+h mayor of Birmingham is making a two year loan of XO laptops to middle school students in the Birmingham City Schools in Alabama. The educational and social changes that will occur in classrooms and the effects on several student outcomes are studied in this Small Grant for Exploratory Research. It is expected that access to technology will change the educational and social environment in classrooms and affect student outcomes. The problem of digital divide is acute among the disadvantaged minority community and this study examines the changes that will occur due to the use and access to technology. Given the local government's plan to distribute the XO laptops to the middle school students, the project takes advantage of this educational intervention to study its effects on several student outcomes. The XO laptops are unique in that they emphasize collaborative learning by providing user interface and mesh networking for cooperative work with others. The sample consists of all 6th and 7th grade students in 6 randomly selected middle schools. The project undertakes the collection of pre and post data on students' technology usage levels and types, education and career interests and aspirations. The data collection takes place at two time points: 6 and 12 months after receiving the laptops. The repeated measures design allows the study of the trend in levels and types of technology use. An important goal of the study is to explore the relationship of the increased technology access to students' learning content and skills and their career intentions. The study also examines how the technology use affects students' perceptions of social connections, belonging and personal expression. Data analyses include descriptive statistics, and multilevel models of change, using HLM program. In addition to paper and pencil survey data from the full sample of approximately 2500 students, twenty students are interviewed in-depth at two time points to probe in detail how the access and increased computer skills influence educational and psycho-social outcomes. The changes in classroom culture, pedagogical changes due to the use of technology are studied, using teacher data and classroom data. This should provide a more accurate picture of the students' learning environment. In order to control for possible effects of teacher ability (at 2nd or 3rd level models), the teacher data is linked with student data for estimating the models controlling for the teacher effects.
