Idea: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and Replace, Refuse and Retire)

Green Web Hosting! This site hosted by DreamHost.Let's be frank. Schools aren't like normal businesses that get to replace their equipment every two years. Officially computers last two years in the outside world, officially they last for five years in a school (to some jurisdictions anyway). This of course makes no sense, but lets governments meet their public targets of five students per computer, even if that computer is running Windows 95. And a Windows 95 computer costs a lot more to run than a new one, with all of the extra time you'll need to put in to make it work.

 

There's a few choices for schools to manage this situation:

  • Match computers to your needs. Be brave and analyze your current computer stock, look at what you really need (that is, what is used for powerful learning), what you don't need (the stuff that is used for teacher comfort, but is not used for powerful learning). Gone are the days when simply having computers were enough. We're an intelligent enough profession to now know that computers do some things well, and some things awfully. With the involvement of your whole school community, decide which curriculum or activity areas that you are going to prioritize for the purchase of computers.
  • Help teachers change the way they teach. Obviously if teachers believe that 'one size fits all' and every child should be doing everything the same, at the same time, then they will obviously want one computer per student. If they realize that students learn in different ways, with different tools, they'll be more than happy to replay those 5 standard issue boring computers with 1 high powered multimedia machine, 1 good laptop, and three low-end workstations that can surf the web and type. Users won't try to do things on computers that are too slow or too fast, and you'll save money on software. If you go for this approach, be strict to your rules. Everyone gets the same, old computers leave the school premises immediately and don't hang around.
  • I also think it is imperative for a school's technology budget to put aside 5% for experimentation and innovation. Maybe a new generic Chinese laptop will be great, maybe it will be awful. But you'll never know unless you try. Most of the time you will be pleasantly surprised, and you will feel much more confident about making a big future purchase if you have already tested a single product beforehand. I have to admit, just about every 'branded' thumbdrive I have bought has turned out to be junk. Stupidly, I bought 20 "sony" 4GB models for everyone on the floor. I just believed the name, and didn't mind spending 200% more than a generic brand, as I just assumed the expensive model would be more reliable. Well, every single product was a dud. We were all fools - thinking that an expensive branded product would would - so we just copied our presentations and files onto the device, and set off for our meetings, four hours away. And every single time the data became corrupted beyond recognition. For everyone, for every use, for every computer, for every way of inserting/ejecting the device. From then on, the generic product at 10% of the cost has worked wonders. Generic products need to work to get sales, not just rely on brand names. I like generic.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. I think this is the answer for the next couple of years. It introduces a series of risks, will demand schools rethink their current processes, and will require a little bit of knowledge of computers and techy things. I'll explain these concepts in a little bit more detail.

Reduce: Your goal is to reduce the use of your school's IT equipment, reduce the cost, reduce support needed. Here's a few suggestions:

