Results from Year 3 followed the same trend in writing-performance differences
as observed in the first 2 years. The laptop students showed significant advan-
tages over the cart students, although the differences were directionally lower
than in Year 2. These findings suggest that students with 24/7 access to laptops
have advantages over those who only use laptops during class, and even a
greater advantage over students in classrooms limited to six or fewer computers
shared by all students.
The observations did not find any significant differences in teaching
approaches between the two groups. The laptop students did use word proces-
sing software and accessed the Internet during language arts classes and when
doing independent inquiry/research more frequently than the cart students.
Student responses to survey items also revealed that a majority of the laptop
students indicated an increase interest in learning and in overall computer skills.
The combination of 24/7 computer access and the above factors may have
contributed to the increased writing performance of the laptop students. Tea-
cher training in the NTeQ model and classroom access to laptop computers
with wireless Internet access were the same in both groups.