New computers out of Ark

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Computer cast-offs from the knowledge economy are being recycled at an Auckland warehouse to boost the brain power of our future e-citizens.

The Ark, a non-profit recycling and educational company, is lining up 50 Auckland schools to receive free computers and will soon start refurbishing 2000 surplus Government machines for regional development on the East Coast.

Just as its namesake was said to have saved Noah and his menagerie from the biblical flood, The Ark aims to help young New Zealanders survive a tidal-wave of knowledge crashing over them.

An initial batch of 1000 Government computers is already in storage at its cavernous Mt Wellington warehouse while it helps the Education Ministry to design networks and servers needed to get the machines into every school from Wairoa to East Cape.

Several schools will be wired up in the next few weeks as pioneers of the scheme, while community groups and marae will also receive computers in the first of the Economic Development Ministry's promised regional development packages.

The high-tech stockpile includes Work and Income machines that became obsolete two years ago with the merger of Income Support and the Employment Service.

Recycling donated computers has been The Ark's stock-in-trade for six years, with the aim of putting as many as possible into schools at less than one-third the cost of new machines.

"We are trying to get kids' hands on keyboards as affordably as possible," says managing director Bob Lye. "Kids can't type any better on new gear."

He is disappointed that schools spent much of a $25 million Government information technology development budget last year on buying new equipment, when he says it would have been better invested in training teachers how to use cheaper computers.

Many of The Ark's computers are donated by industry, including 200 from Mercury Energy's split into the electricity retailing operation of the same name and lines company Vector, but others are bought as job lots.

The Ark sees itself as a clearing-house for the knowledge society, inviting firms not simply to give surplus computers to schools, but to use it as a sponsorship broker.

"If companies just dump computers in schools they are of no use," says Mr Lye. "They have to be restored to workable condition, standardised and have curriculum software installed."

Mr Lye, a "techie from way back," has 10 staff refurbishing what they can, cannibalising the rest for parts, and rendering what is left into four to eight tonnes a week of plastic, glass and metals for supply to other recycling companies.

"We are a zero-waste company," he says. "About the only things that go into the landfill from here are our lunch wrappers - zero waste and the knowledge economy work in together."

The former Vector computers are high-quality Pentium 200s, and 50 schools in Auckland's poorer areas will gain four each.

One is Panmure Bridge Primary, which has already gained eight on-site computers. It has also installed 25 machines in pupils' homes under a scheme funded by the 20:20 Trust and Education Ministry.

Herald Online feature: The jobs challenge

We invite your responses to a series of questions such as: what key policies would make it easier for unemployed people to move into and generate jobs?