Emlen Elementary is lucky to have a great music teacher in Ms. Parker. And to support her in her work, PCF has converted an old storage closet into a recording studio during the last couple of months. And last week we had our formal opening with Principal Thomas belting out some Whitney Houston tunes, a visit by State Representative Chris Rabb and, finally, some kids taking their turn at the microphone. To turn this [...]
For years now, PCF has helped out Emlen Elementary during their Parent Orientation day at the beginning of the year and their Students Play Day held just before summer break. Both events involve cooking a massive number of hotdogs...like 450 of them for each gig! PCF is lucky to be able to recruit neighbor volunteers for these events. "Henny" and "Rick" both have helped us with these events. In fact, Henny brings her griddle each [...]
A generous donor contacted PCF if we could use a baby grand piano. In cases like this, we did what we always do which is to contact our network of schools to see if any of them were in need. Before long, Emlen Elementary let us know that they would love to have it. The donor was thrilled to have their beloved piano go to a good cause but now we had to figure out [...]
More than 11 years ago, PCF changed its focus to work mostly through schools and other organizations (rather than with families directly) in order to support our youth. And one of the first schools we contacted was Emlen Elementary in East Mt. Airy. During our first meeting with them, they mentioned that they desperately wanted a full basketball court and that a company had donated a brand new "goal" (post/board/hoop) but that the District had [...]
PCF has been working with selected schools to provide parents and caregivers with free take-home computers. As part of the application process, parents commit to spend at least one hour a week with their student/s on the (premium) educational websites that are provided by the District. These are the same educational websites students use during school hours. Tools such as Lexia, iReady, Sumdog and so forth provide a great way for students to cacth up [...]
During the 2018-19 school year, PCF donated and installed hundreds of desktop computers to various local schools including Houston, Emlen, Logan, Mifflin, and others. The bulk of them were installed into classrooms with the remainder used in computer labs, libraries, and parent resource (HSA) rooms. About 20 printers were installed in various classrooms too. The computer equipment is donated to PCF by various local businesses. We then clean it up and refurbish it (add memory [...]
On August 20th, PCF Western suburbs co-founders Ashwin and Srikar, along with their new volunteer Divyesh G., had the opportunity to visit three Philadelphia public schools to distribute a total of 60 laptops. Over the summer, the duo contacted local area companies and organizations to solicit the computer donations. In the end, they acquired about 120 great laptops, many of them with touch screens, lots of memory and crisp displays. Ashwin and Srikar cleaned the equipment [...]
During the 2017-2018 school year, PCF greatly enhanced our 3D Printing offering. In order to do so, we purchased a new printer that allows us to print more objects at the same time and it is much faster. We provided classes during and after school at Edmonds, Logan, Emlen and Mifflin. Since printing still takes a long time, the objects are printed at our office after they are created. So students may finish something one [...]
During the 20117-18 school year, a great deal of effort was spent ensuring that the teachers in the schools we work with have all the computer equipment they need...or that they have room for, in some cases. The District has done a great job providing schools with additional computers and ChromeBooks but the need remains great. So PCF has worked hard to try and fill the gap. In many cases. the hardest part for us [...]
Two weeks or so ago, Friends' Central School in Wynnewood donated a van-load full of iMacs and Projectors to PCF. This week, the projectors were distributed to some very happy schools including Emlen, Logan, Dobson, Mifflin, Steel, Houston, and Edmonds. To save each school's tech person the hassle, PCF changed the settings on the projectors as they will not be ceiling mounted. It is a little quirky changing the settings when the screen is projected upside [...]
PCF started to teach our "Website Creation" class to Emlen Elementary students. About 14 students are part of the "Computer Club" After School Program. The website creation program is expected to last at least 6 weeks. The classes are made possible in part by our StartupPHL grant and PCF is fortunate to be supported by Emlen's computer teacher Ms. Vera Hromadka. PCF's Director Deruiter has run a Philadelphia Web business, MostlyWeb, Inc., since 1996 and is [...]
Five Below has been incredibly supportive of PCF by organizing two separate customer donation drives at various Philadelphia area locations. Altogether, these drives have amounted to several thousand dollars in toys and much needed supplies. Earlier this year, the Easter drive was a huge success which enabled several schools to create incentive programs aimed at improving behavior among students. Most recently, Justin Strycharz and regional manager Craig Ridgell once again organized a customer donation drive, this [...]
