"Maybe we should reboot?" suggests eighth-grader Lily Kuang.

"Signal missing?" asks her teammate Philip Unger, a seventh-grader. "But it's on. How could it still be on?"

After mulling their possible courses of action, they decide to press the power button and reboot the system. The computer shuts down, and then comes right back to life with the whirring of a CPU fan, a series of beeps, and, a few seconds later, the same error message on the screen: "Signal Missing."

"How many beeps was that?" Lily asks.

"I don't know!" answers seventh-grader Mathan Martin. "I wasn't listening."

The three fall into a silence as they continue to stare at the simple message.

"Think," Lily says under her breath, as much to herself as to her teammates. "Think. Think."

Her team has only minutes left to diagnose the problem.

It's March 27 at Mission College in Santa Clara. And the three Willow Glen Middle School students—along with almost 90 other students in 30 teams from around the Bay Area and Los Angeles—are competing in the fourth annual StRUT Competition, a one-day technology-awareness event testing students' knowledge of technology, as well as their ability to troubleshoot computer problems and to strip down and rebuild old machines.

It's the marquee event of the year for the Silicon Valley chapter of StRUT, or Students Recycling Used Technology, a nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to provide technology education for students in kindergarten through sophomore year in college.

StRUT collects used, donated computers and equipment from industry and distributes them to participating schools. There, teachers like Willow Glen Middle School's Dennis McCarthy offer students a hands-on experience, by instructing them on how to refurbish and repair the old machines.

Once the computers have been put in working order, many find new lives in other classrooms, where they are donated once more to serve as Internet stations or other computing platforms.

"It's a win-win-win situation," Silicon Valley StRUT Program Director Rendee Dore says. Through StRUT's efforts, students get practical knowledge about technology, industry gets less waste because obsolete computers are recycled and schools get much-needed computers.

StRUT serves 16 elementary schools, high schools and community colleges throughout the region. It has placed more than 4,000 free computers in these schools and has helped technology instructors develop curriculums that stress not only the handling of machinery, but also the systematic approach to troubleshooting.

The students once a year have a chance to show off their tech-savvy skills to judges at StRUT's annual competition. And McCarthy, serving as a judge at this year's event, has had a chance to view this year's pool of rivals.

"Some of these teams work very well together, with well-defined roles and lots of sharing of input," he says. "I always feel as if I could prepare my students better."

Despite his observations, however, at the end of the day, the three teams he sent to the competition take home the highest awards.

The Willow Glen team made up of sixth-grader Nick Hori, seventh-grader Tyler Paradiso and eighth-grader Matt McCollum earns Excellent rankings.

And the Kuang, Unger and Martin team and another Willow Glen Middle School team that included seventh-grader Robert Dzambik and eighth-graders Ian Isaacson and Paul Greiner both earn Unanimous Superior awards for their performances. Unanimous Superior is the highest award available, and the two teams were the only ones to earn the title.

The Dzambik, Isaacson and Greiner team also had the highest score of all teams in the middle school category, which meant each team member could take a computer home—a computer that the students themselves worked on that day.

"I felt like they all performed extremely well," says McCarthy after the competition. "It's only our second year participating, and the students showed great dedication. They all worked so hard and did so well."

The students are noticeably excited, though Lily, who will be graduating from middle school this summer, expresses a bit of melancholy.

"Next year I'm going to Willow Glen High School," she says. "And they don't have a StRUT program there, so I won't be coming back."

For the seventh-graders on her team, there'll be another chance at having fun next year. And they're more than happy to share their experience with any newcomers.

"Anyone who wants to join should do it now," says Mathan, who intends to compete at next year's event.

"Yeah," Phil adds. "Join while you can."