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At Carver, 24 participants were chosen from about 50 students taught by two team teachers, Ms. Mabry and Ms. Evers.

In the fall, a group of 16 students were chosen to work in groups of two children per computer. 8 students were assigned to the morning group, and another 8 students were assigned to an afternoon group. In the late winter, another 16 were chosen to work in similar groups, but the students refused to work cooperatively in groups. Since the students only worked on the multimedia projects when someone from UGA was with them, the winter group was soon reduced to 8 students in order to allow equal access to the computers. 4 students were to work in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.

Both fall and winter groups were told that they could choose any topic they wished to write about. The fall group chose the following topics: "the ultimate video game" (5 boys were in this group), "dance," "black on black violence" (three groups chose this topic), and "peer group pressure." The winter group chose topics such as "famous people of the 90s" (musicians), "famous songs of the 90s," "famous singers of the 90s," "dance," "shoes," "dealing with violence," and "baseball cards."

At Carver, the computers were originally set up outside the team-taught classrooms, in an open area which provided no security for the equipment when the classrooms were unattended. A more secure resource room adjacent to the classrooms and the open area was discussed as an alternative set up location, but use of the resource room would have required some modifications which never happened.

Around November and December, the classrooms were moved down the hall to allow re-tiling of the floors. The computers remained where they had been originally set up. When the classrooms returned to normal, the computers were moved to the media center. Three of the computers were set up in a room off the media center, in an area not directly visible to the media specialist, Ms. Goodwin. The fourth computer was set up in the main room of the media center, directly in the view of the media specialist.

It was hoped that placing the computers in an area of higher security and somewhat increased supervision would increase the time spent on the projects. However, the time spent by the 6th grade groups on their multimedia projects was not affected by the move to the media center. The computers were used mostly by students not associated with the project after being moved to the media center, since Ms. Goodwin encouraged students from different classes to explore CDs such as "Grandma and Me" and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" In addition, the computer that was within Ms. Goodwin's view was connected to the Internet via modem in April. This computer came to be used almost constantly while the media center was open, either for Internet exploration or for reading CDs.

No one in the fall or winter groups at Carver completed their projects due to lack of time on the computers, sabotage of files, and abused equipment. The fall groups working on dance and video games came close to completing their projects, but the ClarisWorks files containing their work were all emptied of the contents and re-saved as empty files. The manner in which these files were deleted was suspicious and almost certainly sabotage.

The fall dance group worked exceptionally hard to gather information and videotape examples of dances for their project, but their documents were deleted prior to completion. The fall video game group also showed considerable effort, but it became clear after a few weeks of work that the effort was not distributed evenly among the group members. Several drawings of villains and heroes were hand-drawn for the game, but little other work was evident as far as structure, accompanying text, or other organization.

In an effort to avoid some of the organizational problems found in the fall group, the winter group members were taken aside on the first days of work on the project and shown some basics in idea mapping and organization. However, this seemed to lead to misunderstandings about the type of product the students were expected to produce. Even after seeing examples of documents made by students at other schools, the winter group seemed unable to visualize how to put their projects together.

The students in the winter group focused on two ideas: (1) reconstructing the organizational "idea map" from a paper representation to a computer version (they mistakenly believed the organizational tool was actually their final product); and (2) the students spent a great deal of time writing personal introductions to accompany their idea maps. Only one of the students was able to come close to organizing and assembling a document. Several students rewrote their introductions every week and never completed or moved past that element.

The student who came close to producing a project was still unable to fully conceptualize what she was to do with it. She filled in text with accompanying video capture pictures of "famous people of the 90s" (musicians), but the text was mostly nonsense and was copied out of context from magazine sources. The text that did make sense was written for her by an older friend from another class.

In addition to the deleted project files, equipment sabotage became another problem after the computers were moved to the media center. Mouse balls were stolen at least 3 times, along with the locking rings that held the balls in place. A cable and battery from the video camera were also stolen, although the battery was eventually recovered.

General abuse of the computer equipment was also observed, as when students expressed frustration with the software by throwing keyboards to the floor or striking the sides of the monitors with their fists. Stated one student when told not to treat the equipment in this manner, "What's in this school belongs to me. I can do what I want with it." Another student added, "My dad says anything doesn't work, give it a good smack." Three of the computers were removed before the computers were damaged beyond use. The Internet computer was left in the care of Ms. Goodwin.

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