Judgments pertaining to the amount of time students spend on learning tasks that involve ICT are
subjective. What is “too much” for one parent may be “not enough” for another. However, it is interesting
that parents who perceived their children as spending too much time on their laptops from both cohorts
generally self-assessed themselves as having lower than average ICT knowledge and skills. Parents from the
two cohorts were asked to rate their knowledge and use of computers as either novice, intermediate or
experienced. An overall mean score was calculated where 1 = novice, 2 = intermediate, 3 = experienced. The
overall mean for the total number of respondents was 2.2. Further to this, 72.9% of Year 5 parents and 64.1%
of Year 7 parents were in the intermediate and novice range. 29.4% of the novice respondents believed their
son’s used their laptop too much.