Anne

I have eight participants, of which I am going to present a general description of each in the forthcoming blog entries.

Anne is a 14-year-old (who turned 15 at the end of the research period) who attends a public girls high school in a city of approximately 100,000 people in New Zealand.

She lives with her younger sister, mother and father. Her father works from home and her mother works full-time. Anne’s parents both have post-graduate degrees. The family is wealthy and lives in a rural area of the city. Anne’s family emigrated from England when Anne was about 5 years old.

Anne is aware that she is privileged and for example, has a rowing machine in her bedroom. Anne mainly uses a PC desktop and has wireless broadband access to the internet. She knows she is the only one of her friends that does not have ‘only’ dial-up internet. This PC is situated in the ‘kids’ wing’, which she and her sister share. It has a small living area, two bedrooms, and their own bathroom. The living area has a computer (sitting on a desk with a chair alongside), TV, and bean bags to sit on.

Her younger sister has an Apple iBook laptop computer which Anne doesn’t use very often. However, this computer used to be Anne’s when Anne attended the same school that her younger sister is now attending.

Her father has another PC laptop which Anne likes to use when he is not using it (he works from home, so often is using it).

Anne does not use the computers at her school very often and does not attend any computing class. She is adamant that the computer classes for the first two years at her high school are very easy, and are far too simple for her level of expertise.

Activities she regularly undertakes on the computer mostly comprises homework research. She uses Google to search for pictures and websites, and does not have many ‘bookmarks’ or ‘favorites’. She often talks to her friends on MSN and plays online games with them (via MSN). Email use and internet surfing comprise a fair bit of Anne’s leisure time.

Anne spends a considerable amount of time practicing her chosen sport/s.

Her strengths at school include maths and science. She is considering a career in computers but is not sure as she expects she might find computer programming boring.