Computers in Homes suspended awaiting funding renewal

This blog is not being updated whilst we await renewal of funding.

Please visit 2020.nz or computersinhomes.nz for latest news or follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/2020trustnz

Thank you

Bill Dashfield
20/20 web maestro

Funding restored – what it means for NZ families

The 2017 Coalition Government Agreement stated that Government funding for Computers in Homes – which ceased in June – will be restored. We are waiting to discuss this with the new Government. Meanwhile we continue to support the families from 2016/17 for their first 12 months online.

Because of this gap in funding, in some regions we no longer have a regional coordinator, and our national team are supporting those families.

The stories and statistics in the Computers in Homes Annual Report 2016/17 shows why the programme is so important – and successful – in helping New Zealand families get full benefit of being online.

Graduations Computers in Homes May 2017

As we held the final graduations for Computers in Homes Whanganui it has become a reflective time. Marton ICT Hub and James Cook Primary School put together a slideshow of all of the graduations we have shared there and it was wonderful to see the happiness and joy shared.

This will be the final post for us in Whanganui Region.  Over the last 10 years we have graduated 1,100 Computers in Homes families.  That is 1,100 homes who have technology that would not have had it.  We have moved from big chunky PC's to Chromebooks and from very few internet connections to almost 99% connectivity.

Technology is no longer a nice to have thing but is now a necessity for modern life, education, health and connection.

Here are our wonderful graduates from Marton

Our wonderful graduates from Taihape

Our wonderful graduates from Ohakune

Our final ever graduation at Tawhero School Whanganui

We wish you and your families every success in all fields and hope the technology will support this.

Chromebooks Rock!

I had the pleasure today of watching a class of new learners, many of whom have never used email before create labels and filters for their emails.

So many whanau I talk to get overwhelmed by the numbers of emails in their mail boxes and not being able to find things.  We showed them through a simple video how to create labels.  Youtube is a fantastic resource to learn new tricks on google.  If you like this one there are heaps more.

How do we learn easily?  We learn by sharing together, laughing, trying new things out and sharing our knowledge.  This was my experience in Taihape today with our two classes we have 18 students all together.  One who learn during the day and one in the evening.  Students move between the classes when they have other commitments.  It works for everyone.

Thank you Taihape

Amazing things are happening in Ruapehu

We are really happy to be able to announce that we are going to be working with Te Pae Tata in Ohakune this March 2017 in the Ruapehu Region.

They are located behind Ruapehu College.  They are driving the Ruapehu Whanau Transformation project which is a visionary project to transform the lives of whanau who live in Ruapehu.

We will be running a Chromebook trial for 10 -12 parents with children in the surrounding schools with the goal of enabling those whanau to have computers in their homes.  This will support them in their wider goals of sustainabilty, employment and education.

Here is a short video to show you what this amazing group are doing.

Here is a short video to introduce our new trainer Chaana Morgan who is talking here about the zero waste management which she is also involved in.

and here is a photo of her test driving the Chromebook

We start our class on Thursday 2 March at 10.30am we look forward to sharing our class photos next month.

Video Streaming - The Legal Way

There are many options for the new computer user in Video Streaming.

Here are a few legal ones

Netflix 










NEON TV

Lightbox

They are all different.  You need to shop around.

The other thing to do is to work out what video setting to watch them on.

When you login  go to the PLAYBACK settings.  If you choose Medium you will get a perfectly good picture but use 0.7GB per hour instead of 7 GB per hour on a premium plan.  It makes a major difference if you are on a set plan.

Check them out.  Remember to put in your phone calendar the week before your free trial expires so you can cancel it if you don't want to keep it.

Happy watching.

Chromebook success at Castlecliff and Keith Street Schools

Over the last few months I have had the privilege of working with a great group of parents at Keith Street and Castlecliff Schools.  These are parents and grandparents bringing up children.  Many of them had very little prior computer skills.  In the 20 hours training they learned about gmail, about using the internet, about the Google Drive, making slides and google docs and how they could support their children's learning.  Here are some of the families from those classes:

They came further than any other classes have using their chromebooks.  Here are the presentations they put together at the end of their class.  They all contributed.  Remember most of them could not have done any of this before class.  This was from the Castlecliff class:

This was from the Keith Street Class:

Here was their graduation