Short takes 

This computer program ROCKS

Five years ago, Richard Noblett set out to make a small dent in the digital divide between the affluent and disadvantaged students at Olive Middle School in the Baldwin Park Unified School District. “I saw that affluent students tended to have more access to computers than students who were less well off,” says Noblett, a math teacher who is also a certified computer technician. “ They did better in school because they had more resources.”

Noblett, a native of England who was the first in his family to attend college, was especially sensitive to the gap between the haves and have-nots. He thought computer literacy could provide a route to academic success for students who had not traditionally done well in school.

“I believe that access to technology truly made the difference in my life,” he says.

He started small, getting permission from his principal to teach an elective computer repair class. “The kids loved it,“ he says. Next he called local businesses and universities, asking for technology cast-offs. Eventually, he found himself surrounded by hundreds of donated computers and 28 students who loved taking them apart and rebuilding them.

Since then, enrollment and course offerings in Baldwin Park’s Recycling Old Computers for Kids, or ROCK, have skyrocketed. A total of 650 students have taken classes in computer rehab and repair, programming, Web design and Claymation.

Olive Middle School now offers four computer repair courses and has a full-time computer tech on staff. Students who were earning mediocre grades got more involved in school. At least one has returned to Olive to work in the classroom after graduating from high school.

In the course of connecting middle-school students to the online world, the program has become a major community resource providing free computer support and donating 1,700 computers – refurbished and rebuilt by students – to local families. This year ROCK also sent 30 computers to Africa.

ROCK students and staff have helped establish six computer labs in district schools and elsewhere in Southern California, providing donated furniture, computers, software and hardware and getting systems up and running. 

With the help of Qualified Zone Academy Bond financing, Olive Middle School built a $1 million computer repair facility, making it the only middle school in the nation to have such capacity. The program has partnerships with Intel and Compaq Computers to employ students as interns and full-time employees after they graduate from high school.

For some students, computer repair is critical. “Our mission five years ago when we started this was to give anyone who wanted it a computer for free,” Noblett says. “Now it’s to give them a computer or fix the computer they already have.”

“More and more families have computers now,” says Noblett, who is now the principal at Olive Middle School. “But problems arise when computers break; a retailer may charge $100 just to look at your machine. Our students can troubleshoot, diagnose and repair computers.”

CSBA awarded the ROCK program a Golden Bell Award in 2005.

What’s especially inspiring about ROCK, says Baldwin Park Assistant Superintendent Lynne Kennedy, is how the program is helping students find their calling. “Students who were not enthusiastic about school are now inspired,” she says. “I believe the program helps students look beyond basic computing to thinking about having careers in this field. Students are excited about learning and about contributing to the community.”