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McCrea: What were the hard parts of this initiative? Smith: Staff development was a big issue. Before the 1:1 rollout we spent at least six months on staff development. Going from 30 kids in a room opening textbooks to 30 kids opening computers is a significant shift. We wound up with a number of early adopters who bought into the change and a bunch of others in the middle who were saying, "Give me time and we will get there." Then there were staff members who refused to participate and threatened to retire. We stuck to our guns and told everyone that we were moving in this direction and that everyone had to be on board. Four years later we're still not there yet but we've definitely made progress. Getting to 100 percent is going to take a while.

"Our research shows that the argument that there is a generational break between today's generation of young people who are immersed in new technologies and older generations who are less familiar with technology is flawed," says Dr Jones. "The diverse ways that young people use technology today shows the argument is too simplistic and that a new single generation, often called the 'net generation', with high skill levels in technology does not exist."

while students had a wide exposure to technology, they often lacked an in-depth knowledge of specialised pieces of software

a small minority of students who either didn't use email or have access to mobile phones