Re: [OS:N:] computers for students

[James McDermott <jmcdermo redhat com>]

Nice idea Anthony! Looks like there would be a number of areas to draw
revenue for the hardware. 1: Goodwill, 2: Sponsorship, 3: PR, 4:
Advertising just to start the ball rolling. 

Where to get started. hrm. Perhaps start with a well crafted information
packet and website showing the benefits of providing hardware for
redistribution. Also it might be a good idea to look into what kind of
tax write off you can provide to donators based on their donation, and
include this in the packet. Then its just a matter of canvassing. Youll
have large corporations donate for the PR/goodwill, regular people
donate because their significant others dont want the old computer
taking up so much space in the living room, and heres the one Id really
focus on... Corporations. They often have huge sales or just throw out
hundreds of thousands of dollars of computers. I would think these
groups would be thrilled to get a tax write off for their old boxes
(which are often still quite fast). Also larger Universities often have
large wharehouse sales of old computer equipment for pennies. 

Make sure you set up a donation spot, you can do this through paypal so
there is a link right on your site. You can use this money for printing
packets for the corporations and buying units. 

Also if there is a central address people can just "dump" their old
equipment it might be worthwhile.

There is probablly also a model to take high end parts which are in
excess of what someone learning technology would need and ebay it for
several "bulk discount" parts from a manufacturer to multiple the number
of basic units you can provide.

Just some thoughts, hope it helped, sounds like a really great idea.

--J


On Wed, 2004-03-24 at 21:26, anthony baldwin wrote:
> I received a few bits of computers from my church 
> (http://www.allsouls.net), and with other spare parts I had acquired 
> from other sources, built one computer, which is now in my 7/8 grade 
> classroom (http://sterling.school-library.net/).  I have decided to give 
> this copmuter away to a graduating 8th grade student at the end of the 
> year, as reward for an essay contest (expository writing about Open 
> Source Software or persuasive essay about why schools can benefit from 
> using OSS.)  I have enough parts here to maybe get another machine 
> together, and I got an idea.  I put out some feelers on a non-profit 
> swap phone-in radio show, and sent a message to a local free 
> giveaway/swapping e-mail list.   the responses have been overwhelming. 
> It seems there is a wealth of discarded hardware available.  I also know 
> that there are thousands of students who could make good use of this 
> equipment, and schools, as well, that could use better access to 
> technology.  I am considering, at this juncture, staring a non-profit to 
> recycle old machines and attempt to disstribute them to needy/deserving 
> students or schools.  I have acquired software from Suse/Novell and/or 
> can use other software, provided by the K12linux.org project(the machine 
> in my classroom is running Red Hat Linux 8.0).
> I haven't the slightest idea how to begin this endeavour, however, and 
> am asking for your feedback, advice or assistance.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Anthony Baldwin
> http://www.School-Library.net
> Freedom to Learn!
> 
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