shoestring pc
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notes from the MACSA WORKSHOP
Building a Computer Lab on a Shoestring Budget

Note: this is the story of my school, Elmira Christian Academy (ECA) as presented as part of the workshop "Computer Lab on a Shoestring Budget" at the 2006 MACSA Convention in Lancaster.  Along with our story are some thoughts and suggestions for anyone trying to build a lab at minimal cost.  My prayer is that the information on this page and the rest of this website is of help to others of like mind.  If it helps, I would appreciate an letting me know.  Thanks!

History of ECA lab

When i arrived in 2000: Where we went in 2001: Where we are now: Some of the main expenses (in time and money) of building and running a computer lab:
How we got there:

     It was obvious that we needed more computers to teach the upcoming classes.... some were pretty large (the top graduating class since I've been there was 14, and we've had up to 23). We could not afford to dedicate another room or another teacher. However, we had some things going for us already:     So...we decided to put a dozen computers in one half of the room and 20 desks (!) in the other side, plus a huge teacher desk. All the screens face toward the teacher desk and stand so constant supervision is possible while teaching or working at desk.
Wow—can i remember all this? I'll try – we let it be known that we needed old computers. We had three decent ones (for 2001) at school, plus some grant money to buy one or two. There were some older ones around and people donated some. We accepted everything—this both encourages gifts and avoids offending people. Besides, even if the computer was old or broken, we could still cannibalize it to fix the others. Thankfully, the pastor's son works as the IT guy at a state-run hospital and was able to give us4 or 5 fully-licensed Gate Pentium-133's they were throwing away. Yes, we still use some of them, mostly in other parts of the school. As long as we use the proper software, they work well—we just can't get them working as a part of the school LAN, but they still surf the web, do word processing, print, edit images, etc.

    As it turns out, I had some major assets---three of them were named Ryan, Brett, and Greg!  Ryan in particular was both knowledgeable and wanting to help; he recommended a friend of his dad's who came over and networked the whole thing for a song and gave lots of helpful advice. We spent a little money on getting identical network cards. We talked about a server-based network vs. a peer-to-peer (workgroup). We went with P2P simply because of expense. I think we would be better served by a server ;-) , but someone would have had to donate that.

    Of course, first we had to set up the room! We settled on two eight-foot tables and one five-foot; these together held 8 computers plus a few peripherals (printers, scanners). For the other four computers we took old typing desks and took off part of the desktop – the old Gateways fit PERFECTLY, and that gave us an aisle between the computer table and the desks. These were all on hand; we couldn't afford to buy much, and we needed to save money for the things we HAD to buy. We used mostly folding chairs we had on hand. We should have lowered the height of the tables about 2 1/2”, but never quite got around to that...
Since we couldn't afford a fancy projection system at the time, the next year we bought a 27-inch TV on sale at Sears and a video card for the teacher's pc. Then we mounted the TV so all the students could see it. A piece of “Formica”-type wallboard (about $15) made a great whiteboard and (now) serves as a great projection screen as well.

    Watching the weekly ads became a part of life! Staples has a store nearby and they are very friendly to schools with their “Teacher Rewards” programs and tons of rebates. Watch for freebies! Many times we bought an item and got a rebate on the entire purchase price...for instance, CDs, programs, peripherals, and school supplies.   We STILL earned Teacher Rewards...and used the money for more items!

    We looked for internet cable and a computer store redirected us to THEIR supplier (!) where we were able to purchase a 1000-ft. spool of CAT-5 cable for $100. My daughter Ruth and i spent many HOT summer days with our heads in the ceiling of the third floor of our school, stringing cable...Ryan showed me how to attach the connectors. I did most of them right, anyway...

    Of course, these computers were a mix of Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 98se. You really can make up a nice lab with all Win98se machines, but there ARE other ways. More on that later! During this same summer someone showed me how to put up a website, so this was started as well.
Then we needed software! Two key pieces were a free typing program and Sun's StarOffice 5, a giveaway to schools that had word processing, graphics/photo editing, web design, spreadsheets, databases, powerpoint, and more all rolled into one. (It's still available as either StarOffice 8 [a commercial product but free to schools] or as the open-source OpenOffice program.)

    Finally, entering our sixth year, all our computer students have dual-boot machines with Windows XP and Mepis Linux.  We are up to twelve machines with one left to upgrade, a mini-lab (Win98 machines) is going up in the library, and the secretary took it upon herself to begin a typing lab -- utilizing our oldest Pentium-1 and -2 units.  Wow!!  Thank You, Jesus!

Click for slide show from workshop >
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