Kate Baggott, a youth media analyst in Toronto, says the increased activity at home is occurring while the school system struggles to make adequate computer resources available. But although a Statistics Canada survey in January showed that nine of every 10 students at the elementary, intermediate and secondary levels in Canada attended schools with access to the Internet for educational purposes, getting real time on those computers is an issue. School technicians reported that there were too few computers to go around, insufficient copies of software and a lack of technical support to maintain the machinery and solve minor problems. Principals of schools representing two-thirds of students complained of a serious lack of training for teachers in computer knowledge and Internet skills. That makes it all the more compelling, says George Kyriakis, educational marketing manager for Microsoft Canada Co., for parents to fill in the gaps.
Parents can approach the educational use of computers in the home very differently than at school.
They went on to study other connected issues made especially possible by the Internet and its links to follow-on areas of study. She says that her daughter, Ashley, is learning spelling and grammar by participating in an international effort under which a group of Canadian students is helping a group of kids in Estonia to translate their work into English on-line. They have built Web sites for themselves, her business, a local park and a project to set up archives and a museum in Comox. Much of the material on the Internet is low-cost or free. Although the computer allows kids to work alone at their own pace, parents say supervision and involvement are especially crucial in the era of digital education, for reasons ranging from ensuring they're actually doing their work to making sure they are visiting safe sites, getting accurate information and not giving in to the temptation of copying what they find on the Net.