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At Washington, up to 80 students had access to the four computers. These 80 students were team-taught by three teachers: Ms. Watson, Ms. Jones, and Mr. Black. When the computers were first placed in Washington, we requested that 8 students from each homeroom (a total of 24) would be involved in using the computers to produce multimedia documents. This was to allow teams of two students per computer to create documents during each grading period. The time allowed for each group of 24 to create their projects was not specified, but the time was initially assumed to be one grading period.

The four computers at Washington were set up in a narrow resource room located between the classrooms of Ms. Watson and Mr. Black. This resource area was fairly secure to prevent theft and misuse of the equipment, and was accessible only through a locked door or through the two adjacent classrooms. Locating the computers in this resource room allowed relatively easy access to the equipment by the students and teachers.

The structure of 24 students per marking period was not adopted by the teachers at Washington, nor did the teachers embrace the idea of allowing student groups to create their own multimedia projects. The teachers instead incorporated the computers into their established teaching styles and used the computers to enhance those methods. For example, before having access to the computers, students made travel brochures using cut and paste, paper and pencil methods. With the computers available, students used a CD-based encyclopedia to locate information (text, maps, and other graphics) about the areas chosen for their brochures. Students selected by the teachers then used the software program ClarisWorks to assemble text and clipart used in the brochures. Details such as the country's name, types of businesses, local language, common animals, etc., that were contained in the brochures were highly structured and outlined by the teacher. Students were allowed to design their own documents, but the design was within the constraints mandated by the teacher.

In another example, the students wrote poems about being African American. Students who wrote the "best" poems were assigned to transcribe their poems into ClarisWorks after the poem was written out longhand. Students then used the video camera to take individual pictures of themselves, and placed the video pictures in their ClarisWorks documents with their poems. The final documents were printed and taped up along the 6th grade hallway for display.

Students at Washington were not getting much experience in self-directed project-based education, but they were gaining computer skills, and most of the students (as well as the teachers) were gaining exposure to the possibilities of computers in the classroom. Whenever there was a break in the coursework or when students finished assignments before the rest of their class, they were allowed to use the computers, often to transcribe what they had just finished in class into a text or graphics file. Some students also learned how to display math problems using the spreadsheet and graphing functions of the ClarisWorks software.

The students at Washington were initially interested in games on the computers such as the solitaire card games, but as the school year progressed, they seemed less inclined to play the card games in their free time and instead explored ClarisWorks or the CD-based encyclopedia. For example, one student opened up ClarisWorks and discovered the "assistants" or templates for making commonly used documents. On her own, she decided to make an invitation for her mother's birthday party from one of the ClarisWorks templates, and proceeded to change the clipart, the fonts, and the wording on the template to make a custom invitation. Three other students in the room saw what she was doing and they made their own versions of invitations, showing each other how to find the clipart and how to change the template so that it could be customized, and then printed in the proper orientation.

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