As an official worldwide partner of the Olympics, Acer has quite a presence in London. However, it seems the company will be leaving a little something behind when the Olympics draw to a close later this month. As part of a partnership with education charity the e-Learning Foundation, Acer has announced plans to give laptops currently in use at the Olympic Games to schools around London.
Acer says selected primary schools in the host boroughs including Barking & Dagenham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich and Waltham Forest have ordered the laptops for every child in a selected year group. The main condition for receiving the laptops is that the schools must be willing to work with the e-Learning Foundation. The following schools will receive laptops:
- Trinity and Southwood Primary Schools in Dagenham Essex
- Cherry Orchard School in Charlton
- Whitehall Primary School in London, E4
- Northwold Primary School, London E5
- Ainslee Wood Primary School in Chingford
- Bigland Green Primary School in E1
- Brook Community Primary School in E18
- The Children’s Hospital School, Great Ormond Street Hospital
"This is a really exciting opportunity for these schools to be part of the London 2012 legacy. It would have been easy just to give these away, but by requiring that the school makes a commitment to continuing an e-learning programme, we are building the foundations of a sustainable programme rather than a one-off hand-out," said Valerie Thomspon, Chief Executive of the e-Learning Foundation. "Schools with relatively high free school meals figures will be able to deploy some of their Pupil Premium funds to ensure that every child in the selected year has the same opportunity to have an “Olympic Games laptop” while inviting all the parents to make a modest contribution towards the cost of the programme."
These machines, branded with a London 2012 Olympic Games logo, will be refurbished in time for a late-Autumn delivery to the selected schools. During the Olympics, the machines were used for games management, competition scores, reception, information queries, broadcaster support, media centres and the itinerary for each athlete.
In a release published in June, Acer revealed that it has 13,500 desktops, 2,900 notebooks, 950 servers and storage systems, 13,000 computer monitors, and 'a number of tablet PCs,' at the London 2012 Olympics to run the entire information system.
