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So the teacher must, first of all, plan. She must make a reasonable estimate of the time required for this lesson or that project, and make sure to reserve the computer room for those periods and those days. The planning extends further: The teacher's estimate of the time required for the lesson had better be close, or one of two problems will arise:

1.Students might not have enough time to finish. This might happen even if all peripheral problems do not appear, such as missing mouse balls, balky software, or hardware on the blink. The teacher must provide for a Plan B when students find, legitimately, that they can't complete the assignment as written. This Plan B might include further research using more conventional media, or it might mean truncating the lesson as elegantly as possible and salvaging what you have.

2. Students might have too much time. Did I say "might"? I should have said, "will." This simply always happens. There are students who, despite the standard speech about slow learning, get themselves into a hurry-up speed right away and move through even the most complex questions as if they will be rewarded for being the first to finish. The teacher will often find that the work presented is slipshod and incomplete, and return the student(s) to the lesson to dig deeper and farther. Then there are students who will simply apprehend the information more easily, work through the documents quickly but thoroughly, and otherwise work faster and more efficiently than others, and still produce work of high quality. In this case the teacher had better have a Plan B, also: send the student on further, perhaps with that dreaded incentive of "extra credit," for more research on a related topic. If the lesson is on the Emancipation Proclamation, then get back in there and show how the EP became the Thirteenth Amendment, or how it changed, and who was involved, and how long it took, and so on. The teacher shouldn't be grasping at straws here or ad-libbing but should be prepared with what are often called "Extended Activities" that often come at the end of pre-packaged lesson plans. That's why they're there.

Another strategy that can be used here is to bunch your lesson plans. I have been reading a lot about John Brown recently, and I wrote a lesson plan on his life. Then I wrote a second, more complex unit, and then a third one, even more challenging. I used different web sites for each, while still listing the others as peripheral, secondary resources for the students. I tried to mix up the media, too, basing one unit on a web site that was mainly text and another on a graphic source. This little "bunch" of sources and lesson plans served me well this past semester. I found that the units could be used individually or as a group, that the time planned for the computer lab could be adjusted flexibly, and that I could keep all students challenged and continuing to pursue good research and produce quality work while moving up the ladder from one unit to the next.

My approach to the management of time in the computer room has changed over the years. My school is on a block schedule in which many of the periods are 63 minutes long. Years ago I thought that roughly an hour in the computer room, on-task, researching and reporting, was an interval of time well-suited for this kind of work. I soon changed my mind, as I have found that the attention-span of teenage students will not allow that kind of time in front of the computer. I am not well-versed in educational psychology, but my experience and observations tell me that students, no matter how well motivated, educated, stimulated, and challenged, will not sit still for an hour and focus on difficult material. In contrast, I find, somewhat to my dismay, that the rule of thumb might be the opposite: the shorter, the better. This has been confirmed by other teachers who are experienced in using the Internet with their classes frequently, who have had good success. Thirty to forty minutes maximum at the computer seems to be a rough guide for productive work. After that the teacher, so newly proud of now being the "guide by the side" rather than the "sage on the stage," becomes now, simply the Babysitter: imploring students not to stray to their favorite sites for entertainment, gaming, music, or other assorted off-task amusement. This posture of nagging, threatening, and punishment is to be avoided at all costs. I would much rather plan and execute a short, successful, online unit, perhaps leaving the class a little bit curious and asking to continue on, than have to be the teacher-grouch, trying to squeeze every last bit of meaning out of every last document. The teacher is still in control, and she can always return another time to a subject that wasn't quite completely covered. So, if I have a short lesson plan such as a webquest, intended for coverage in one class period, I will spend the first 10-15 minutes with the computers off setting the context and discussing our research objectives, the next 30-40 minutes online, and the last 10-15 minutes of class discussing what we learned. If this sounds a lot like the old teacher prescription of "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, and tell 'em what you told 'em," well, perhaps it is, but it works well for me.

Time weighs heavily on teachers and students in the public school, and that seems to be true in the computer lab as well as in our more conventional classes. Many of the pitfalls that teachers at the college level seem to be able to avoid nonetheless affect us regularly. All the more need, then, for careful forethought and scheduling. With good planning, anticipation of potential pitfalls, and lesson plans that are pedagogically sound and at the same time written with the clock in mind, teachers can make time their ally.