Abel Real attributes his transformation from likely high school dropout to nursing student at East Carolina University to classroom technology. Real, a self-proclaimed success story from poverty-stricken Greenville, North Carolina, shared his experience with a school laptop program that introduced him to the power of technology before the House Committee on Education Labor yesterday at a hearing on “The Future of Learning: How Technology is Transforming Public Schools.”

When Real was 13, both his parents were incarcerated and his two older brothers had already dropped out of high school. By sophomore year, Real was so distracted by his torn family that he was sure he would repeat his brothers’ mistakes. However, when a health care teacher introduced him to technology and his school gave him a laptop, his life began to turn around. Even when “home life was a mess,” Real could instant message his classmates and teachers after school to work on projects and ask questions through his computer, he said. The laptop program was a “portal to a new life,” in his words...