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.

Comments

Local recycling is the best way to go.

[TerryC101]

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.

Re:Local recycling is the best way to go.

[wierd_w]

I can't prove it, (and it is highly inflammatory to say), but I would hazard the following guess as to why:

Corporations have intellectual blinders on. They are far too focused on "Beating the other guys" (financially, economically, technologically, legally, and otherwise) that the very concept of enlightened self interest-- Helping others, to promote a better environment, which they also stand to profit from-- is not given proper attention.

Note, the company you work for only considered this charitable solution after it was discovered to be cheaper and with fewer regulatory hurdles than actual electronic waste disposal. (even though these devices will eventually get there, regardless. nothing lasts forever.) Ultimately, the allure of such initiatives at the corporate level has nothing to do whatsoever with improving the community, and everything to do with foisting a cost center onto somebody else. (Disposal fees for the ewaste now are the concern of the charities that repurpose the waste, and of the people who accept the repurposed waste, when those devices actually do catastrophically fail. Granted, this can be after many years of service-- however, they WILL eventually fail, and they WILL require proper disposal at that time. The people paying for the disposal will be the new owners. Not the company you work for.)

The concept of "enlightened self interest" is far too long term for modern corporate culture to even come close to comprehending-- It uses forces that mature over several decades, often at human-generation timescales. That's where the payoffs on recycling like this REALLY happen-- you increase availability of an essential resource, increasing the possible labor pool in 20 to 30 years, as a consequence of the increased availability of the raw equipment needed to foster competency and skill.

Corporations dont like to think this way. They want to think about how they can cheat the system to increase their profits THIS QUARTER; not how they will get competent workers in 20 years. For the latter, they tend to suckle the teat of modern 'free market capitalism' philosophies, and expect to just magically get what they need, without actually investing in the competencies they are going to need later on.

You see this rapaciously happening in the US-- Our BS with H1B visa abuses, massive over-use of foreign workforce, short-sighted erosion of regulatory laws, and so much more. All have the central theme though: Get the money, get it quick before anyone else can, crowd out everyone else-- the market will always provide, it will be OK.

In a sense, what you have done by revealing this to your employer is highly pathological, when taken in this context-- You have enabled them to circumvent a regulatory compliance directive aimed at ensuring proper disposal of their e-waste, by allowing them to redirect that waste flow into the public commons.

Having been discovered and exploited, I would forecast the following, in this order:

1) This will be suddenly become INSANELY popular. Other companies will follow suit.

2) There will be a glut of viable e-waste in the charity network, far outstripping demand. the real nature of e-waste as refuse will rear its head.

3) This glut of ewaste at the charity level will prompt a less savory secondary market, which appropriates these low cost assets and resells them abroad, or in other municipalities-- for a time.

4) regulators, (sadly, often captured by the companies they are supposed to be regulating) will step in, and impose new regulations prohibiting the disposal of ewaste in this fashion. This is because the e-waste is not being disposed of properly/disposal fees cannot be realistically charged to the new endpoint of the refuse chain. Supply to charities will dry up.

5) Ultimately, after an initial boom, there will be less overall availability of perfectly usable recycled electronics than before.

[obligatory: 6) profit]

There is an alternate pathway, of course, depending on how the regulatory agen

Opposite land

[cascadingstylesheet]

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.

Re:Opposite land

[gsslay]

Congratulations, you have just created a false dichotomy.

Having access to a computer does not prevent the reading of "actual" books, and not having access to a computer does not guarantee the reading of "actual" books.

Re:Opposite land

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears you do not know any pre-schoolers.

Everybody has a tablet and they watch silly videos on Youtube. If you deprive your children from that, they become outsiders.

School is not only about information, there is interaction with other people, too..

Re:Opposite land

[oodaloop]

Right. Because kids from a family too poor to afford a single computer will have tons of books to read. Good point.

It's the internet, not the computer that's needed

[petes_PoV]

A household that can't afford $100 for a used PC isn't likely to be one that's paying for an internet connection.

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.

No so sure about this

[damienl451]

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.

Re:Oh good, another one.

[flyneye]

Agreed, I've made note of how computers are used in both public and private schools. Academia=10% Fun and bullshit=90%. Putting a computer in an otherwise happy home, already dealing with money problems is more harm than good. Adding malware, computer addiction, inevitable hardware and software problems isn't promoting family values.

I understand that people want to do something for education. There are a load of things that CAN be done, from donating time to stumping to eliminate unions, to purchasing better text books, to spending time at home helping your own kid, and on and on and on.

It's better for schools than families

[rebelwarlock]

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?

Sigh.

[ledow]

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.

Re:I'll attempt it.

[Half-pint HAL]

Let's get TV out of the way - it's passive, dumbed-down, lowest common denominator entertainment.

Twilight, Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey...? The medium is NOT the message. Reading is not automatically less trashy than watching TV, or vice versa.

Re:Is 'Ken Starks' for real?

[AndyCater]

Ken's real - and is working hard in Texas as ever he was. Helios Project - affiliated with SPI - joined with another charity Reglue and they're still attempting to get computers to needy children and adults locally to them.

Re:Who does not have a computer in 2014?

[neiras]

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?

You have no idea how many students and families are thrilled to receive a 3-year-old desktop or laptop. I've seen it. I sometimes refurbish old systems for the local horribly-underfunded school district and they are thrilled to recieve them. They are still using machines I built them 5 years ago (from even older hardware) in places. I know, personal anecdote, but this can't be rare. Need is everywhere.

Also, groups like Free Geek exist.