Exploring the 'Buddy Evaluation' Collection

For several years from the mid-1980s, the US State of Indiana was keen that its citizens, adults and children alike, know how to use computers "in the same way they know how to use pencils". A key means of accomplishing this strategy was through the state-wide introduction of computers in schools. The evaluation presented here relates to BUDDY, one of these projects. This project was directed at children in the fourth and fifth grades from selected urban and rural school districts throughout Indiana. In line with the state’s broader aims, not only would these children have access to a computer at school; their families would also be given a personal computer to use at home, along with support for learning and operating the equipment.

Cynthia Cole, author of this study, was one of the evaluators contracted by the North Central Regional Laboratory (NCREL) to conduct family and school case studies for the BUDDY evaluation in 1993. The evaluation took place when computers had been in the homes of four families for a period between 12 and 18 months. It showed that the parents welcomed the computers into their homes enthusiastically.

However, tensions were also apparent in what was regarded as the primary use of the computer: for the school, computers were primarily for the educational use of the students; for the state of Indiana, they were a means for people to improve economically by obtaining better jobs and the evaluation suggested that some decisions and policies underlying the BUDDY project had not been thought through carefully: what the state of Indiana considered to be the primary purpose of the computers did not translate in identical terms into the different participating schools, which in turn influenced the families and how they used the computers.

The new technology also had an impact on the norms that governed behaviour and interpersonal structures within families, as exemplified in the Waxman family, who feature in the case study in the archive. In particular, the changes in the life of Laura Waxman as a result of her enthusiastic and intense response to the computer, could not have been predicted, least of all by Laura herself. Cole’s experience as a family sociologist was particularly relevant in handling the family aspect of the BUDDY project: for example, a key element in the design of all the case studies, was the inclusion of a drawing technique, designed to give a voice to both children and parents involved in the project.