Popular mechanics

I Spencer wasn't careful about what he asked for. But he was creative with what he got. To get computers for his classroom, "I talked to my principal and local businesses," says Spencer, a fourth grade teacher at Terra Linda Elementary School in West Jordan, Utah. "I figured someone had old computers they'd be willing to donate." He was right. In the end, he found a computer for each of his 31 students. But most were, well, "inoperativ." Yet

Spencer remained undaunted. "At one time I was an auto mechanic," he explains. "So I began thinking of computers as the electric motors in cars." Though he'd barely even used a computer before, Spencer got the hang of computer repair.

And now his class contains 31 individual computer work stations. "Creative writing-that's where I think computers really make a difference," says Spencer. "Kids who used to give me one or two sentences now do page-long stories. I wouldn't get anything like that if they had to handwrite their assignments."