BELTON, South Carolina—Getting primed for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is a rite of passage for college-bound high school students. At T.L. Hanna High School, students in Bryan Bacher's math classes are finding that handheld computers offer a handy tool for pacing themselves through the test-prep process.

Bacher says hand-sized computers "provide immediate feedback to individual learning," allowing students to work at their own pace as they review concepts or master new skills that may be tested on the college placement exam. He has loaded a class set of handheld computers with SAT prep software, including practice problems, games, and flashcards.

In addition to individual learning, students also work on some assignments in pairs or teams. "I am trying to teach and encourage students to work as a team for the same goal," he explains. "Goals are sometimes not attained without teamwork." The handheld computers allow students to "beam" information electronically, enabling them to share information or assess one another's performance.

Students expect to use computers of one size or another in Bacher's classes. "I use a variety of technologies every day," he says, including laptops, distance-learning applications, graphing calculators, and projection screens.

Indeed, the entire school makes it easy for teachers to incorporate technologies, with a computer lab in every wing of the building. Each teacher is given a laptop to take home, along with at least one new desktop computer in the classroom. A set of laptops can be wheeled in for classroom use. An extensive network allows teachers ready access to information and resources. Even driver's education classes use computer-assisted driving simulators. "This building is the most up-to-date I've ever taught in," says Bacher, who also teaches high school statistics and college-level math classes in the evenings.

Not every application of technology unfolds smoothly, of course. One student, thinking he was chewing on a pencil, bit off the top of the stylus for his handheld computer. A girl once mistakenly beamed the teacher "a very embarrassing note she wrote to a friend about a male student she liked." And Bacher once accidentally beamed the whole class the answers to a quiz he'd spent hours writing, and hadn't given yet.

Although the 1,600-student school is in a rural-looking setting, it also serves an urban and diverse population. The majority of students are African-American or Caucasian, but some come from homes where the first language may be Russian, German, Chinese, or Japanese. Belton (pop. 11,000) is home to several large companies, and the award-winning high school has established partnerships with many of them. Job-shadowing programs allow students to learn about career opportunities with corporations such as Bosch and BMW, as well as local textile companies.

Bacher himself is a transplanted New Yorker—a detail his students are prone to point out. "When I have to discipline my students (which isn't very often)," he says, "they call it 'goin' Yankee on them.'"