STUDENTS HEAD BACK TO CLASSES WITH SOFTWARE, LAPTOPS AND CELL PHONES

There may be no single area of everyday life more affected bytechnology than schools. From preschool classes to the lofty airs ofresearch institutions, the microprocessor has had marked impact, bigand small, on how students study and how teachers teach.

It's no surprise, then, that back-to-school time is also a bigtime for companies that trade in tech products and services in theconsumer arena. Not nearly a match for the holiday season, to besure, but back-to-school marketing nevertheless is on many techcompanies' radar.

With that in mind, we present a modest list of suggestions forback-to-school items that could help students of different ages.

AT&T Digital One Rate Plan -- What's college without calls home orto friends or -- these days -- to job recruiters? Next to a laptop,a cell phone may be the most useful item in the phalanx of high-techtools an equipped-to-the-teeth student has today.

College, in fact, may be a ready-made market for the heavilypromoted AT&T's Digital One Rate Plan, which has drawn about 200,000customers nationwide over two months. The plan, aimed at thebusiness and consumer markets, but probably ideal for college-studentuse, is expanding the use of digital PCS (personal-communicationservices) phones throughout the country.

It works this way: Customers buy digital multi-network phones,which work with various cellular-phone networks (seehttp://www.attws.com). AT&T Wireless is offering two models fromNokia, the 6160, which sells for $199, and the 6162, which goes for$249.

The attraction of the plan is its simplified billing (anyone whocan decipher a standard cell-phone bill and all its layers of chargesdeserves a top-level Pentagon job with the highest level ofsecurity).

For $89.99 a month, subscribers can make up to 600 minutes ofcalls with -- and here's the best part -- no long-distance or roamingcharges. The two other rates are $119.99 for 1,000 minutes and$149.99 for 1,400 minutes.

Because the coverage area extends over all 50 states, for allpractical purposes, the phone can place calls throughout the nation,no matter what kind of cell-phone systems are operating in a givenmarket.

The Nokia phone itself is a little marvel. Light and compact, italso houses so many features (even games) no one will probably useall of them. The battery life will keep the phone in standby modefor up to an amazing five or more days.

Call quality is what you would expect from a cell phone, thoughduring a two-month trial period the clear connections decidedlyoutweighed the spotty ones.

For a college student, calling home across the country or thepizza house across the street for the same rate would be a definiteplus, an advantage households may want to consider. If your long-distance charges and your monthly cell-phone bill add up to more than$90, the One Rate Plan may be a viable alternative (also figure inthe initial outlay for the PCS phone).

Kid Desk Internet Safe -- The Internet can be a great teachingtool. But judging by the unceasing attention paid to the dangersthat lurk online, learning isn't always the prime consideration.

Kid Desk Internet Safe, a $29.95 program from Edmark, recognizesthe anxiety and offers a unique way of dealing with it. More aproduct for parents than their children, Internet Safe is anextension of Edmark's long-standing Kid Desk program, which isdesigned to give young children a kinship to the desktop computer.

The idea behind Kid Desk Internet Safe is to take the conceptbehind the typical Net screening software and stand it on its head.

Rather than keep kids from surfing into an offensive Web site byscreening out certain key words -- an arguably passive way of doingthings -- Internet Safe forces parents to take a proactive role inmonitoring what their children are viewing. Especially for parentsof younger children, that's probably how it ought to work anyway.

Parents select sites they would allow or even want their childrento view and add them to a "desktop" interface the program sets up asan individual child's own (an Edmark site will offer a changing listof suggestions of appropriate sites for kids). Parents also add tothe desktop any programs on the computer's hard disk they allow thechild to use.

In this manner, when kid users get on the PC, they click on theirown icon, which leads to the desktop. Pictured on there are iconsfor the parent-selected programs and Web sites. Clicking on a Website icon will automatically dial in to the family's Internet serviceprovider (including America Online) and place the given site inInternet Safe's own browser.

For the child, it's an easy way to learn some Internet navigation,not to mention whatever benefit a site's content can bring. For theparent, it's a way to know the child will be safe while allowing himor her to own some real estate on the family's PC (and any parentwill tell you a 6- or 7-year-old can be quite territorial).

