We learned a great deal about troubleshooting, working as part of a team, and meeting the needs of a community organization through our work on the computer lab for Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church.

1. After spending an hour trying to find something and not finding it, think about solving the problem a different way.
Here I am refering to the amount of time spent on finding Compaq network drivers. Upon recommendation from Dinesh, we finally decided to install new network cards. This made our lives so much easier!

2. Communication is key.
E. did an excellent job as the go-between for our group and the staff at Morning Star. Also, I believe we all benefited from communicating with each other since we could not all meet at the same times outside of class to work on the project. We would go in alone or in pairs and work on things. We were conscientious about leaving notes on computers and sending emails out to the group so that everybody was on the same page.

3. Before offering to provide an extra service, make sure that you have the time and resources available to meet the needs of the community.
Here I am referring to how after we finished our lab set-up in under two hours, we offered to upgrade the computers from the Morning Star’s first lab, which they planned on giving away to youth at the congregation, from Windows 95 to Windows 98. We had the best intentions, but we did not make sure that we had everything that we needed in order to finish the task in East St. Louis. We were missing the all boot disk, we ran into hardware problems, and we needed to leave the church by 1:30 because they were having a wedding. Had we realized that we were missing the all boot disk, we may have been able to better utilize our time on Saturday by helping other groups finish their lab set-ups, and we would have saved ourselves the stress of bringing three computers back to Prairienet to be repaired.

4. When working with a community organization, take the time to relax and enjoy the people at the organization. The people at Morning Star made this part easy for us. They were friendly, flexible, and they welcomed us with delicious macaroni salad.