Two-year institutions are increasingly jammed with students who lack academic readiness--a command of those basic skills that will help them find employment in the workplace or continue on to four-year institutions. That's where remedial--or developmental--classes come into the picture. Community colleges are investing heavily in remedial programs to bring students up to college and workforce readiness--but technology can both help and hurt the success of those efforts. The author describes lessons at Piedmont Technical College which demonstrate that the application of software may only take a college so far in its efforts to bring unprepared students into college or workforce readiness. The faculty in the classrooms also play a major role, and students need to know how to use their computers effectively in order to exploit technology initiatives.