In the vanguard of education, the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) in metropolitan Washington, D.C., are committed to expanding the frontiers of learning with their stellar use of technology.

Consider the live, televised conversation with orbiting astronauts that FCPS students experienced not long ago. For Fairfax County students, this kind of educational experience is not all that unusual. And that's a key reason the school system has been called the "best in the nation" by at least one researcher.

For the students at FCPS' Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, last Nov. 15 was more than just a routine day at school. With the aid of a live satellite downlink, Thomas Jefferson students had the chance to interview two crew members from International Space Station Expedition 12 as it orbited Earth.

Arranged in honor of International Education Week, the live teleconference was broadcast on NASA-TV and on the FCPS network to all its students. Other school systems from around the country were able to access the program via satellite.

The students asked Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev questions ranging from future sources of energy in space (McArthur said nuclear power holds a lot of promise) to the greatest threats of living in space. Other queries focused on the two astronauts' backgrounds, education, microgravity experiments, and diet.

Their images broadcast on a large projection screen during the live event, the two crew members bobbed up and down in the weightless vacuum of the Space Station as they answered the students' questions.

Several students asked Flight Engineer Tokarev questions in Russian. At one point, students laughed as an object resembling a Sharpie pen floated in front of the camera.

"We really are all in this together, and the opportunity to push the frontier is tremendous," McArthur said.

With 228 schools, 163,500 students, and nearly 22,000 employees, FCPS is the 12th-largest school system in the nation. It has a $1.9 billion annual budget, more than $120 million of which is spent on technology. In November, voters passed a $246 million bond issue for school construction and additional technology upgrades.

All teachers and students have access to an enterprise-wide eMail system that reportedly processes more than 12 million messages each month. There are 87,000 workstations and 800 servers in the district, which boasts a student-to-computer ratio of 3 to 1. All classrooms have internet access, and all schools also have some form of wireless connectivity, with nearly 7,000 wireless access points deployed throughout the district.

This world-class IT infrastructure is making possible all kinds of technological innovations in delivering instruction to students, bringing information to parents and other community members, and streamlining school administrative functions.

In fact, in recognition of its top-flight use of technology to improve all areas of operation, FCPS has received CIO Magazine's prestigious CIO 100 award, which recognizes organizations around the world that excel in business performance through resourceful IT management and practices. FCPS joins the likes of Dell, FedEx Corp., and JPMorgan Chase as past award winners.