If you're a brilliant math student in a high school without any brilliant math teachers, what do you do? Until recently, the University of Manchester in the UK sent tutors to local schools to help students with advanced math courses. This got the students through their exams while giving the University a chance to recruit the best and brightest, but it was an expensive solution that didn't reach all the students who could benefit.

A distance learning pilot project using videoconferencing with a whiteboard let more students take the course and pass their Advanced-level exams. Tutors and students experimented with tablet PCs and different types of software, finding that some were better for presentation and others for group discussion.