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Tux on the Upper West Side
The Beacon "tech staff" is a loose gathering of faculty and students, but don't think for a minute that the faculty is there to ladle jargon and useless information onto the kids. These students are maintaining Webservers, learning Perl and rebuilding machines. Beacon is a place unlike any other, and the differences are wonderful.
For instance, there's Tiffany Atiles. Tiffany is the captain of Beacon's girls basketball team. She's also learning Perl and she teaches the teachers HTML. Carmelo Pabon is a tall guy, and he's the captain of the school's Ultimate Frisbee team. He's also incredibly good at taking machines apart to find out what's worth keeping, and what should go; a valuable skill in computer systems triage, especially at a cash-poor high school. The students take an active role in building and maintaining the school's network; Adam Matos, the senior student sysadmin, has root and administrative privileges on every machine in the school. Instead of the standard "spoonfeeding" that takes place in computer labs around the country, Beacon works because there's an overwhelming sense of cooperation, among the students, their parents, and the faculty.
Beacon prides itself on maintaining a dynamic curriculum focused on aestetics, technology and the arts, as well as the high school staples. Due to financial constraints placed on public schools, Beacon has to get the most out of every piece of technology they have. It seems as though Linux is a perfect fit. I recently got to ask Chris Lehmann, the school's technical coordinator, about how Linux has helped Beacon.
"Using Open Source, I was able to scale projects to include the entire school. If we were using proprietary software for all of the services we provide, we'd have to raise tens of thousands of dollars just to pay for e-mail and Web service for everyone. We wanted to start teaching programming... we didn't have to go out and buy compilers, we use the open source compilers on our server. IRC servers for bringing in experts to talk to our classes, mailing lists to support collaboration, we wanted conferencing software, we found great open source projects for Web-based conferencing, and now we're starting to alter the source to make it fit our needs better! Just by offering everyone in the building a stable, robust e-mail, Web and file-server, without ever worrying that we'd go over a user license, we create an atmosphere that encourages the use of the technology. Without Linux and Open Source, that doesn't happen."
Everyone at Beacon is learning a valuable lesson; when technology is implemented in a way that benefits everyone, cool things happen. All of a sudden, they're building Web sites in English class. Not only that, but they're often sharing their work with a "Cyber-Mentor," a program now in its second year, where students work with adults from the outside world on their writing. They're using technology every step of the way, and learning multiple skills as time goes by. Remember Tiffany, the girl's basketball captain? You can hear play-by-play of the games on the school's RealAudio server, as well as poetry readings. Keith Miller's photography class is getting into digital photography.
Thermodynamics tells us that there's no such thing as a completely efficient system. What happens when things go wrong? I asked Chris if any of the students have ever caused a serious problem on the network.
"Define serious... every time Word crashes when a kid hasn't saved their work in the last two hours, we've got a crisis of epic proportion."
"Seriously, not often. We've had a scanner walk out of the building, and we lose our fair share of mouse balls, but we've had very few problems. And I think there is a reason for that. The best hackers in the school work for the tech staff. We encourage kids to learn as much as they can, and we want them to feel like they've got access to anything they'd need to accomplish that. Every student has shell access... and we want them learning as much about Linux as they can."
"I'd say that once or twice a year, we find a kid trying to install a keycoder, or trying to hack into a hole in the server. More often, kids have been fiddling around and thought they'd accidentally wrecked something. I remember the poor student who was trying to learn about TCP settings and hit return right when our T1 line went down. They thought they'd brought down the network."
It raises an interesting point, one that's been recently discussed at length on Slashdot; what isn't allowed on the network at Beacon? It's great to trust kids and work with them, but there's got to be some kind of control there. Chris?
"Installing AOL is verboten, mostly because the kids try to set it to 'Home' setting and it always messes up network connections. Also, I really don't want my kids playing around in the AOL chat rooms... The last thing Beacon needs is a cyber-scandal. Keeping AOL off is a good defense. We also are pretty strict about installing games... again, not just for the obvious reason of 'Games are bad' but rather because most of the games I've seen kids installing off of a download have been buggy or virus-riddled. Also, we do want to control the use of games at school. Even with three open labs, there are always kids wanting to use the computers for their projects... not having games all over the computers make using the computers for educational purposes easier. That being said, when the kids and I have worked in the summer to get the school ready, we've had some pretty amazing Quake games."
"Clearly, porn is not allowed at Beacon, but we don't try to filter out every site. Rather than trying to filter everything, we really work to teach the kids what is and isn't appropriate for school. We also have supervision in the open labs, by both teachers and students, so that there is an expectation of appropriate use."
"Again, I think more important than 'What isn't allowed' is 'How do we teach the students to use the computers well.'"
Using Linux and Open Source software as the infrastructure, Beacon is blazing a new trail in American education. By using free tools and expanding on their functions, Beacon does a lot for a little, and the real winners are the students. When Tiffany, Adam and Carmelo leave high school, they'll have marketable skills in the tech marketplace. While all the other students may not be quite as technically inclined, they'll be familiar with more than just the basics. Beacon teaches students not to be afraid of computers, and if they're good with computers, not to be afraid of their skills. In the words of Chris Lehmann...
"Being a techie isn't a stigma, it's cool. And that rocks."
We're inclined to agree. The case for using Linux and Open Source software in education is getting better and better as each day goes by, and the Beacon School is a shining example.
