In an effort to broaden the context for classroom writing by providing an audience other than the teacher and classmates, a study used microcomputers, a modem and an electronic mail service to set up communications with classes in other communities. Two classes (27 students) at Sewickley Academy in Pennsylvania communicated for a semester with two classes from Wilsall, Montana (19 students) and one class (23 students) from Kyle, South Dakota. Students wrote in a variety of forms--notes, letters, stories, interviews, drafts, transcripts, and summaries--writing informally and formally and adjusting to the particular rhetorical situation by determining what the reader needed to know, what tone to adopt, and what form to write in. The three schools were extremely different from each other: Kyle is located on a Sioux reservation, Wilsall is very small school in the Rocky Mountains, and Sewickley Academy is a private school in an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. The students began their course investigating their preconceptions of the other communities, writing about and expressing their stereotypes freely in class. At the completion of the course the majority of the Sewickley students agreed that they were more aware of cultural differences in the United States and had learned to question stereotypes, suggesting that the range of discourse was important not only in teaching students to be agile writers but also in providing a situation where students write to find out about different people and other communities. (NH)