Alaska has been forced by geography and weather to look at numerous innovative solutions to improving communication between families and schools. The Internet is showing more impact than any other technique that has been tried. This has been especially helpful to parents of children with disabilities, due to a severe shortage of special education professionals. Although not every family has a computer, public Internet access is available at 90 percent of the public school libraries and at Native corporation or tribal council offices. There are programs to give or lend computers to families without them, and many families have e-mail accounts at their workplace. A bigger problem than connecting families to the Internet is convincing technologically timid parents to try it. Among the strategies being employed are interactive Web libraries, chat groups, bulletin boards, discussion lists, person-to-person e-mail, and homework e-mail lists. Delta Greely Cyber Charter School provides education directly to families' homes for grades 7-12 using Internet conferencing, live chat technology, and e-mail. The school is extremely popular, and has experienced a recent surge in enrollment of students with special education needs. The Alaska statewide correspondence school increasingly is using computer and Internet based services. The cyber and correspondence schools loan computers to families without access to one. Laptop computers are loaned to island families that have to travel to neighboring islands with telephone lines. The Alaska Department of Education plans to conduct studies to determine the effectiveness of Internet based education. (TD)