As the world of online education continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar schools are incorporating digital curricula and virtual teachers into their classrooms in surprising ways.

The new State Technology Reports assemble key findings in an accessible PDF format that allows readers to examine a particular state’s performance on this year’s indicators. This is a special state-focused online supplement to Technology Counts 2009.

These interactive maps offer a quick way to examine state-by-state grades by categories. The grades break down into two categories: capacity and use.

This interactive resource provides comprehensive data for individual states in the following categories: use of technology, capacity of use, state data system, and data access. Also provides ways to compare multiple states' data in all categories, as well as states' overall grades.

Online classes may be a relatively young instructional practice for K-12 schools, but experts already generally agree on one point: Research shows that virtual schooling can be as good as, or better than, classes taught in person in brick-and-mortar schools.

Online Advanced Placement courses, which offer college-level material to high school students, are at the forefront of the online education movement.

Teachers looking for lesson plans, worksheets, videos, and multimedia activities for their daily classes can find plenty of materials on the Internet.

Although online education is growing as an option for students in K-12 school districts, colleges and universities have been much quicker to develop and provide online courses and incorporate them into their curricula.

More and more teachers are tuning out the distractions, turning on their PCs, and logging on to Web-based training programs at times that suit their own schedules.

Though almost all states now offer online education options to their students, the number of opportunities available and the policies that guide the organization, management, and funding of such programs vary widely.

Even in today's gloomy business climate, market experts predict that the K-12 online education industry will continue to grow.

States looking to see how they stacked up in Education Week’s Technology Counts will spot a significant change in this year’s report card on state policies and practices: Because of a shortage of available data, the report does not issue overall grades. Instead, the report gives grades in policies related to the use of technology for learning and policies designed to increase educators’ capacity to use technology.

For the Technology Leaders section of Technology Counts 2009, the EPE Research Center collected data on 10 indicators spanning two major areas of state technology policy and practice: use and capacity.