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Reglue: Opening Up the World To Deserving Kids With Linux Computers
jrepin writes: Today, a child without access to a computer (and the Internet) at home is at a disadvantage before he or she ever sets foot in a classroom. The unfortunate reality is that in an age where computer skills are no longer optional, far too many families don't possess the resources to have a computer at home. Linux Journal recently had the opportunity to talk with Ken Starks about his organization, Reglue (Recycled Electronics and Gnu/Linux Used for Education) and its efforts to bridge this digital divide.
Oh good another group for computers for children, lets add it to the pile...
Food would be better,
Or more education for their teachers (most of whom choose to be teachers after failing their primary profession),
how about teaching children to read properly (functional literacy is not a good standard)
how about using the money so their parent/s could work less hours and see their children more than just weekends.
The undeserving kids deserve preferential treatment. Don't educate the smart kids, they'll only grow up to cause trouble. The stupid knuckle-dragging glue-eating morons should get all the cool stuff, because they'll grow up to be obedient little Amerinazis and vote all our beloved evil tyrants into power.
Is 'Ken Starks' for real? For instance, the Austin School board has no knowledge of a Karen or any incident involving a pupil and a Linux CD. See slashdot of Dec 2008. See also this blog from Dec 2008. And also The Register of Dec 2008.
Before I joined my current company their equipment disposal policy was to have their old equipment picked up as General Purpose electronic scrap. It didn't take long for me to find a local charity that was re-purposing PCs by loading them with Linux Mint and giving them back to people who couldn't afford one in our local community. In the UK we follow the EU law Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... so recycling locally actually kills a few birds at the same time. We follow the law, the charity are happy to confirm that they have receive the equipment for recycling. Which also keeps our accounts people happy as they can track the write offs. Our machines are wiped down as they put a fresh Mint install in place. And we're giving something back into the community. I really don't know why more companies don't put the little bit of extra effort into putting the same kind of relationship in place.
Why not weapons? Many kids will die in an armed conflict later on. Why not give them an advantage early. Give computers and similar toys to disabled people and future secretaries.
BTW.: is there *really* any advantage in throwing various tech gadgets at children? What makes you believe this? Read this. This was exactly 30 years ago! Did we learn nothing? Obviously, not.
Today, a child without access to a computer (and the Internet) at home is at a disadvantage before he or she ever sets foot in a classroom.
On the contrary; a child who has been reading actual books and using their imagination in play - in other words, not vegetating in front of a screen - has a huge advantage.
How is a computer going to change the fact that little Shaneeqwon's mother is a crackwhore who got high while pregnant, and her father is serving 30 in the state pen?
How is a computer going to change the fact that little Marcos' parents are illiterate, unemployable illegal aliens who had him merely as an "anchor baby"?
How is a computer going to change the fact that little Rodney's unemployed mother is on disability because she sniffed too much gasoline and glue while he was in her womb, and his father just up and vanished one day?
Like it or not, a lot of American kids are spawned from people who are total crap, and no amount of education or computers are going to do anything to help these kids. They're lost causes to begin with, in many cases, thanks to their parents' persistent drug and substance abuse during pregnancy.
Even when given computers and education, Shaneeqwon will reject them because they're the "white man's tools of oppression". Marcos can't use them because he can't read, understand or even speak any language except for a small handful of Spanish slang. Rodney's brain was fried before he was even born thanks to his mother's habits, and he's functionally retarded. There's nothing that can be done for them, and the many like them.
was the future and game changing technology? I mean besides the fact that we can 3D print computers for these kids.
Aren't kids brought up without a 3D printer going to be the next generation of Luddite?
You've got it all wrong. The Internet of Things (IoT for short) is the game changing technology of the week now.
Maybe you just haven't heard about it yet? It is really cutting-edge. Well, basically every device you have in your home becomes a computer that's connected to the Internet. That way your bathroom light fixture can video you while you urinate and defecate, and your fridge can track your eating habits so various advertising companies can show you very targeted ads on your tablet. How cool is that?! That's just the start of the awesome possibilities, though. I can't wait until my neighbor's kids download a script from some Russians that will allow them to remotely control my thermostat without my knowledge, turning on my air conditioner and furnace at the same time, causing a fire in my basement that burns down my house. Man, this technology is so sweet. It is The Future.
