My suggestion would be to seek a local technology council or technology interest group as part of your chamber, and approach their board regarding offering technical support to your home-based students as a community project.  I would target a corporation that has a call center as part of their infrastructure.  Plus, a call center can analyze the calls.
 
For example, Walmart 1-800 literacy referral campaign was answered by a company in TX that is the call center that fulfills their book orders for Walmart.  It is my understanding, that the call center trained a few individuals in their organization as part of their community service effort in partnership with Walmart.
 
I served on our local technology council for years and we were always looking for community projects with a technology focus.  
 
Brenda Clark
Literacy Consultant
Nashville, TN--- On Thu 10/19, karisa tashjian < ktashjian at yahoo.com > wrote:From: karisa tashjian [mailto: ktashjian at yahoo.com]To: technology at nifl.govDate: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:02:40 -0700 (PDT)Subject: [Technology 660] Computers in students' homes - the issues involved
Hi all, I am really enjoying the conversation on computer literacy as a requirement. On the topic of helping students get computers for their homes, we have been doing this for the past few years (in the form of a free raffle).  I have actually not had a difficult time getting the computers but the real challenge has been to provide technology support after the computer goes home.  We have had many reports of students not being able to connect to the Internet, to receiving a virus, to just not getting the computer to work.  I have tried to offer an hour of in-home technology support time for each computer given, however, the budget just isn't there and one hour often isn't enough.  I have to admit that there are probably many non-working computers sitting in students' homes collecting dust..... What have been your experiences and do you have any tips? Thank you, Karisa TashjianRhode Island Family Literacy InitiativeProvidence, RI  

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