STEP had to confront obstacles on both the personal and technological level. First and foremost, STEP needed to sustain the enthusiasm of the teachers and establish a comfort level for the participants so they could deal with information overload of numerous computational tools and resources. In addition, both Macintosh and PC users were actively recruited to participate, so STEPs first summer workshop had to address a cross-platform problem: using the 20 Macintosh computers in the SDSC auditorium (2 teachers to a Mac) was not comfortable for PC users.

And as a multiyear program, STEP experienced turnover among the participants. The 1994 summer workshop extensively reviewed the 1993 workshop because eight new teachers joined the program to replace people who left for various reasons, primarily job obligation or relocation. The school team focus was successful here. At most one new teacher joined any team, and the veterans helped the new member feel welcome and become familiar with the previous years materials.

For the summer 1994 workshop, San Dieguito High School brought in IBM PCs to use with the scientific visualization tools provided by Dave Thomas of Montana State University and other STEP contributors. In 1995, SDHS again loaned computers, and SDSCs Network Support group connected them to Internet. By summer 1995, the SDSC auditorium was equipped with a Pentium PC, and the projection system could now display screens from the Macintosh, PC, or Unix workstation.

Supporting both Macintosh and PC platforms at the various schools was difficult. Lecture notes had to be provided in formats for Macintoshes, PCs and even Unix workstations. This difficulty eased tremendously with the arrival of Web browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, that look and behave much the same on every type of computer. In 1995, Don Anderson showed the STEP teachers how to set up helper applications on the browsers, so now all the notes can be viewed on the Internet with a Macintosh or PC.

On a technological level, STEP did not have funds to purchase hardware and only modest funds for software. Also, teachers did not always have easy access to resources; for example, the computer might be in the school library, rather than in the classroom.

Several of the accompanying slides show the high school student labs available, as well as the typical classroom setup, which has several students sharing a single machine. Even though classrooms may have Internet access, they do not always have enough computers to allow each student individual access. Students therefore must often work in teams, which has advantages when the teacher constructs lesson plans that account for this group dynamic. That has been the case for the vast majority of STEP teachers.

Within STEP, even topics that could be considered difficulties have been viewed as opportunities. With the continuing advances in Information Technology and the confidence and expertise that the STEP teachers have already demonstrated, they will be prepared to take advantage of future, unforeseeable developments.