Bridging the Digital Divide With Refurbished Computers
Our buddy Eric Batchelder in Swiss Alp had one stored in a shed, locked away so his buffalo couldn’t get to it. Marsha Pyle had two in her closet. Mike Koeth, a civic-minded computer repair guy in Weimar, had a garage full of dusty Dells and orphaned HPs guarded by swarms of mud daubers.
Everywhere we looked, we found them – old, unused computers that nobody wanted and nobody was willing to throw away. They were gunked up with malware or bypassed by the umpteenth version of Windows. The owners thought they were worthless.
But we had discovered they were pure gold.
The digital divide in Fayette County isn’t just about a lack of broadband. There is also a hardware divide. “Not all kids have computers,” read the headline from a recent survey. https://theconversation.com/not-all-kids-have-computersand-theyre-being-left-behindwith-schools-closed-by-the-coronavirus-137359.
Not all adults have computers either. And in these days of stay-at-home work and Zoom schoolrooms, to be without hardware is a special kind of quarantine.
Over the last month, a small group of volunteers has taken these neglected machines, stored under shoes and hidden from bison, refurbished them and given them away. Now adults who, until the coronavirus, were studying English four nights a week at the Randolph Center in La Grange are continuing their learning on Zoom. And their kids are connecting with their teachers.
It was simple. But first you need a Bill Rose.
Bill is a retired engineer type who lives in Rek Hill, a suburb of Fayetteville. Bill told how he liked to get old computers, wipe their disks clean and then load them with Linux, the free operating system. In no time and at no cost, he said, these old machines could do anything.
We asked Bill if he had a machine we could give to Janet Moreno. Janet was a loyal English student, driving 40 miles roundtrip four nights a week to work on her English in La Grange. After the schools closed, she also had three children at home and a husband taking online college courses at night. Bill Rose said he would get an old Toshiba laptop ready.
The next week, we drove the computer to the Whataburger in Schulenburg where Janet works. We gave her the machine, she hugged it and said, “This is my first computer.”
That night, Janet was on Zoom working on her English. Later, her oldest child was zooming for the first time with his teacher.
It worked.
Then we got serious. We started asking people for computers and, sure enough, they had them. Jennifer McCoskey at the Girls and Boys Club in Weimar and Schulenburg had a half dozen. Jack and Martha Plunkett, who have a weekend place just outside La Grange, brought seven from their business in Houston. Then Mike Koeth, who runs CompuCleanser in Weimar, opened his garage door and loaded out a small army of machines.
Bill Rose needed help programming Linux on the old computers. Getting help in Fayette County is easy. You just have to ask. Within a day or two Nicolas England, a math and computer science student at Texas A&M, and Landon Von Minden, an 8th grader at La Grange Junior High, were tackling more donated computers. A few days later, high school senior Sean Green volunteered. Now Tara Bennett, the crackerjack computer teacher at La Grange High School, is hunting down old computers at the school.
We’ll soon have 20 computers out, mostly given to adult English language learners. But that’s just the beginning. Nicolas England is working on a computer room at the Randolph Center that can be used by kids coming to summer camp. A family in Schulenburg needs a computer for telehealth checkups. There are plenty of opportunities.
On a recent Sunday afternoon we met Sonia Gomez in La Grange. Misti Von Minden drove her son Landon in from Nechanitz with the computer he had rehabbed. Landon showed Sonia, her husband Urbano and daughter Emily how to turn on the HP laptop, where to link it to WiFi, how to find Zoom and other features.
Sonia said she was going to use the machine to work on her GED and English. Emily needs it for school. And Sonia’s son will be able to log in to his college classes. “We’ve wanted a computer,” Sonia said, “but they are so expensive.”
Bill Rose insists that when each refurbished machine boots up, the first thing that appears is the new owner’s name – Janet Moreno, Arcenia Cuellar, Jose Lopez, Marina Torres. Bill thinks it’s important that people see that these machines are meant for them.
When Landon had finished his explanation, Sonia turned to us and asked when she needed to return the silver HP. Never, we all chimed in. It’s yours.
(If you can help this “computers for all” effort, write us at bbish@protonmail.com or call 979-338-9233.)