Bannerman Press

On Saturday 8th January Volunteers from the community co-operative Bristol wireless spent the day reconditioning and giving away 27 high specification computers which had been donated by the Institute of Physics publishing

The computers are the first batch of 40 which are being offered to school pupils and their families from Bannerman Rd Primary school. The school is in the Lawrence Hill ward where only one in three have web access The volunteers installed a open source operating system called Mepis which allows the computers to be distributed without paying prohibitively expensive license fees.

The open source movement has had a boost from the recent support from the United Nations and the UK Treasury's Office of Government Commerce, which recently concluded that "open source software is a viable and credible alternative to proprietary software ... for meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop users".

The volunteers also installed the package G Compris which is free educational software that contains over 50 activities.

The software includes

• Computer discovery: keyboard, mouse.
• Algebra: table memory, enumeration, table, mirror image.
• Science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine.
• Geography: place the country on the map
• Games: chess, memory.
• Reading: reading practice.

This was however just the first stage of the innovative project, the computers will soon be linked together into a Community Area Network using cheap 802.1 wireless (Wifi) technology.

More information about wireless networking is availible on the Bristol Wireless or Wireless Leiden websites.

The wide area school network will allow teachers to develop new and exciting learning packages. Communication between the school and parents should also be improved.

The second phase of the project is supported by the Greater Bristol Foundation Whilst the University of the West of England's Community Information Systems centre are acting as the research partner.

As a non-profit, volunteer run organisation Bristol Wireless are always grateful for donations which can be made through their website they are also interested in hearing from companies who can offer sponsorship or high specification computers for re-use.

Please contact sam@bristolwireless.net for further information.

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