  • The first thing you need to do is work out how much a computer costs to run in your school. Usually a new computer will cost 1.5x the retail cost for computer. So if you buy a computer for $1,000, its actual cost will be $2,500 spread over three years. This includes maintenance, repairs, installations, replacement parts etc. Be realistic about the real cost of computers. Then you can budget properly, or better still, identify which parts of the budget you can reduce. For example, replacement of peripherals, the cost of stolen or broken mice, reduction of moving parts accessible to students (eg: CD/DVD drives).
  • The easiest way is to cut this cost dramatically is let students use their own technology in school. Most students will have a cell phone with a camera, voice recorder, inbuilt memory, bluetooth/infrared communication, Adobe Reader and maybe some basic office-type programs. More and more students are getting their own small laptop / EeePC, and many of course may have computers at home. The priorities for your school would be to (a) provide computers for those students who do not have any (eg: lunchtime access, borrowing laptops, use of after-school supervised access), and (b) provide ways for students to transport their work to/from school. This is a challenge as it introduces viruses, possible hacks into your school system, breaches of student privacy and of course a way to manage where all of these files will go, and who will manage them. I tend to like Blue tooth communication for sending/receiving files, as communication is highly secure, easily to manage and will only transport specific files that are chosen to send, and chosen to receive. As soon as you start thinking about this concept, companies will come out of the woodwork promising they can make a great bit of technology to make all of this happen. Forget about it. You're not called a school because you develop new software - you are called a school because your first priority is education. Keep the technology simple.
  • Help your students buy their own equipment. Through fund-raising, sourcing cheap products at bulk discount rates, or through school rebates for family purchases, a school can dramatically increase their access to equipment with a substantially reduced cost. Your government might support rebates for the purchase of laptops for students, or you can let parents know they can easily add a laptop to their salary sacrificing. You could even set up a scheme where parents get a 10% rebate from the school, if the school has secured a good bargain on the promise of a bulk purchase.
  • Buy a mix of general and specific equipment for specific tasks. It's heartbreaking to see a $2,500 multimedia computer being used day after day for work processing. Just buy a few of them, and students can organize how they access these if they really do need that level of computing power. It's heartbreaking seeing a laptop be used as a desktop. Why bother with the expense, security risks and high maintenance with a laptop, if it always stays in the same spot? It's like buying a 4WD and never getting off-road. It might look good, but it's expensive luxury. And most school's can't afford expensive luxuries.
  • Stop chasing stupid goals. One computer per five students is an international goal. You'll get respect if you meet it, but you'll get more respect if you can propose more intelligent model.
  • Reduce technical support by keeping the peripherals away from your computer - or connect them to a network instead. Printers, scanners, DVD burners and camera-plug in cables can be stored in a shared area, away from where the computers are actually used. This way there will be less ongoing playing with the equipment, and it will be easier to monitor its use (remember, if students like what they are doing with the technology and enjoy the curriculum, they will be watching for breakages/theft just as closely as you).
  • Put more information on your website. Reduce the amount of information students need to take home, the amount of CDs and DVDs that need to be burnt, the number of files that need to be copied onto thumbdrives. You can store this information on a lot of other sites available with password protection.
  • Automate as many tasks as you can, reducing the amount of time you need to manage, use or track your equipment. If there is any procedure that is repeated often, it can be automated. Emails can be sent out, and information collated when they come back. An investment in a programmer to automate a process can dramatically reduce the time needed to perform a function, and of course automation cuts down on data entry errors, which can create a horrendous domino effect contaminating your other data. Vista's automation tools are reasonably easy to use, but most applications like MS Word have built in automations (called Macros) and there are some brilliant commercial software packaged that will automate very complex tasks. When I was a wedding photographer, I ran all of my 3000 photos from a shoot through an automation 'action' I wrote in PhotoShop. It took about 3 hours to run, and it did 98% of the work I would need to do otherwise.
  • Batteries are your new 'Enemy #1'. Batteries are:
    • expensive
    • hard to manage - How do you know how many to buy? If Year 4C really needs 20 x AA batteries every week?
    • bad for the environment
    • easy to steal
    • difficult to know when they are actually low or the low performance is the fault of the appliance
    • not going to last when 30 students are intensively using an appliance for a 6 hours a day
    • have variable performance, which is just annoying - sometimes they work well, sometimes they slow down then speed back up, sometimes they just die slowly, sometimes quickly and at the worst times
    • not the only choice you have
    • You can buy rechargeable batteries, but these share the same difficulties above, and have the added risk of exploding for no particular reason when being charged (I had some very good brand-name batteries explode in their own recharger once).
    • And my major gripe - they fail when you need them most. This week, I've been pounding away at my calculator working out costs for products, and my battery died. Later that day I was taking a friend to an upmarket shopping mall, where my LR44 cost me $7.50. And this is a product I sell from $0.33 each and from $0.10 each in bulk. And then I found the spares I had at home, that I bought from my local $2 shop at 2 for $2. There isn't much of an alternative with button batteries - you pretty much have to buy them. But better products powered by AA and AAA batteries should come with an AC adaptor.
For reference, see TS-SKU-60
and TS-SKU-3032

 

  • The better option is to buy products with either inbuilt, inaccessible rechargeable batteries, or products that will accept an AC electricity adaptor. Electrical adaptors are cheap and produce a consistently strong current. You'll also be supervised by how many you have accumulated with all of the devices or Christmas lights you have purchased over a few years. Here's one of my old Nokia phone chargers, that I can't use anymore because of new phone connections. It was destined for the garbage, but now I have put to good use, operating at least 4 battery run appliances. So now I don't need any batteries, and I just need one cable.
  • When I worked in an office, I always had a Nokia charger plugged in and the loose end just hanging off my desk (I hid the actual transformer under my desk so it couldn't be stolen). Every day people plugged things into it and thanked me for it.

 

Reuse: Your goal is to get the maximum outcomes from your existing investment, without putting in more resources than the benefits you get out of your equipment. When your inputs are more then the outputs, it's time to write off the investment.

  • Have a good look at what equipment is compatible. You might be surprised about how many things you have that will already plug into each other. This is true especially with electrical cables and transformers. Don't stress if you buy an item with an electrical plug from US or China. You probably have spares galore.
  • Get adaptors - for $2, you can get things to plug into other things. If you have an old printer that has zero maintenance issues, but comes with a strange connection, just buy a cheap converter. If you ask a retailer, they will tell you its impossible to use old equipment, and that you'll just need to buy more. But this isn't always true. As long as you know that the voltage of a system isn't open to negotiation, you'll be fine.
  • Lock the device into a simplified application . If a computer just doesn't want to connect to the internet, make it a kiosk computer for parents to browse school documents. If your old PDA is just awful, lock it into being a keyboard for a special needs child with limited fine motor skills.
  • Briefly explore upgrading. Upgrading is a bit of a trap. It's like putting a Porsche suspension system on my Daewoo. It's not worth it, it's not going to be compatible, and it will impact on some other part, like making my power steering not work. The biggest cost with upgrading is labor. 'Plug and Play' is really 'Plug and Diagnose'. Just try to put more than 4GM RAM into your new computer. Yes, it is cheap, but you'll need a PhD in computing to get it recognized. Upgrading is a trap. Yes, you can replace one broken part in a 3 year old machine, but the rest of the machine is still old, and its other 2432 components are due to wear out soon. And yes, buying new.old parts that are still compatible with three year old technology costs a fortune.
  • Emulate - If you have software that you like from another computer system, or software that contains a lot of school information, consider emulating another computer on one of your school's computers. Emulating is mostly a free process, and is based on the presumption that all computers are made of the same thing and work the same way. So you'll find it's easy to Emulate Windows 95 on your new machine, an old 1980's atari, or even a Commodore 64. Some specialized technology will only work on specific equipment, so don't throw away a valuable investment until you have tried all of the possibilities.