I totally agree and so do many tech people who make sure their kids see more of the world then from a screen of a device.
But if you want to get more computers into kids hands especially in third world Countries. My suggestion would be to take all these trade in laptops and install Linux on them and make use of slightly older technology. Instead of Chromebooks or iPad's which don't have the flexibility of a notebook. Such as a LAN connection, full OS capable of plug and play capabilities and not reliant on a Google,Apple or Microsoft. The bigger problem with much of the World that is poor comes from a lack of education, government's that truly work for the people and no resources to attract investment.
Give them a computer and it's like giving a starving man a tin of beans - but no tin opener.
The computer is only the tool. The resource that stop children being underprivileged (in an extremely narrow, and not very practical sense) is internet access.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Can we please stop with the "children who have no PC will be at a disadvantage in the classroom" charade? Computers are great and useful, but we don't need to pretend that they will magically help children do better in school. If anything, the limited evidence available from larger-scale voucher programs suggests that they may very well reduce test scores. Which is rather intuitive. Sure, you can use your computer to do your homework and prepare your next presentation. But you can also use it to play games or go on Facebook and Buzzfeed instead of doing more productive tasks. If you're a child with low impulse control/intrinsic motivation to study, having a PC only means one more source of distraction.
This kind of program appeals to nerds like us because we remember getting our first PC, learning how to use Linux to set up our first home server, learning how to code, spending a lot of time online acquiring new knowledge, etc. That's literally the first paragraph of the article. But we're not the average person. Most children will not do that: ask non-nerds around you how they felt about the time their parents bought their first computer and you'll get a "meh" because, in the pre-internet era, you could easily see them as glorified typewriters if you weren't a nerd. Nowadays, the average child will start playing Flash games on the web and be content. And gaming is much more fun than doing your homework.
I think it's also good to distinguish between "cannot afford a computer" and "does not think a computer is worth the cost". What I mean is, if instead of providing a computer or a voucher that can only be used to buy a computer, charities gave people $200 (enough to buy a Chromebook or Chromebox that's sufficient for all school-related uses), would they go out and buy a PC? Or is it a paternalistic endeavor that insists that poor households REALLY need a PC because WE couldn't live without one, so they must just not know what's good for them? Of course, if you give away something for free, people will take it. That doesn't mean they value it as much as you think they do. I see that they're trying to identify people who really need it, so kudos to them, but it's difficult and, so far, willingness to pay remains to best way to do that. Provided of course that people have enough money to have real options. This is where I start my rant about how charities are at best a stop-gap solution fraught with problems such as the fact that people always start them because they think they know what poor people REALLY need ("a PC", "no, toys", "no, cans of food", etc.). What about: a decent income so they can make their own choices rather than having to rely on handouts?
At least, when it comes to PCs, money is quickly becoming a non-issue. A Pi with case, keyboard, mouse and Wifi dongle can be purchased for perhaps $60-$70. Spend a little more and you can buy a Banana Pi or another cheap Chinese ARM machine. When you factor in the time it takes to check that donated computers still work well, set up the Linux OS, coordinate donations, etc., I'm sure 'free' PCs end up being more expensive.
Thing is, you can get an ISP to donate an internet connection to a school. If you have poor kids, they probably go to a poor school, so why not just hook up the school with a network of linux machines and let the kids learn there?
Alright, go for it, man: tell us all why the verb "vegetating" only applies to screens and not pages.
Let's get TV out of the way - it's passive, dumbed-down, lowest common denominator entertainment.
Video games are nothing but interactive TV programs when you think of it. There isn't any redeeming value to them. And save the hand -eye coordination benefits argument. Nothing beats running around outside and playing.
Internet - surfing crap and at best, small articles that people don't even finish reading the article - yeah, it's not just Slashdotters. I hate researching on the Internet because for one, so much stuff is just copied verbatim. You go through hundreds of sites and read the same shit over and over.
WikiPedia can be good, but sometimes the writing is just dense or doesn't flow well. There is a lot to be said about a skilled writer. Here is an example of a skilled writer making complex material understandable AND enjoyable. You will not find material like that available on the net; although, you will find the author's individual articles. But those articles will not have the long narrative that the book has and you wouldn't finish his article anyway which leads to ....
Books: long narratives on a single format. Will not get distracted by other shit. How many times has one gone to read on the Internet and get distracted and end up on a time wasting site - like Slashdot? There is NO new and breaking news here.
