Our Recycling Digital Learning Project

by David Kerr in Thurso, Scotland, United Kingdom

Our Recycling Digital Learning Project

Total raised £485

raised so far

9

supporters

We are a small Community Interest Company in Caithness, who are trying to help put an end to digital device exclusion and laptop poverty.

by David Kerr in Thurso, Scotland, United Kingdom

At Budding Engineers our main focus is to inspire STEAM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) into education. 

For the last few weeks, whilst the country has been under lockdown, we have been receiving donated devices from across Scotland. We take these devices then refurbish them and install educational applications on them. Then we donate them to families and young adults living in the North of Scotland who cannot afford their own device, allowing them to engage in each of their school’s digital online learning programme. 

Another part of our criteria for qualifying for a donated laptop/desktop is that the person using it can benefit from using several of the educational learning applications that we put on the equipment. All the learning applications we include have a reference to STEAM in some way.

We also ask that people can provide feedback and how the device has benefited them.

There are a number of families across the whole of Scotland that are unable to purchase electronic devices (i.e. laptops, iPads, tablets, etc.) and are instead having to rely on their mobile phones for online learning. Some of these families may have potentially borrowed a device from their school allowing them to get online during this difficult time due to the Coronavirus.

Budding Engineers Community Interest Company are looking to crowdfund monies to allow us to purchase spare parts for the donated equipment i.e. replacement batteries, RAM (memory modules), power packs and SSD hard drives.

Quite often a donated device that has the original battery will not hold a charge or charge evenly making this unit dependant on being plugged in all the time. 

A replacement battery solves this issue. Increasing the amount of memory and installing an SSD drive will improve the performance of the device and is also likely to increase the lifespan of the older equipment. Even though we sanitise the hard drive, prior to refurbishing the device, this also ensures that any donated unit has a completely clean Hard Drive satisfying any Data Protection regulations.


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