Until recently, ICT was a closed book
to most people on Matakana Island, a small community off Tauranga. The veil of mystery is
now being lifted, thanks to a National Communities Trust grant of $7,000 and the arrival
of 13 CANZ recycled computers.
The computers have been
installed in the local school’s library and three classrooms, and the facilities are
available to the whole community.
The Trust money lay untouched
for some time, while the community debated how to get the best bang for relatively few
bucks. The grant was for both the school and the community library, which were on the same
site. The more they looked at it, the more they realised that $7,000 worth of new
computers couldn’t make much impact. The school already had four computers, but they
weren’t being used effectively.
Then the school received an
advertising flyer from CANZ recycler The Ark and began to consider the possibility of
buying a whole lot more computers for the same money. Enough to do the job properly for
everyone.
Ngaire Paki, principal of the
40-student school, says their big concerns were how good the recycled computers would be
and what The Ark would be like to deal with.
"I rang up a number of
schools which had bought CANZ equipment from The Ark, and they were just so happy with
both the computers and the service," says Ngaire.
The decision was taken to buy
twelve CANZ workstations plus a server/workstation, and hook them all together. The
computers arrived in August, pre-loaded with software and accompanied by a wiring diagram
and instructions. "It was very much plug and play," says Ngaire. "We
incorporated the existing computers into the new network and it’s all working
fabulously."
At this stage the software is
entirely Microsoft – the Office suite plus Internet applications.
The whole school is learning
together, with teachers doing their best to stay ahead of the students. Word is being used
in language classes and kids are already drawing graphs with Excel. PowerPoint is
particularly popular.
"They took to it like
ducks to water – especially when they learned how to include photos they took
themselves with our digital camera."
The community has just
started to use the computers in the library, after being introduced to them during the
school’s recent Calf Day. The kids developed a quiz for their parents with
PowerPoint, they sat down and did it together and it all went down a treat.
"A lot of our parents are nervous about
coming into the school, but these sorts of things make them feel much more
comfortable."
