It’s more than the convenience of new data projectors and e-mail access; in some Johnston classrooms, hardware and software have become a hyperlink to the world.

“We branched out of the classroom,” said Charlene Covington, a technology facilitator at Clayton Middle School. “There are really no walls for these classes.”

Covington and Laura Piraino, who teaches global technology, are planning an Internet-powered link-up with a school in China for next school year.

In April 2008, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill helped Clayton Middle hold a Web-cam meeting with a school in Kyrgyzstan. Students stayed until 10:30 p.m. to see and speak to kids 11 time zones away.

“The reaction was how similar they were,” Covington said. “They’d rather be outside playing ball.”

For eight days this summer, Covington and Principal Eddie Price will travel to China on a grant to help get next year’s program started. Clayton and its Chinese sister school will meet multiple times next year, using teleconferencing technology.

A few years ago, the hardware and software needed would have cost thousands of dollars, Piraino said. Now, a Web cam is less than $50.

“The world is getting flatter and flatter every day,” Covington said.

“You can’t be stuck in the 1960s,” Piraino added.

Ever-lower prices and more-intuitive hardware and software have put new tools in the hands of Johnston County teachers. Five years ago, each school had one data projector; now, each school has about one for every two teachers, said Diana Freeman, the school system’s supervisor for instructional technology.

“We’ve been so surprised, and it’s been so good for the kids,” Freeman said.

With the projectors, teachers at all levels can use movies, graphics and presentations, methods that in the past showed up mostly in colleges and high schools.

The county’s technology funding includes $300,000 from Microsoft, which had to pay $1.1 billon to schools across the country as part of an anti-trust case.

Individual Johnston County schools are able to direct some of their own spending, each using a $10,000 block grant.

Freeman hopes technology in the classroom will transform teachers and students from end users to high-tech creators, able to use the systems to learn and create solutions. She thinks the process takes five to seven years, but said this year had seen an explosion of progress.

“It’s like the floodgates were opened and the dams burst,” Freeman said. “The difference is the technology’s become extremely user-friendly.”

At South Smithfield Elementary, Martha Eaton uses a system called “mimio” to turn her whiteboard into a digital suite for her kindergarteners. If the class is learning the days of the week, for example, the system can project the names of the days. The kids can then physically drag the words around the board, or click them to hear them spoken aloud.

“You can’t teach it if the kids aren’t paying attention,” Eaton said.

“They’re seeing it, they’re hearing it, they’re touching it, they’re moving it.”

In Piraino’s class, students have campaigned on the Internet for their favorite new wonders of the world and created their own digital videos. It’s spread to other classes too; Piraino says students often take the new-media techniques they learn in her room and use them for other teachers’ projects.

Students in Piraino’s class must post on a class discussion board. The boards often draw unexpected participation from an Internet-raised generation.

“It’s incredible,” she said. “They can type faster than they can write.”

Freeman said computer-based creativity and research get students more involved. “We move from the teacher being the source of knowledge to the kids finding knowledge,” she said.

Piraino and Covington have found that after their curiosity for a subject is piqued on the Internet, some students go and find relevant books — yes, books.

For some students, computer-based projects can be a self-esteem booster, Covington and Piraino said.

“I had kids that I would never expect asking to stay after school to finish projects,” Piraino said. “That’s every teacher’s dream.”