By Laura Collins : The Herald-Sun

March 30, 2009 

DURHAM -- A weekend event capped off with more than 40 area students receiving free computers.

With music blaring and PCs taking up nearly all of the floor space in several rooms at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, students and volunteers wrapped up the weekend-long Geek-A-Thon on Sunday.

The event, a Kramden Institute initiative, was the 16th Geek-A-Thon and refurbished more than 200 computers, all of which will be given to students in the Triangle.

Carrie Clark, director of operations with Kramden, said the volunteers come from all over and perform a variety of tasks.

"We have volunteers who come from an expert background and we have people that show up who have never worked with a computer before," she said. "The great thing about that is we have a job for everybody."

Clark said the refurbished computers have to meet a certain criteria, including a minimum of 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20-gigabyte hard drive and typically a Pentium 4 processor.

Sunday, Kramden awarded about 46 computers to students who were selected by teachers. To be selected, students had to be hard-working and not have a home computer.

"These are kids who are working hard in school academically. They're staying after school late. They're going to school early. They're finding a friend to work with them and do their homework," Clark said. "They're kids who are going above and beyond just to be on the same playing field with their classmates."

Sammy Lockhart, 13, a student at Shelby Middle School in Cleveland County Schools, was a nominated to receive a refurbished computer. He said he was "really, really, happy" when he found out.

"This is my first computer. It's going to help me achieve more stuff in school," he said.

Sunni Utt, 16, a junior at NCSSM, loaded operating systems on the computers at the Geek-A-Thon Sunday.

"I think it's really great the students get an opportunity to have a computer," she said. "It's opens up a lot of doors and opportunities. They get to use them for school work, but it's not just the one students that gets to use it, the whole family gets to use it."

Anyone interested in donating a computer to be refurbished, volunteering or nominating a student can visit www.kramden.org