ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how and what young people are learning when they use computers at home. Learning is at the centre of the humanity and the culture; it defines people as human beings and it is something that they do throughout their lives. They learn to walk and talk before they go to school and they continue to learn many things after they have left: gardening, cooking, DIY, politics. Children's perceptions of computers are shaped by their interests, previous experiences, and the social and cultural resources which surround them, and the influences lead them to use the computer in a variety of different ways. Time at home is also important in terms of enabling learning to take place over an extended period. When writing or producing a multimedia text, for example, there is instant feedback on the representational forms of the document; there is also feedback in the form of spell checks and grammar checks.
