Following a period of staffing and planning in the early part of 1993, CK:P selected four sites for initial implementation. The sites were chosen to implement curriculum-focused projects that had been proposed in our original NSF submission, each of which had been developed by teachers and support staff in the school district. A summer workshop was organized to help acquaint teachers at these sites with networking technology and network resources, and classroom installations were prepared for the fall of 1993. We are currently completing our first year of classroom activity with these first four sites and are preparing new sites for the 1994-1995 academic year. The present proposal will establish the Urban Research Laboratory and use it to develop new research projects in the years 1995-1997. Our experience with the four initial sites has confirmed some elements of our original research design and forced modifications of others, as will be indicated in the text which follows.
To expand from the initial four sites, we developed an internal competition and invited schools across the district to apply. This proved to be an extremely successful venture, and it is one which we seek to extend in the present proposal. Seven sites were selected as a result of this competition, and planning is currently underway to allow for classroom implementations at these sites in the fall of 1994.
The following subsections highlight the major findings and activities of the project to date.