At the end of a dimly lit corridor in the heart of the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering (AITE), a 450-student public high school in Stamford, Conn., a student stares into a camera lens. The wall behind him is plastered with dull green paper ripped from a giant spool in a nearby art classroom.

Two feet away, one of his classmates stoops behind a tripod, barking orders. He fusses with a small handheld camcorder, as a third student stands on a chair in a futile attempt to optimize the overhead lighting.

It might not look like much, say the students--not yet. But very soon, this ragtag movie set will be the birthplace of a short film chronicling a police inspector's globetrotting pursuit of a notorious jewel thief. Like the blue screens made famous by big-budget Hollywood blockbusters such as the Matrix trilogy, George Lucas's Star Wars, and other largely computer-generated classics, the unremarkable green backdrop serves as a sort of digital canvas, enabling the students--each of whom is enrolled in a class designed to teach the finer points of digital media arts--to test their creative boundaries.

Once they've captured the scene before the backdrop, the production team will hunker down in a nearby computer lab, where they'll employ a combination of software programs to digitally set the scene's surroundings--in this case, using Apple's Final Cut Pro software to drop in cultural images associated with several African nations, creating the appearance of a manhunt on the Serengeti.

At first blush, the production might seem a little crude, and--students will be the first to admit--the conditions are anything but optimal. But even amid such straight-to-DVD surroundings, they say, the skills they're gleaning through the use of these and other technologies at AITE will better prepare them for the future, a future in which blue-chip employers--including several of Hollywood's foremost production studios--are as committed to recruiting tech-savvy employees as they are to pleasing their shareholders.

Principal Paul Gross says the goal is to better equip students by giving them hands-on experience with technology, encouraging them to work in teams, and helping them attain the skills that business leaders agree are needed for success in the modern workforce.

Gross, along with educator and longtime advisor Christine Casey, helped launch AITE in 2000, looking to give students in Stamford and its surrounding community an alternative high school where they could explore emerging fields of study and pursue interests often ignored in the more traditional curricula of the city's other two high schools.

AITE isn't the only high school with an eye toward technology. Across the nation, more schools are cropping up with a high-tech focus. Last year, the City of Philadelphia celebrated the grand opening of its School of the Future, a $63 million, high-tech sanctuary for students in one of the city's roughest neighborhoods. Designed in partnership with software giant Microsoft Corp., that institution was built as a model that potentially could be replicated throughout the city--and, if all goes well, organizers contend, the nation. (See: of the Future' opens doors