Home access: Providing computers to families via a national strategy

In this paper we discuss the role of new technologies, and computers in particular, in lives of families in Australia. We report on part of a project that provided children families with computers and connection to the Internet. There is an increasing awareness that living in the 21st century involves using and interacting with a range of new technologies, also referred to as information and communications technologies (ICT). However, for many children and their families this is not possible because they do not have the capacity to purchase them. The Tech Packs Project (The Smith Family, 2007) grew out of the Computer for Every Child Project which was an attempt to start to bridge the ‘digital divide’ by providing computers so that a group of families in the targeted locations of large metropolitan cities could participate in the Information Age. The families involved were those whose personal resources did not afford them the opportunity to purchase new technologies, especially computers We surveyed the families members to determine the extent of their use of any technologies before and after receiving the computer and initiated focus groups to find out the ways in which having a computer created contexts for them to become more proficient in the use of ICT In this paper we will present the findings from both the survey and focus group data that we have collected.