We all know that engineers like to take things apart to see how they work and learn most when putting them back together. The inquiring minds of children are really no different.

So when several old PCs were donated to West Hill Park School, head of IT John Adam, saw it as the perfect opportunity to develop real life skills for his students. He decided to run a project whereby a number of year 8 pupils would focus on dismantling and re-building the machines, and bring them up-to-date.

Letting Imaginations Run Riot.

Due to the popularity of the scheme, Mr Adam developed the idea further still. The students chose their own components; costed them out on a spreadsheet; purchased them from the Novatech website and built the computers at school before taking them home. The children’s enthusiasm and creativity was evident from the garish and fantastical selection of colours, neon lights and outlandish designs. However the technical quality of the machines was not in doubt and the schools’ DT department even commissioned the pupils to build a bespoke PC for their classroom too.

Driven by the students.

The project has now become a permanent part of the IT curriculum at West Hill Park and they are considering extending it to other year groups due to the level of interest.

John Adam said, “The success of this project has not only been driven by the students’ predictable enthusiasm for building their own computers, but also by their appetite to learn how the components work on a deeper level”.

Who knows with this level of enthusiasm for IT at such a young age West Hill Park School could even give us the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates!