On day one, you would have students surf the WWW locating data on the numbers of causalities and people wounded in historical wars. By the conclusion of this class, your students would then turn in either an electronic or hard copy data sheet. A ranking of which 50 year time period was the most deadly. On day three through five, students get approval from teachers and begin to create the database. On the final day of the project, students present their findings to the class.
Optional activities can include debating about the reliability and validity of the data.
Most of today's databases have built-in functions that make them much easier to use than databases just a few years old. Yet, it has comparable power to other applications on the market. Lotus SmartSuite's Approach - This application is known for ease of use. It is, hands down, one of the easiest database packages to learn. Yet, we rarely see it being used in schools.