Justin Strycharz (l) and Craig Ridgell In the early Spring, PCF received a call from Justin Strycharz at Five Below asking if we would like to participate in their annual Easter Drive. PCF would be the recipient of goods purchased and donated by Five Below customers during checkout at regional stores. We replied that we'd love to participate figuring we would receive a few boxes of goods that we would divvy up among [...]
Nothing marks the end of the school year like cooking 600 hot dogs in the summer heat at Emlen Elementary! Although somewhat outside of PCF's technology focused mission, we have helped Emlen with this fun event for the last three years. We love doing it and, besides offering assistance to the great staff at Emlen, it is a great way to say goodbye to the students we've worked with (and whom are off to middle [...]
PCF has been busy distributing and installing Laser Printers to schools and community centers in need. In many schools, teachers only have access to the printer in their school's main office, which means they have to leave their classroom and walk several flights of stairs just to print a document. For the Community Centers, it allows their users to print their resumes, applications and other documents. PCF came into a large donation of 40 HP Laser [...]
PCF spent the day at Emlen Elementary in East Mt. Airy to launch a new way for us to support schools with classroom computers. PCF's "IT Support Team" program refurbishes and installs computers on-site with the help of the school's own students. These students learned a lot while PCF benefitted from their labor. And together we made 4 teachers very happy campers with computers in their classrooms. Earlier this year DAO Technologies donated a lot of their time and devised a great new [...]
PCF was contacted by the Land Health Institute to assist with an outdoor classroom area and painting of the annex building at Emlen elementary. PCF has a long history with Emlen and LHI so we were thrilled to assist. On a very hot and steamy day in August, PCF's Jan Deruiter brought a car full of tools for volunteers, chainsaw, painting supplies, etc. and spent three days volunteering with various volunteers under the guidance of [...]
After finishing up our 3D printing classes at Henry two weeks ago, we have started a new course at Emlen and expect to start another at Logan soon. Both these classes will run until the end of the school year. PCF owns an old 3d printer that was donated to us. We bring the printer to class with us so kids can see how it works. During the week following class, PCF touches up the [...]
Board member Hal Augustine organized and facilitated a volunteer day with HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern PA. A team of HSX employees showed up and spent almost a full day doing the spectrum of volunteering: computer rehab, cable sorting, book coding and monitor testing. We got a ton of work done. The computers processed that day ended up at Houston Elementary in Mt Airy a month later and most of the books went to Emlen's new library. And [...]
After Emlen Elementary received their new computer lab at the beginning of the 2015 school year, PCF jumped on the opportunity to teach technology classes there. About a dozen 5th graders were selected by their teachers and allowed to attend the weekly 2.5 hr class for the remainder of the school year. A donor had given PCF an old, first generation but durable 3D printer which we thought would be the perfect gimmick to get kids interested [...]
When PCF heard that Emlen Elementary was converting an unused, junk-filled classroom into a library, we got very excited and offered to help. The completion of this project was a huge undertaking and involved a lot of individuals, private donations, school personnel, private schools and organizations including PCF. The opening ceremony was very touching with kids speaking as well as the family of Elbridge G. James, to whom the Learning Center and Library is dedicated. Throughout the year, we helped [...]
PCF Board member Leona Laibhen-Cesar (standing) along with fellow Woodforest National Bank employees came in to volunteer for the better part of the day. They worked their way through a TON of books that eventually made their way to Emlen Elementary's new library. Each book was looked up on the web and then color coded according to the 100 Book Reading Challenge. This color coding method is much more practical since kids can just look for the color that matches [...]
PCF was featured in an article in The Notebook, Philadelphia public schools' independent voice for parents, educators, students, and friends of Philadelphia Public Schools. In the article, PCF Director and Principal Thomas from Emlen were interviewed about the beginnings of what became PCF's Classroom Computers Program. Out with the old? Not so fast District schools like Emlen and Robeson are taking donated technology and making it work in classrooms By Paul Jablow on Mar 24, 2015 Jan Deruiter [...]
PCF placed roughly 60 computers into various classroom at Emlen at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year. Due to the success of our pilot program there, PCF received official permission from the Philadelphia Public School District's IT department to roll out our Classroom Computers program to other schools. After our successful pilot program, we are now officially allowed to work with other schools directly! We learned a lot from working with Emlen: the value these computers represent to [...]
