Abstract: Using laptops with students in the classroom can be a challenge to any professor, but the instructor and her students in this paper turned their initial turmoil with these computers and a new software program into an equalizing learning experience. In the first class of laptop computer use, the teacher fumbled with the touchpad in pursuit of a straying curser. She faced the added pressure of dealing with the projection of her work for the first time with this new class. The students’ discomfort with the waywardness of the curser on their touchpads was equaled by their own unfamiliarity with the new software program. To an observer it seemed to be an example of a disastrous first lesson. Despite Smaldino and Muffoletto’s (1999) claim that students first gain understanding of applications through an in-depth examination of the way the program works in the classroom, this first class made clear why faculty members in many universities do not model use of technology (Mousand & Bielefeldt, 1999; Wetzel, 1993). As Groves and Zimmel (2000) assert, the professor wants computers and a software program that are easy to use and instructional technology (IT) support that make their job in the classroom look easy. This paper explores the work of a unique class that used its difficult start not as an obstacle but as an opportunity to develop teacher-student relationships that were supportive and collaborative. Students helped their teacher with her manipulation of the laptop and the projection of her work. After two class periods, the laptop computer forced the teacher to give her role of all-knowing lecturer to move among the students asking and answering questions as initial line segments became radii of circles, sides of parallelograms and angles, as well as angle bisectors. Students were constructing, labeling, and measuring geometric forms with the aid of Sketchpad and discussing the properties of their creation. This graduate class of teachers and teaching consultants were using the laptop and a software program, Sketchpad, as another manipulative tool in their conceptual approach to teaching geometry and linking geometric concepts to algebra. As members of the Preparing Tommorrow’s Teachers for Technology (PT3) team at the University of Houston, we followed the work of this class and two others for a semester to chronicle the relationship of the teachers, students, and laptop computers and to lend assistance when needed. As instructional designer, tech fellow and research associate, we entered the classrooms to support the teachers and observe the progress of the class. While the teachers were the acknowledged facilitators of thess classes, the initial turmoil that led the teachers and the students to seek assistance from each other equalized the teacher-student roles. Observations in these classrooms found students sharing their developing skills, discoveries and experience with each other and their professors in an atmosphere that sometimes left the observers wondering who was the teacher and who was the student. References Groves, M. M. & Zemel, P. C. (2000). Instructional technology adoption in higher education: An action research case study. International Journal of Instructional Media, 27, p. 57-66. Moursund, D., & Bielefeldt, T. (1999). Will new teachers be prepared to teach in a digital age? A national survey on information technology in teacher education. Santa Monica, CA: Milken Exchange on Education Technology [Online]. Available: http://www.mff.org/publications/publications.taf?page=154 Wetzel K. (1993). Teacher educators’ uses of computers in teaching. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 1(4), 335-352.