"She 'talks' to people all over the world that she has met on the computer," says Carla. "They all come home from school and start on the computer."
A year ago, the Henry family was one of 25 households with children at Panmure Bridge Primary School who received a free recycled computer and six months' free internet access under a Computers in Homes scheme.
When the two-year experiment started, Carla Henry "didn't know how to turn on a computer". Now she is connected to the world.
Says the school principal, Rod Bright: "There were families who were not literate at all, and who have found that just using the computer and having to be fairly precise with what buttons you press, have actually become much more aware of how letters and things work."
The Henrys are among the lucky ones. But last year only 34 per cent of Maori and 38 per cent of Pacific Islanders had home computers, compared with 51 per cent of Europeans and 60 per cent of Asians. The gap was wider when it came to accessing the internet. Just 16 per cent of Maori and 12 per cent of Pacific Islanders had internet access at home, compared with 38 per cent of Europeans and 56 per cent of Asians.
This is partly an urban/rural issue. While 42 per cent of people in the main centres had home internet access last year, the figure was only 32 per cent in provincial cities and rural areas and 24 per cent in small towns where many Maori live. The high-bandwidth phone lines able to carry complex internet images quickly are still mostly confined to the big cities.
But the biggest divider is income. Only 11 per cent of households earning less than $20,000 a year have the internet at home - compared with 69 per cent of those on $100,000 or more.
Many of those at the bottom end can't even afford a telephone. Although only 4 per cent of the population as a whole were without phones in the 1996 census, this included 14 per cent of Maori, 15 per cent of Pacific Islanders, and more than 65 per cent of Maori households earning less than $15,000 a year in Northland and the East Coast.
A report by economists Infometrics for the Maori Development Ministry Te Puni Kokiri in July found that this "digital divide" matters, for three reasons:
* Educational: American studies suggest that computer-aided instruction is more cost-effective than tutoring to improve students' learning, especially for slower students.
* Economic: Most jobs require familiarity with computers, and businesses use the internet to find customers around the world.
* Social: The internet enables people not just to watch the world passively, through television, but to look actively for the information they want, to make contacts and to get involved with people anywhere.
In effect, the internet has become the passport of the new global society. Since race can be invisible on the net (words on the computer screen could have been written by a Chinese, African, Maori or anyone), minority groups can participate in this new society as equals.
But that depends on getting access to the net.
Around the world, governments are wrestling with the issue. Should internet access be provided cheaply or free, on the basis that it is now a vital extension of education, which has been free in principle for more than 60 years?
Or should it be treated as a commercial service, to be bought and sold in the free market like TV sets and telephones?
Many governments recognise the educational value of the net, without quite offering it free.
Australia has allocated $A464 million ($568 million) from the partial sale of Telstra to provide high-speed phone lines suitable for the internet to remote rural areas, and to subsidise community internet centres in small towns.
Singapore is putting $S100 million ($131 million) into a $S400 million ($524 million) project to wire its island with a high-speed broadband internet network, Singapore One. It subsidises internet access for families with children by $S10 ($13) a month, and provides recycled computers and free internet access to 30,000 families earning less than $S2000 ($2620) a month. The families pay a token $S50 ($65.50) for the computers. Canada has opened 10,000 public internet access sites.
In New Zealand, an "information society initiative" promised last year for early this year has now been abandoned. But there have been some, mostly low-cost moves.
Last month the Government put a total of $300,000 - an average of $50,000 apiece - into bids by Northland, South Waikato, East Cape, Taranaki, Wairarapa and Southland to create regional fast-internet broadband phone links.
Far North Development Trust chairman Chris Matthews says Northland is willing to raise its own money from local trusts to group local internet users into a viable customer base, and to form a regional telephone company in partnership with a wireless phone operator.
"We don't need access to Telecom's copper wires," he says. Customers wanting internet service would install small radio transmitters to reach the nearest wireless transmission station.
Says Broadcast Communications Ltd general manager Rob Sweet: "There is no reason why it can't be done, technically. It comes down to economics as to whether we can make it stack up. The guys in Northland are putting together some business models to make it happen."
On the East Coast, the Government has spent $2.3 million recycling 2000 old computers from state agencies for schools and a proposed 13 "community hubs".
The first hub opened a year ago with 23 computers in Wairoa's disused courthouse, now known as 'Wairoa.com'.
The Napier polytechnic and a Maori trust board are running computing courses for the public in the centre, Senior Net meets there twice a week, and the place is open for public use on weekdays and Saturday mornings.
Public users are charged $5 an hour waged or $2 unwaged. But the centre depends on a Government grant to pay a staff member, and has two years of free internet service from Telecom.
"A facility like this could never survive without the continued support of the private sector and resources through the Government," says organiser Hine Flood.
