Technology is helping to meet a critical 21st-century challenge: how to equip the swelling number of autistic students to enter the mainstream student population. Technology-based solutions, such as tools for teaching kids how to recognize facial expressions, are giving educators a means of helping autistic students acquire basic life skills. The Second Life project is one of the growing number of ways educators are turning to technology to help address the needs of students with autism--a population that is growing at a rate of more than 10 percent per year, according to the Autism Society of America. The general push in US school systems to integrate autistic children into mainstream classrooms means that every teacher will likely have one autistic student in the classroom at some point. And the unique needs of each autistic child can present challenges for educators. But they are ones that technology can be very effective at taking on, because tech tools can be easily individualized based upon a learner's needs and abilities.