The Forest Park Recycling Program

Learning about technology is an important and recognized aspect of education. But learning about technology while helping the local community opens up new opportunities to put education into practice beyond the classroom.

Through an innovative program at Forest Park High School in Woodbridge, Virginia, students learn about technology, get older computers out of the waste stream, benefit other schools and organizations, and teach others about technology.

The Communities of Practice

WIN-WIN Strategies Foundation builds Communities of Practice ( CoPs) to advance K-12 education. CoPs are groups of stakeholders bound together by shared expertise and passion to achieve an objective.

We believe that this model develops students with a greater capacity to learn; they achieve a mastery of basic skills, develop productive life skills, and acquire thinking skills needed to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st century.

The Foundation offers two CoP models: the National CoP, a research-based and interconnected CoP of leading-edge schools and nationally recognized experts. Participants in the CoP share existing best practices and develop new ideas about the seamless integration of technology into the curricula. The foundation facilitates the implementation of lessons learned from the national CoP through the vehicle of the High School Pyramid CoP model.

In the High School Pyramid CoP model, a high school shares its student, teacher, and administrative technology expertise with its feeder middle and elementary schools. The high school is naturally motivated to participate because the interaction and community-building benefits the children who ultimately attend the high school. It is a grassroots, self-controlled, and self-policing model that puts the school in the center of a community of learning.

Forest Park Recycling Program

Forest Park High School is a member of our National CoP and is piloting our first High School Pyramid CoP. Forest Park's Learn and Serve program serves as a model for other high schools in our CoP.

Started four years ago, the Learn and Serve program works in partnership with the school's IT program to expand its service opportunities for students in computer technology. The high school's IT program offers a technology track in network and hardware education, and the students who participate in the Learn and Serve program become an educated and trained volunteer work force for the Students Working to Advance Technology ( SWAT) program. There are currently 200 students who can offer their services to the SWAT program.

The goal of the SWAT program is to provide citizens and students of Prince William County with the opportunity to expand their technological skills and knowledge. As part of the Learn and Serve program, the SWAT team obtains computers and equipment through a nonprofit partnership with The Scholastic Technology Infusion Corporation ( STIC). Since the rate of donations is not consistent, the students use much of the equipment for testing and training. But the SWAT team has the capacity to recycle computers at the rate of about 100 to 300 per week, and has placed over 5,000 computers in the last three years throughout the Prince William community. And it can handle even more. Brian Hackett, Learn and Serve coordinator said, "Given our resources to recycle and place computers in the community, Forest Park would be happy to work with any company interested in donating their computers."

The SWAT team coordinates rebuilding and distribution of recycled computers. These computers are donated to assist needy students, both in the classroom and in the community. The SWAT team has built servers for school programs, built labs for elementary schools, and has annually upgraded more than 200 SWAT computers in the classrooms at Forest Park for student use. Over the past two years, Forest Park has donated more than 50 computers to needy families and has sent computers to a project in Haiti for underserved children. The SWAT team currently provides a mobile capability to assist its High School Pyramid with its technology needs.

Each computer repaired or built is logged with a Learn and Serve invoice. Upon completion, computers repaired or built receive a Learn and Serve bar code and are inventoried. Inventory sheets are addressed each nine-week period, and pickup and delivery is documented. The team is in charge of all computer-related problems in the classroom and goods that are delivered.

The process for managing work and repairs follows these guidelines:

1. Each member of the team documents the work performed in special logs and journal sheets.
2. Persons or organizations request assistance.
3. The team develops a timeline for the work to be completed.
4. Each team member, upon completion of work, documents and inventories the goods.
5. All of the goods to be delivered (monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) are inventoried and recorded on a delivery inventory sheet. This sheet contains all of the serial numbers and data on the goods to be delivered.

The Learn and Serve recycling program is an easily replicable model that removes computers from the waste stream, leverages resources throughout the community, gives students the opportunity to receive credit for community service hours, and teaches students real-world application of classroom skills, higher-order thinking skills, and productive life skills.

Prince William County Schools assists the program in three ways:

1. It maintains a partnership with the STIC, a nonprofit organization that collects and distributes computers to outside agencies.
2. It obtains a licensing agreement with Microsoft for the distribution of software to nonprofit organizations for the sole purpose of advancing and encouraging education.
3. It also obtains licenses that can be used on machines that will be sent to organizations that are not in the above category, but are not business. These computers are sold at a cost that covers the price of the licensing.

SWAT team students provide tutorial services at one of their feeder elementary schools for additional community service experience. The younger children look up to these older students as teachers and significant role models. One high school student identified a vision problem with an elementary student during a tutorial session. Once the vision was corrected, the young student enjoyed increased self-esteem, better grades, and is more popular among her peers.

The students in Learn and Serve experience real-world application of classroom skills and gain, in the words of one student, "the responsibility to lead others into the new age of technology."