Volunteers bring computer education to migrant schools first

The project’s future

When Greenboard first went to Wende School, it began training four teachers to use its free curriculum. Today, two of those teachers remain: one is the headmaster.

Teacher loss is always a problem at migrant schools, where many earn less than 1,000 yuan per month.

For now, the lab is more than any of them had ever hoped for, Cui, the headmaster, says.

“I believe in these children. If they are given the same educational tools an opportunities that most children get, they can exceed their peers and score higher,” he says. “I hope one day, students at other migrant schools will have the same opportunity that mine have now.

That might be possible, but not for a while, Muller says.

While the group is visiting schools with LEAD volunteers every weekend, its current total curriculum is tied to Dexxon’s machine, which is decidedly not free.

“We’ve had requests from other migrant schools that already have some second-hand computers. We’d like to support every architecture so we can just githem some disks,” Lam says.

The group’s first goal is to make the curriculum work with every Loongson-based computer before expanding to the more common Intel-based computers found in most schools and homes, he says. ost of the information is already there, it will just take a dedicated volunteer to repackage it.

In the mean time, schools interested in following Greenboard’s lessons can download and install most of the programs on their own.

The current goal is to perfect its lessons and translate Greenboard to English, so schools in other countries will be more able to access it.

“That we can get this into primary schools, and that tere has been so much community support, tells me we are going in the right direction,” Lu Shouqun, chairman of the Chinese OSS (open source software) Promotion Union, says.

“But community projects like these need moreattention and volunteers so more students can have a chance to access these resources.”