BUSINESS NEWS UPDATE
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ST. LOUIS Mo., October 2, 2002 (Business News Update) -- Using a power drill to put some holes in a sheet of plywood isn't an action often associated with computers but it was a thrilling experience for the seventh grade girls of the Marian Middle School computer club.
The girls mounted a motherboard and power source on the plywood, making a rudimentary test board they'll use to separate working computer parts from a pile of cases, memory chips, processors and components donated to their club last year by Business News Update readers and members of the St. Louis Web Developers Organization. When donated, most of the pieces came in the form of old but working computers.
Computer guts
Last year, while sixth graders, the girls studied the
parts that make up a computer and learned how they interacted. Most of these
girls don't have computers at home, but all are being exposed to them as part of
their regular classes.
Marian Middle School has about 40 sixth through eighth grade students. It focuses on "girls at risk," mostly from low-income families, providing them with a structured education geared to push them into one of the St. Louis area private high schools. Classes are small and attention is lavish at Marian.
With the help of its readers and WebDev members, Business News Update started and continues to run the computer club. The goal of the club isn't so much to teach the girls useful skills, as it is to de-mystify the machines in their eyes and to show them that technology can be a part of their life.
Discussion often revolves around how fashion designers, veterinarians and musical artists use computers in their work. For seventh grade girls those are the professions of choice, but other careers discussed include physician, underwater welder, dancer, teacher and video game tester.
Destructive exploration
After the test boards are constructed the
girls will begin sorting through the pile of computer junk in search of gems.
Some of the donated computers, monitors and peripherals work - some can be made
to work -- and the rest will be torn apart to see what's inside. Destructive
exploration is a big part of the class.
At the end of the semester the seventh graders will be replaced by a new
batch of sixth graders. They'll destroy their share of old computers too. They
might not all learn how to put a pile of components back together, but they will
come away knowing that they could if they wanted to.