I find having a dead tree book (can't surf the net or get email notifications or anything like that like I can on electronic things that distract me), I can get engrossed in it and absorb MUCH more than I can reading crap on the net.
And that's my project - use my local library and read books.
So there you go. Sometimes, technology is a bad thing.
A child without a computer is NOT disadvantaged. A child without food, water, shelter is disadvantaged. Computers are wonderful toys, but finding a way to grow crops, produce food and clean water is far more important.
I work in schools.
I work in IT in schools.
I've only ever worked in IT in schools (or colleges, or tuition centres...).
School computers do not make better students. Home computers do not make better students. Personal computers do not make better students.
If anything, the opposite unless they are regulated... by a teacher... in a classroom... and they have the will to learn. Guess which are the magic factors and which aren't?
Sure, there are disadvantaged children that don't have an Internet connection, a PC, time on it, and can't fill in their homework that the school provides on its website. The number of them is VANISHINGLY small. And, usually, because of much bigger problems that have nothing to do with technology - i.e. the kinds of families that you would find had sold the PC the next week for money to buy something else. They are dozens of charities, government schemes and even schools that do this. It's not taken up en-masse unless you are giving SILLY amounts of money to it, and then it's taken up to save them paying a bill that you could have just paid for them twice over.
And then, when I was a kid 15-20 years ago, I didn't have much access to a PC either. I came out near the top of my school. In IT. It wasn't a burden. In fact, my teachers fretted about my wasting so much time on the computers when they did come in.
Let's get this straight - giving an old recycled PC that someone was throwing out to a kid does not give them anything. I can't give this stuff away, when I throw out dozens of desktops a year, for a reason: you can run old stuff on it, if you're careful. So instead of "no PC", they have "slow PC full of junk that either can't run or is ancient". They're better off with no PC. Sticking it onto the Internet is, again, just a recipe for disaster. Now all that rich online content, tied into the school's cloud systems, requiring all kinds of plugins... they still can't view as intended.
Sticking them on Linux isn't going to help either. I speak as someone who HAS deployed Linux machines in schools, is never without a Linux server somewhere, and has Linux at home. And Windows. And (spit) Macs. And I was an early backer of the Raspberry Pi project. All it means is they won't be able to read their homework in a format that the teacher can send or send their homework in a format that the teacher can read. I *know* that you and *I* can do that, but this are disadvantaged kids with no PC skills stuck on an unfamiliar system that few people can help them with.
STOP GIVING THIS CRAP TO CHILDREN in the first world. Nothing is actually *better* - they then might have to come into school and do stuff like learn. And if the kid is that disadvantaged but able to learn, there are libraries, after-school clubs, lunchtime clubs, or they can negotiate after-hours access with their schools direct - which might just help those parents struggling to leave work in order to pick them up...
Sending this stuff to the third world doesn't help either. They have the same problems, and have to deal with too much junk.
On top of all that, unless you're online it's pointless. The Linux educational software is NOT educational software. It's some geek's idea of educational, conforms to no curriculum whatsoever and, if you're lucky, can be crowbarred to fulfill two or three curriculum requirements over the course of a year. And if you have to put these kids online to do what they need, THAT is the cost and the expense and the problem, not what device they happen to access it from (by the time you are then, any kind of thin-client would work, backed by their school).
Really, we need to find other ways to solve this problem, not just throw old computers at kids. It's not even as useful as throwing old library books at kids.
computers are less likely to take IT jobs.
There, I said it.
What about opening up the world to deserving kids without Linux computers? Are we really going to discriminate against kids based on what O/S they run on their computers?
I'm not deserving, I'm undeserving. And I mean to go on being undeserving: I like it.
In the immortal words of Judge Smayles: Well, the world needs ditch-diggers, too.
-Styopa
Okay, who is the person without a computer in 2014? Do we have a profile of this person? Look, I've had a lot of perfectly usable computers over the years that were just too old for software development, but still worked great. No one wanted them. No one would take them. All I could do is recycle them. You literally can't give an old computer away, because I've tried. So we need to rethink this idea that there are kids who want old computers running Linux. Who are they, and why can't we match up the glut of surplus machines no one wants with them?
I'm really surprised Microsoft didn't launch this kind of initiative ages ago.