Palm III -- The immensely popular Palm line of hand-held computersfrom 3Com seems tailor made for the college and even high-schoolmarket. What student, after all, couldn't stand to be moreorganized?

Wielding a stylus and a handwriting recognition program calledGraffiti, users can keep a calendar, address book, memo pad, expensetracker and other functions in a device that fits into a shirtpocket.

The $399 Palm III, the latest model in the line, works with 2megabytes of RAM and is slightly sleeker in design than the PalmPilot and Palm Pilot Professionals, earlier models that are stillactive sellers on the market.

As useful as the Palm may be on its own, however, applicationsdeveloped for the platform enhance its potential for students.

A trip to The Pilot Zone Web site (http://www.pilotzone.com)unveils a panoply of programs that can be downloaded into a Palmthrough its HotSync link to a PC. Take scientific-calculatorprograms, for instance. Several shareware programs can turn the Palminto a calculator for that purpose.

Another useful extension is a $129 modem that would allow the Palmto receive e-mail or, with other software, faxes.

Laptops -- For the college student, a laptop or notebook computeris becoming a standard tool of operation. Now that prices aredropping, that may become even more the case.

Students are, of course, price and value conscious, and desktopcomputers remain the choice on both counts.

But whereas you once had to shell out $2,000 or more for theconvenience and portability of a notebook computer, it is possible toget decent models for $1,500 or even less. At the other end, youcould end up spending more than $5,000 for models designed for powerusers.

Notebooks, more so than desktops, are subject to individual tastes-- how the keyboard feels, the size of the screen, trackpad vs.trackball vs. trackpoint, the unit's weight. So if you're in themarket for one, be sure to try it out.

At a minimum, expect to get a unit that has a CD-ROM drive, 32megabytes of RAM, a 56K modem and a hard drive in gigabyte land.

Several manufacturers produce popular notebooks. Among them areCompaq and its consumer-oriented Presario line, Toshiba and itsSatellite line, and IBM and its ThinkPads. One newer unit that hasreceived good reviews is the Sony Vaio 505, a slim, light unit thatgoes for about $2,000.

Educational software -- One power of computer technology ineducation is its ability to combine fun with teaching, hence the term"edutainment," which has come to define a category of software.

True to their schools, three big producers of home-educationsoftware, each of which calls the Seattle area home, have introducedor are introducing a slew of new programs in time for school.

Microsoft, for one, is introducing first and second grade programsin its My Personal Tutor line of software next month, adding to thepreschool to first-grade titles already in the market.

The $34.95 suite of programs, each featuring the helpful ProfessorPresto, are designed to develop math, reading and thinking skillsunder the titles "Sky's Space Station Voyage," "Sam's Hide and SeekAdventures" and "Turru's Daring Sea Quest." Each program takeschildren through a series of engaging games and an almost bewilderingnumber of brightly colored animated characters.

Edmark, the producer of Kid Desk Internet Safe noted above, hasalso introduced the second title in its Thinkin' Science series --ZAP! Designed for 8- to 12-year-olds, the $29.95 program uses ananimation format to introduce youngsters to physical sciences,including light, sound and electricity.

Next month, the IBM unit is introducing the second in its Let's GoRead series, this one titled "An Ocean Adventure." Aimed at childrenjust beginning to read, the program uses voice recognition to helpthem along.

Edmark is also going the mini-route with a series of program in aseries called Brain Bytes. Individual titles in the series willfocus on specific subjects within broad topic areas. For instance,"I Can Tell Time," a $9.95 title, focuses solely on that subject.Other titles center on phonics, counting money, fractions and makinggreeting cards to practice writing skills.

The third company, Humongous, emphasizes the entertainment part ofthe equation; learning may be more subtle or incidental. It recentlyintroduced the second in the Pajama Sam series, "Thunder andLightning Aren't So Frightening," $29.99.

Next month it is scheduled to launch titles from the popularNickelodeon series "Blue's Clues." Look for the blue dog and hostSteve to pop up in even more places.