Programs · Technology
First you fix it. Then you make it do something.
The repair bench comes before the code editor, because a kid who has opened a laptop is much harder to intimidate with a for-loop.
- Ages
- 10–14
- Meets
- Tue & Thu
- Capacity
- 12 per block
- Bench
- Montavilla & Lents
There is a shelf in the Montavilla workshop with 43 dead laptops on it. They were all donated by people who assumed we would throw them out. We do not throw them out. Kids take them apart, diagnose them, and either fix them or harvest them for parts, and the shelf slowly empties and refills.
Three tracks, one bench
Track 01
Repair
Diagnose, disassemble, clean, replace, reassemble, test. The first track, and the one every kid starts on. If you cannot get the back panel off, you are not ready for the fun part.
Track 02
Code
Block-based first for younger kids, then Python. Projects are physical: a sensor that texts the plant when it is dry, a doorbell that plays a custom sound, a scoreboard for Robot Rumble.
Track 03
Make it move
Microcontrollers, servos, motors, and the occasional 3D-printed bracket. This track exists because kids kept asking why the code could not push something.
The tracks are not levels and kids do not graduate from one to the next in order. A kid can spend a whole term on repair, which is what about a third of them do, and that is a complete program.
The laptop ledger
Every donated laptop gets a tag and a row in a spreadsheet the kids maintain themselves: donor, model, symptom, diagnosis, outcome, parts used. The current survival rate is 61%, which is not impressive engineering and is a genuinely impressive teaching record, because the 39% that die get a proper autopsy written up by a twelve-year-old.
What kids make
- A working laptop, cleaned and reimaged, which they may keep if they need one. About 18 kids a year do.
- A sensor project with a physical output — light, sound, movement, or a message to a parent's phone.
- A repair guide, written for the next kid, with photos. These live in a binder on the bench.
- A Robot Rumble bot, if they choose that spring project. Cardboard chassis strongly encouraged.
The best moment is when a kid realizes the thing is not magic. It is screws and dust and one connector that came loose. You can see their whole face change.
What you need to know
No experience required. Kids who already code are welcome and will be handed a broken laptop within ten minutes, which is either humbling or thrilling depending on the kid. Kids who have never touched a screwdriver start there, with a real screwdriver and a real thing to unscrew.
Pick two. Stay eleven weeks. Show somebody.
Every program runs one afternoon a week for a full term. Kids choose two, and we do not shuffle them around like a tasting menu.