With the PCs for Families project, we wish to determine whether, under the best of circumstances, ubiquitous access to networked computing by both students and their families has measurable effect on long-term student achievement. We are interested in how networked computing effects students' educational achievements, the attitude and professional development of the teacher and support instructor, and how families support their students and react to the new technologies in their homes. In this article, we discuss the design of the PCs for Families experiment, a longitudinal quantitative and ethnographic study of networked computing in the fifth-grade classroom. We cover our experimental methodology and provide an overview of what we have learned.
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