Kamo High School students build computers for the community

Kamo High School student Judd Crabb loves his new computer.

It's much faster and bigger than his old Chromebook, and he doesn't have to worry about charging it.

But that's not what makes it special.

The computer is one of more than 30 which have been built by Year 11 students at the school as part of a scheme which is also benefiting the community.

"It works pretty good. It's fast, reliable and there's heaps of space. I've done heaps of school work on it," 16-year-old Crabb said.

Kamo High School student Judd Crabb says his new computer built by fellow students is much faster than his old one. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Technology teacher Mark Turton said the project started after he found statistics from the 2013 Census regarding the number of Northland families who were without an internet capable computer or device at home.

After a discussing this with his class, they decided they should do something to support the community.

"I found a storage of a huge number of decommissioned computers which would have just been pretty much turfed and probably cost a heck of a lot to take away to the dump," he said.

"So with the support of senior management and the class itself we came up with a proposal to give back to the community."

At an assembly Turton announced students would be building computers for the community and overnight there were 25 orders, mainly from senior students who wanted support to be able to continue to do school work at home.

For the past five weeks the students have been taking the outdated computers, stripping them down to their individual components, cleaning them up and ensuring they work properly.

"It's quite fun. Our hobby is to pull apart computer and it makes you really happy to know we can give away something to people who need them. Especially something that would have been thrown away and wasted," said Year 11 student Daniel Hick.

While Hick and another Year 11 student Tasman Keenan had built computers before, classmate Charlie Cassidy said it was the first time for him and he had learned a lot.

"It's good we're delivering them to some people around the community. It's a win-win pretty much - we get to make some computers and give it out to people, and we get to learn," Cassidy said.

Crabb said he was looking forward to doing more school work on the computer.