That would have been a genius move - painting themselves as altruists, while teaching kids that Linux is a "welfare OS", for those who can't afford anything better.
What did people do with computers before broadband became common? They ran software that came on optical discs. Encarta was a CD; why can't some relevant subset of Wikipedia be a DVD?
Where I live, there is an organisation called Camara doing something very similar with a an OS called Edubuntu
In many cases, Reglue pays for connections too...just an FYI.
Just because it doesn't work for you in your situation doesn't mean it doesn't work for Ken where he is. That's an ignorant view of things.
Insert_Ending_Here
I do not think the internet is the answer to young children. It is used only to shout "yolo" on network sites, post naked selfies and hashtags and whatsapp messages and [pick your deity] knows what. Is this is an advantage to a child? The amount of information bashing on a child's brain is so massive that it can no longer make the distinction between relevant information and nonsense. Parents of children that do not have a computer and/or internet are usually not capable of teaching their child to make this distinction. You may call me old fashioned, but school going children would have a bigger advantage learning their native language properly. In my country, people write job application letters with dozens of language errors, because they literally do not know any better, because that was all they needed to communicate with others over the internet. Next they are surprised and threaten the potential employer when explained that that is not the way to go. The conventional library is the way to go.
In the USA you can get a low-end tablet for under $60 easy. In many urban areas you can get 768Kbps internet for under $20/month. If your carrier allows previous-generation modems (some don't) you can get a used modem dirt cheap.
If Mom or Dad has a smart phone that acts like a hotspot you don't even need a separate internet - just make sure the kids don't use up all of your gigabytes (most low-end cell data plans in America are metered or they throttle to "2G" speed after a certan amount of usage each month).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
By them violins and they can all work for an orchestra.
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
Chromebooks are $200 new. Figure in used and people who can not afford one are in more urgent need of assistance in other areas of their lives. Once you have one, there are plenty of online tools for education, even coding.
Internet connections are a biggie. If anyone in the family has a cell plan, tethering would be an option. It would be a huge help if wireless providers donated access, even to a very limited plan with low speed and only selected educational sites.
I am sorry but i don't agree.
Internet is actually _very_ distracting. I belong to the pre-internet generation. Back when i was 12 the only computers that were around were MSXes, Commodores, Ataris, TRSes, Apples and some very expensive IBM compatibles which were way too expensive for most of us anyways.
While my resources were VERY limited i learned a lot spending hours over hours on my MSX, reading and re-reading the few books i had but most of all "exploring" by trial and error. Internet was unknown to me, and so did BBSes too (the only thing i really miss and i only wish i could have experienced).
For every other kind of information that was not related to computers i could rely on the local public library, on the books at my school, on a couple of encyclopedias that i had access to, on my parents, on my friends (adult and not) and on teachers.
Sometimes i look at the kids i know today... and i see them wasting their time on facebook, youtube, 4chan... and sometimes i wonder... what if i had Internet access back in my youth? I would have probably wasted my time too. Because, lets be honest... Internet is a hell fun. Forums are fun, youtube is fun, the kitties on the internet are cute and kawaii, facebook is... ok... facebook is just scary... so instead than studying, exploring, experimenting i would have probably learned nothing beside how to waste time with perfectly unknown strangers who spend their lives trolling online and today i would probably know 1/4 of what i do and what i need in my job (i am a software developer).
Please note that i am not saying that Internet is bad for children. It isn't. It is actually very useful... what i am saying is that it is extremely distracting and that most activities online are not educative at all and also that there are lots of other resources "out there" (yes, outside of the bedroom) and that kids probably are better off playing, experimenting with their peers, riding their bikes before they become too old to find that fun and the outside world amusing or left alone with an internet-less computer with a couple of good books about programming and maybe a couple of informative DVD-Roms.
So no, i don't agree that "give them a computer and it's like giving a starving man a tin of beans - but no tin opener", it was not true for me back in the 80es/90es, it is not true for a child today. Internet is a nice addition and if not abused it can become a great educative and fun tool... but is not vital for learning.
Also... a computer without internet access is still better than no computer at all.
Computer hardware manufacturing is probably one of the most expensive things, environmentally speaking, in the world.
Reusing a PC, even if it uses 2000% more energy, and requires transportation across the world, is still a net benefit to our globe.
We need more of this, and less new hardware.