Check Out Those Smiles: Photos from P.S.124 Laptop Upgrade

We posted a story back in October about P.S. 124 teacher, Paul Conrad, and his Donor’s Choose effort to raise $1,077.49 for student laptop upgrades at the school. The coolest part of this story was not so much that Mr. Conrad reached his goal in around 24 hours, but that the kids were planning on performing the upgrades themselves.

Our 5th-grade tech team will gain real world experience performing under-the-hood upgrades on the existing laptops, and they’ll have the vivid before and after measure of what having adequate Random Access Memory (RAM) means to the computer’s performance and the user’s experience. These 10-year-olds and their younger schoolmates will have that concrete engagement with their world, ensuring their old but functioning laptops can be made “new” again: not by some wave of a magic wand, but because of a specific solution they explored and applied themselves.

Mr. Conrad recently added photos from the upgrade to his Donor’s Choose site, and if those smiles are any indication, these kids are crazy excited about their new computers.

Looking to make a local, end of the year donation? There are a number of teachers in both the 11215 and 11232 zip codes who need some extra help. Check out their Donor’s Choose stories, and make a difference in the lives of our local kids.

Photos via Paul Conrad