FREEPORT – If best-selling author Stephen King has his way, the Maine laptop initiative could have one more benefit next year: His writing instruction.

King told a group of Freeport Middle School seventh-graders Tuesday that he would like to set up an interactive, Internet-based system through which he could teach writing to students.

The idea is conceptual for now, King said, but it illustrates the learning possibilities laptop computers bring to Maine classrooms.

“I would like to teach writing via this technology,” King told the students. “I would like to get in touch with you and have you get in touch with me. Because that can happen, and together we can make that happen.”

King was at the school with Gov. Angus King to visit classrooms and talk to students and teachers to see how they are using the 115 Apple iBook laptops that are in use at the school. The laptop initiative calls for putting a computer in the hands of every middle-school student in Maine.

About 18,000 of the iBooks were delivered in September to students and teachers in 239 schools. Another 18,000 are scheduled to be delivered next year.

The governor and the author, who are not related, also spoke to the students as a group.

The governor said delegations from Scotland, France and Canada have visited Maine in recent weeks to learn more about the laptop program. The world, he said, is watching.

“You are going to be in the history books,” he said.

Stephen King, who grew up in nearby Durham and now lives in Bangor, said all students in time will have computers as part of their learning arsenal.

“There’s never been a class that has had what you have before you,” he said. “When I was in the seventh grade, I was given a pen.”

King is the author of more than 30 best-selling books, and is no stranger to teaching or to the Internet.

He taught English at Hampden Academy in the early 1970s, and two years ago wrote “On Writing,” a book about his life and his craft.

King a couple of years ago distributed a 66-page short story, “Riding the Bullet,” over the Internet by allowing users to download it for $2.50. He also distributed a book, “The Plant,” over the Internet using an honor system in which readers were supposed to pay a dollar for each installment of the book.

He is now proposing to combine his writing knowledge and the Internet to help Maine students.

The author told reporters that he can envision establishing a dialogue with students, giving them assignments and posting good writing examples online for others to see – just like in a classroom.

He said there will be “stumbles and falls” in the teaching project, but that the opportunities are plentiful.

“That’s what’s so exciting about this,” he said. “We’re like surfers riding in the curl.”

King also weighed in on the debate over whether the laptop program should be cut to help the state deal with its $240 million budget shortfall.

The Legislature is scheduled to convene Wednesday to begin addressing the shortfall, and cutting the laptop plan is one area that has been discussed. Under Gov. King’s emergency budget plan, the laptop initiative account faces a cut of $9.6 million.

Stephen King said he doesn’t see any viable reason for legislators to stop the program.

“It comes down to the question of what’s fat and what’s muscle,” he said. “If you consider teaching Maine schoolchildren to be ‘fat,’ I suggest you have to go back and rethink your situation.”