ATLANTA -- When it comes to using technology, it is the one area where teachers know less than their students, according to Wanda Barrs, chairwoman of the Georgia Board of Education.

Tuesday, Barrs put on a pair of headphones and viewed a laptop in the Capitol lobby playing a video created by first-graders from Commerce Elementary School. The school was one of 13 chosen to display its use of classroom technology for lawmakers as they are considering next year's budget.

Barrs said the technology helps teachers reach students who have different learning styles, those who are geared to listening and those to doing. Today's students are surrounded by technology anyway, so using it in school draws on their familiarity.

"The real challenge is to see that the adults know how to do all this," she said.

That's where the Educational Technology Center at the University of Georgia comes in, along with 12 other regional centers operated by other colleges and teacher-support organizations. UGA staff tutored Commerce Elementary media specialist Christy Johnson and other teachers on how to use all the gizmos supplied by various government grants and fund raising.

"The teachers who are not part of this grant, we have assigned teachers to them to mentor them," Johnson said. "We work together as a team."

The first-grader wrote stories, videoed them and then shared them with one another. The geewhiz gadgets were the enticement to draw the students into learning reading, according to John Wiggins, director of the UGA Educational Technology Center.

"Commerce is a great example of that (cooperation)," he said. "They saw the opportunity and the need, and they jumped right in."

The students don't come from wealthy families where laptops and iPods are found in the homes. More than half are poor enough to qualify for free lunch. And they're young kids, pre-kindergarten through second grade.

First-grader Taylor Rylee explained.

"It's helping us learn about reading," she said.

Classmate Daniel Nash agrees.

"I learned how to read and make movies," he said, noting that his parents don't know how to make movies.