Beyond Wairoa, some computers have gone to eight computer centres run by the Hekenga Mauriora Trust, and Jim Corder of Gisborne's Kiwa Education Partnership says about 30-35 per cent of the computers destined for Gisborne schools are now operating.
Gisborne is a trial site for a Microsoft-sponsored learning programme, also being tried in the Far North, West Auckland, Lower Hutt, Canterbury and Southland.
Around the East Cape at Te Kaha, another American computer company, Cisco, is providing a programme for 25 students in an abandoned school now rechristened a "cyberwaka". Its 280-hour course on designing, building and maintaining computer networks operates at more than 8000 sites in 130 countries.
The Te Kaha academy was opened in January by Cyberwaka Enterprises, a joint venture between the local Runanga o Te Whanau a Apanui and a new South Auckland charitable trust, Matagi E Fa ("Four Winds").
Two more academies followed at Ngata College in Ruatoria and at Waikohu College near Gisborne in March and July, and last month another was opened by Prime Minister Helen Clark for 20 students at Otara's Tangaroa College. Tangaroa principal Mike Leach says the students' success in the Cisco course is already boosting their confidence generally.
"Because of the interaction [with the computer], the kids are focused," he says. "I have seen the spinoff to their other subjects. They have a passion for learning because they have been successful."
One student, seventh-former Okirua Kirianu, enjoys the course a lot because it is "the way of the future" and will help him get a good job.
"I like the idea that one day I'm going to have all that money," he says. "It's like a motivation. And also getting an international qualification."
When the Herald called, sixth-former Paea Manumua had e-mailed a teacher in Lansing, Michigan, to get some tests e-mailed back to him.
One problem for most students is that they have no computers to work on at home. The college does not open at nights, and Manumua uses a computer at his cousin's place at the weekends.
Matagi E Fa chairman Hamish Crooks is negotiating with another trust to seek financing for getting the students home computers.
The Wellington-based 2020 Trust, which runs the Computers in Homes scheme at Panmure and a similar one for 25 families in Porirua, received just $10,000 from the Government towards the total cost of those two trials. The rest of the cost of $3000 a family was met by the trust's other donors, including a Mt Wellington business, The Ark, which seeks cast-off computers and renovates them for schools.
This year the trust has launched further Computers in Homes projects in Newtown, Wellington (25 homes), in Kutarere, Waimana and Matahi in the eastern Bay of Plenty (75) and last month in Flaxmere, Hastings (200) - the last of these backed by a major $500,000 grant from the Education Ministry.
But all these moves so far have reached only a fraction of the New Zealand families who are still "offline" outside school hours. To reach the rest, one obvious answer is the local public library.
Auckland City has $5000 subsidies from the Education Ministry to create "Akozones" (learning zones) at the Glen Innes and Mt Wellington libraries, where children can use computers for homework after school with a teacher on hand.
Without the subsidy, North Shore is opening a similar centre with six computers at the Glenfield library, and Manukau opened a new "youth library" with 16 computers in Otara in August.
All three cities allow public access to selected New Zealand and educational websites free, but charge around $2 a quarter-hour for access to other sites or e-mail. Some give concessions to children in the learning centres.
In Papatoetoe, the Manukau Urban Maori Authority runs a similar "Cybertek" with 15 computers, charging $3 for 15 minutes, $5 for 30 minutes or $9 an hour. It also runs a free holiday programme for children.
In Wellington, a private trust drawn from the IT industry runs the "(e)-Vision Centre", with meeting spaces and a range of computing courses from beginners upwards.
(e)-Vision founder Jan Bieringa has proposed that the Government should fund similar "e-centres" around the country, with free internet access for low-income people, courses on how to use the internet, incubator support for new businesses and meeting places.
"I hear that the Government are saying they don't want to do this, they feel that they shouldn't be delivering these things, that private developers should," she says.
"I disagree with that. It's like the health system, the roading system, the electricity system. I think this infrastructure, and these skills, are essential, and that Government has an essential role to play there. They don't have to be the primary funders. The do have to seed the initiative and kick-start the country."
2020 Trust director Alistair Fraser is even more ambitious.
"I'd love to see us having a slogan saying, 'Every New Zealander has a computer and someone in the family is able to connect to the internet and send e-mail'," he says.
The 2020 Trust has just restructured itself into a national trust and what it hopes will be a series of regional trusts.
It aims to raise the money to extend the home computer scheme from experiments like Panmure to all decile 1 schools in the country - around 70,000 students in 260 schools.
"We'd like to see it rolled out as soon as possible, doing a further 20 pilots within the next two years," says Fraser.
"It costs $3000 per family to participate. I reckon you'd find there would be a payback in three to five years in savings in social costs of maybe $20,000 to $30,000 from that investment."
www.2020.org.nz
www.the-ark.co.nz
www.cisco.com/edu
Herald features
Proud to be a Kiwi
Our turn
The jobs challenge
Common core values
