Greenvale Computer Lab

I think it was about two years ago I met Holly who was the executive director at Greenvale school. PatchX had worked with Verne in supplying the classes and mostly the kids in the downstairs area with computers. We talked about what we had done in the past and the future possibilities with Greenvale. One of the areas was a computer lab for the kids that would be separate from the computers that were in the other areas to teach computers and not just for games. The room at the time was being used sort of for storage and some meetings at Greenvale.

Holly went to work on getting the room cleared out and cleaned up. Jenny Lee who is a great friend to PatchX and worked at Greenvale at the time reached out to the Jr League for some help in giving the room a face-lift. Her proposal was excepted and a group from the Jr. League led by Jessica Hilbish planned for the transformation of the room. They did an intial survey and figured out the colors for the walls and the cabinets. But they decided to go a step further. Not only did they take off each cabinet door and paint along with painting the walls, they used a projector to show the Greenvale logo on one of the walls and painted it in by hand. The major work of all of this was done in a couple of days. A couple of the ladies came back a couple of times that week to finish up the logo color fill in. What was left was a room everyone could be proud of and used for a long time.

GreenvaleRoomReboot from Brian Wilson on Vimeo.



Once the room was done it was up to PatchX to set up the computer lab. Greenvale had just went through a computer upgrade thanks to another proposal from Jenny Lee which allowed some of their computers to be transformed for the lab. Using those computers and a couple from TwoRobs we were able to configure and install six computers with flat panel monitors. Half of those generously donated by Robertson Marketing Group. So we have the computers in but we wanted to tie them together and segment them away from any of the other computers on the Greenvale network. Garan Sink who is the network administrator at Robertson Marketing configured a wireless linksys router that not only allowed this network to be on its own but allow wireless secure access for the room.

Now we have the room looking good, computers and a secure network to run them all. What are we going to teach. After looking at some educational games and the Kahn Academy we found what we were looking for. Scratch is a programming to create interactive stories, music, art and allows people to share their creations on the web. It was created by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT.

Greenvale Computer Lab Ironman A/R from Brian Wilson on Vimeo.

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