Last school year, many educators were caught unprepared when schools closed in response to cases of swine flu. This time around, both the federal government and school districts are putting specific online-learning measures in place to get ready for possible closures or waves of teacher and student absences because of a flu outbreak. To prepare for the H1N1 flu virus, federal education leaders recently formed a partnership with high-tech education companies to help students access curricula online. At the district level, school officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, made sure students could send e-mail attachments to their teachers and find their homework online. And in Irving, Texas, school technology leaders are considering using video lessons that would air on the district's television channel and providing laptops for middle school students to take home. Concerns about the flu are pushing schools to use technology more heavily in their day-to-day activities and prompting them to look at creative ways of employing online learning. Schools with some e-learning tools or programs already in place are expanding or speeding up their use. Those that haven't done much with e-learning are now thinking about how technology could continue students' education in all types of scenarios, from swine flu to hurricanes to other events that put students at home for extended periods.