At the middle school, 25 students from a 7th grade classroom participated in the project during their biology class period.

Classroom infrastructure. The classroom had one computer (Power Macintosh 5200) with access to the Internet via 128KB ISDN connection. A television monitor was connected to this computer. The students in this class did not have any formal access to the school computer lab. However, when the project started, the students spent one class period per week in the school computer lab to go over the project Web-site. The school lab had 25 computers, ranging from Macintosh LCII to Macintosh 580. During the entire semester there was a student teacher assisting the teacher in the classroom. Both the teacher and the student teacher attended the training day.

Sample activities. The students worked in four groups with six students per group for acquiring images through their single classroom computer. While one group worked on the computer, other groups worked on different activities planned by their teachers, such as making observations on their classroom incubator. A television monitor was connected to the computer so that the rest of the class could watch while one group worked on the computer. The classroom teacher also provided the students with writing assignments, such as the following:

Explain why the air cell increases greatly during incubation.
Read: How A Chick Emerges. [Class handout adapted from the resource materials by the Champaign County Cooperative Extension Service.]
Hint: What happens on Day 14 of incubation? Also - Find out when the embryo's lungs start to function.

Although students worked in groups, each student would turn in her or his work individually. For instance, here is one student's response to the first question above:

So the chick can poke through the membrane easily and get accustomed to the air, and so its lungs will start working right.