Osman also used his connection with Northern State University of Aberdeen, S.D., to secure a grant loan for "Mindstorms," or Lego sets with programmable bricks and electric motors to build robots and other automative systems. Students in computer application classes can program, develop and create technology-driven software to manipulate the robots.

A group of six students named the "Digital Scribe Tribe" are also currently building and working on the school Web site. None of the students had prior HTML training, and the Web site, http://www.angelfire.com/home/ctschool/, is the product of less than four months work. Every day, students from grades 9-12 manage and update the Web site by writing code on their own. Starting from scratch, the students use trial and error to update it.

"They'll incorporate it, they'll rewrite it," said Osman. "This is the new language of the world."

"They pick it up effortlessly," said Kulland.

Students are also using "elluminate" sessions, a technology that allows communication between rooms and communities. It's a web-based program that allows Power Point presentations, video clips, Word documents and a variety of other documents to be shown in real-time through the computer. As technology becomes unavoidable in our daily business, Osman believes that the literacy of the 21st Century will be based on programming.

"This is the new language," he said. "Other languages are important, but what's going to distinguish between intelligence and social classes is the web programming language."