Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Donating old computers?

Donating old computers?

Published by Wesley Fryer in edtech on October 13th, 2006

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What should school districts or businesses do with older computers they are surplusing and want to donate to worthy, non-profit causes?

Gifts In Kind is one organization that invites donations like this. Does anyone know of others?

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3 Comments »

http://ideasandthoughts.org Dean Shareski

Wes,
Our school division gives away computers to students. As soon as they upgrade, students can apply for the computers. We’ve been doing this for about the past 8 years.
http://www.learningismessy.com/blog Brian Crosby

My school district was all set, about 2 years ago, to start giving computers away to families from “at risk” schools and even possibly get them online and set-up an online mentoring program. Alas someone brought in a “security expert” that scared administrators and the school district lawyer by showing them that no matter how they scrubbed the hard drive he could pull info off the hard drive – so plausibly someone could maybe under certain conditions get student info off these old teacher computers – I believe the district ended paying to have them commercially disposed – sad because we are talking about hundreds of computers.
http://www.randomconnections.com Tom Taylor

Our county has worked out an arrangement with our local Lions Club. They take our surplus computers, reimage and refurbish the machines, then provide them to “at risk” families.

It is a shame someone scared your folks about old data, Brian. I may be naive, I think the likelihood of this happening is very low, and the benefits to the students outweight the risks.

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