 


My heat sealer! It goes through batteries because it creates heat, so an adaptor is a perfect solution to keep it running at peak periods.

My fuzz remover! This one actually works really well, and as it involves moving parts and friction, it goes through batteries quickly also. But the adaptor always gives me great performance.

My LED light. I have started putting a light next to my keyboard now, as I am typing for long periods, and the natural light from the window and the low-wattage room light isn't enough. So my LED is with me all the time now, and I don't have to strain my eyes shifting from a bright screen to a dark black keyboard.

I purchased this little adaptor from Nokia to convert the size of the outlet (because I think I lost one of my new chargers or left it somewhere one day at work). Works like a charm.

So now it can also charge new phones.

And operate products that come with a smaller plug.

 

Recycle: While considering the environment, get rid of old stock with zero tolerance for fond memories, and distance yourself from the computers

  • Ban the use of screwdrivers and fire anyone with even a slight interest in opening a computer case. No, no, no. Seriously, it's dangerous, you probably don't know what you're doing, you can destroy data elsewhere in the school, or even start a fire.
  • Find out how to delete data from the computer . Never give a computer out until you have formatted it. You will need special software, easily found on Goggle. You'll need to repeat this process about 5 times to be sure.
  • Form a loose partnership with a community organization to accept your old equipment. Don't ask for money. Just get it picked up, on the condition that it won't have any traces that it came from you, and that you won't be contacted by any customer for support.
  • Absolutely no exceptions. If you have a system, where you know which computes will be replaced when, teachers can base their curriculum on the cycle of replacements. If you extend the times between replacements, this can upset your whole system

Replace: No equipment lasts forever. A smart leader will know when to put effort into keeping equipment, and when to make it disappear. Nothing operates at a zero cost. Work out how much your stuff costs.

  • Old stuff usually costs more to keep running than new stuff. Old stuff might be 'free' but costs an hour a week of technical support to keep it going. Over three years, a high-end printer that your school already owns might cost an additional $4,800 (if technical support costs $40 an hour). A new printer, designed to work this millennium, with a 2 year warranty, might cost $2000 to buy, but only need 1 year paid-for technical support, calculated the same way comes out at $1,600. So by buying new stock, you can save yourself $1,200 over three years, and have access to the best technology around.
  • Make your sales representatives work for you. You can choose to keep an eye on prices at local shops, but its easier to form a good relationship with a supplier, and then make them do all of the work. Ask them for the best products, the best specials etc. It saves you time. And they will know the best products for you. The $19 ink-jet printer might look good, but the ink replacements will be too high (unless you hack the system to accept third party ink, which you can't do in a school) and the printing interface /software will be crap. Your supplier will know a $200 B&W laser printer will be a better investment for each classroom set, and a $10,000 colour laser printer, stored in the office and rented out to community groups, will be a better investment.
  • Get rid of old stuff through a third party. Donating computers to families and community groups is fraught with incredible risks and liabilities. The equipment must have its electrical's tested, someone else can deal with the complexities of transferring the licence for the operating system, and someone else can answer all of the questions about why the purple keyboard plug won't fit into the yellow mouse plug, and maybe should it go in the purple plug? But now it can't because the pins are bent. There are usually community groups that specialize in this process. Your donated computer might end up costing $200 for your poor families to buy, but that's actually cheap, considering how much work will go into getting the computer ready, taking ownership for the licensing and providing a warranty, then supporting it.

Refuse: There's no harm declining a local organization who want to donate their 15 year old computers to your school. "Thanks, but no thanks." Maybe put them onto your third party reseller. Or send them to a school you don't like. Yes, it might look like a computer, but its like fruit that's too old and has gone bad, but you don't know until you bite into it.

Retire: People do have emotional attachments to some computers. They can either be real (something I don't understand) or disguise another issue (the lab of 30 old machines, that the soon-to-be-retired teacher uses to teach 'computer classes'). Have a public celebration about everything the old technology has done, make a speech, take photos, then order in a garbage truck to pick it up. This happened once at a school I taught at. A company dropped off a big skip, the size of a shipping crate. Us, as teachers, didn't just enjoy throwing our old computers in there, we enjoyed it a bit too much, and sent off for hammers and crowbars we could use to inflict as much pain on the computers as they gave us. We knew a new shipment was coming (with not as many computers, but ones that would at least work), and most of us were ecstatic to see that the school made a tough decision, based on teacher feedback regarding the old rubbish.

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