By Elizabeth Valk Long

While cyberspace is still a murky universe for many grownups, it is becoming a playground of vibrant invention for more and more of America's children. TIME got a keen sense of just how innovative these computer kids can be when we invited students from the U.S. and Canada to submit their online creations to our first Internet contest.

The event, which was co-sponsored by AT&T, drew nearly 100 entries. Teachers and students were asked to develop interactive educational projects that could be shared with other schools over the computer networks.

The results were as impressive as they were diverse. One student group used the Internet to track acid rain on the polar ice cap. Another communicated with researchers kayaking through South America. A class from Tucson, Arizona, invented a modern version of hide-and-seek called Where Are We? in which players zero in on one another's location by exchanging hints through E-mail.

The two winning schools, which will split a $10,000 prize, took very different approaches. The third- and fourth-graders of the Nueva School in Hillsborough, California, studied American social history in the 1940s by making online contact with people who lived through the period and asking them some sharp and provocative questions. (Example: "How did you feel about Eleanor Roosevelt, and does it compare to what you think of Hillary Clinton?")

Ninth- and 10th-graders from the Eagle Academy in Poughkeepsie, New York, used the computer's protean powers of simulation to build a virtual replica of the Gilgamesh myth. Not only are the details of the Sumerian ruler's life re-created, but visitors who log on also get to play at being king for a day, at least in cyberspace.

"What's interesting about seeing these students approach interactivity is that they have no pre-conceived notions about what it means," says Time cyberspace writer Joshua Quittner, one of the judges. "They took this new medium and pushed it to its limits."

While Quittner was helping award prizes, another Time journalist was winning one. Correspondent Michael Duffy-who has covered both the Bush and Clinton administrations for us-received the coveted Gerald R. Ford Prize last week for outstanding reporting on the White House.

ELIZABETH VALK LONG

PRESIDENT