How to Tech-Up in a Tech-less school

I find myself at a crossroads. I am very quickly absorbing all sorts of teachnology ideas from various sources in the edublogosphere, and find my mind running wild with the possibilities of setting up a class Google group for students to post assignments, get peer review, continue conversations from the classroom, etc. Yet, the same nagging thought keeps resurfacing: How can I possibly get something like that to work when most of my students have no access to the internet aside from what amounts to a computer lab at our school? I remember quite well my attempt to establish a wikipage for my advisory class at the beginning of the year and the seemingly insurmountable problem of not only teaching the kids basic word processing skills but also creating time for the students to work in the lab at school. As the school year progressed I had to compete with more and more teachers for lab time, until eventually I was forced to give up on the idea altogether. My doubts were only reinforced when I spoke to other teachers about their difficulties getting their students to even type an essay in Microsoft Word.

How do teachers at low-tech schools teaching low-tech communities bridge the gap and bring their students into the high-tech world? If I can't answer that question (and soon), I don't know how much of Web 2.0 is going to benefit my students, other than my use of it to create low-tech lesson plans and projects my connecting with other low-tech teachers through the burgeoning social network I am trying to establish.

I see so many possibilities and opportunities to use these tools, but too many of my students exist in this technological limbo where the only electronic device of importance in the home is the television and a cellphone (and not the kind with internet access).