With this school the students are maintaining the UNIX-running webservers. Not expensive sysadmins. Usually schools have teachers or students maintaining things, not "real" sysadmins. So what you say is wrong.
Secondly it may be easier to fool around with a WinNT server and make it dance. But do you *really* know how to administer it? It's been said that WinNT allows any idiot the ability to screw up a network. Belive me, I know. I've had to clean up Windows networks before.
Not all New York City schools are this fortunate. Many others are making do with very limited funding, very old computers, and an extremely limited ability to fix the computers that they do have. US Government funding provides a substantial amount of money to schools to get them "wired" for the Internet, but does not provide that much for the computers themselves.
My point, however, is to reiterate something I heard on the same program - that it is possible that these kids are learning how to use computers, but the skills may be taking the place of normal learning activities - like critical thinking (in more than a programming sense), literature, perhaps even more math skills.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Back in 1985 when I was in school, they were teaching us to code LOGO on the C-64. You can't do much useful with that language, but it was just the right thing to teach us, how computers work and how you can program them. Not to mention the taste of power one gets by experiencing that the machine (or rather the turtle here) follows his commands!
One year later we had to learn BASIC on some DOS-Machines. Quite okee, computing can be fun on any machine. The downside here was, that since I already knew some Basic (we had a Colour Genie at home since 1982), I wrote my programs in my own style. The teacher, when looking at my programs always said, that my solution is wrong, since my code was almost always about only 1/4 of lines compared to the listing in the books. They've never ever heard, that you can print a string with INPUT and do not need a seperate PRINT command for it. And it was strictly one command per line. (Of course, I'm a spaghetti-coder, but REM is your friend here)
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
I sympathize with your having to deal with a tech staff throwing buzz words at you. Essentially, the advantage of the IX platforms is pure reliability. I initiated the purchasing of an RS/6000 running AIX as our primary database server about half a year ago, basing its cost efficiency upon the lack of downtime -- working for a sales driven company, an hour of downtime roughly equates to $22,000 worth of loss. The downtimes with IX platforms are much, much lower. This translates into less 'lost opportunity costs'. (The kind that you've probably sued your telco or ISP over at some stage when they violate their uptime guarantees)
/that/ much effort to word things in English. Everybody who has ever tendered a proposal has had to do it at some point.
I'd imagine your NT servers are being used primarily for user interaction -- possibly metaframes to allow for wide area networking, and possibly fileservers as well as particular application servers. You may even be running your primary domain controller off of windows NT. These are all fine and good uses of Windows NT, administration of which requires a middling skill set to pull it off without dropping bombs. The incredible number of MSCEs kicking about will keep the salaries low.
I would have to hypothesise that your database servers and core heavy applications (webservers, et al) are running on IX systems. IX systems don't tend to crash as much (when you have a good administrator), and they also provide much faster querying times for databases than NT based servers. Take a look at TPC.org for some benchmarks on the subject. Take note that, yes, NT solutions are cheaper than IX, but look also at the efficiency achieved. It all comes back to opportunity costs, in my mind.
The reason your admins can go snowboarding is probably because they're quite good, although I question the wisdom of letting every IX admin in the house go off snowboarding without leaving at least a skeleton crew. IX administrators do their work in a different way than NT administrators. NT administrators fight fires, whereas IX administrators primarily stop them from occurring.
Fewer people have the skills required to be an excellent IX administrator, and a top-notch one can make your system much more efficient than a middling one. That's why you pay so much money to them. This is also due, as you know, to the current labour shortage in highly responsible technical positions (it seems to be levelling off amongst junior staff and programmers).
Ultimately, the best choice for a mission critical application is an IX system. They don't go down as much, they support much more comprehensive data recovery operations and are much easier to diagnose for difficulties. As well, they scale (in my opinion) much easier than NT servers. When I want to add 60 gigs of storage space to my RS, it takes me somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes, at least half of which is making certain that I'm mounting them appropriately.
Feel free to mail me (Drop the X's), as I'm a business oriented techie, so I may be able to shed some light. Of course, there are many more eminently qualified people who are doubtless right now critiquing my misuse of various terms. No time to proofread.
As for that unhelpful tech staff, I'd suggest that you tell them if they don't start justifying their expenses properly, they aren't going to be passed. It doesn't take
Off on a bit of a tangent, but you should check on costs of upgrading those NT servers, keeping up on the latest Windows software, etc. You may find that they tally up. -l
When Tiffany, Adam and Carmelo leave high school, they'll have marketable skills in the tech marketplace
I thought you said they were learning Perl?
This is great stuff. Reminds me of the Netday efforts honcho'd by an army of volunteers in the local communities. Grass roots efforts always seem to have a bigger positive impact on the kids that the "Only in it for the press" efforts of the big companies who leave as soon as the cameras are gone.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
I attended a public high school in NYC and had the joys of encountering corporate interest in the school environment. One key topic that this article does not touch on is the effect that large amounts of proprietary hardware or software have on schools, especially large schools. Because we were subsidized by various companies, offering us large amounts of services for a discount, we ended up choosing the route most economic without enough regard for effectiveness, reliability or educational benefits.
I was good friends with a lot of the techies and some of the computer people in the faculty, and I saw some of the weird stuff they had to fix, the strange networking problems they had to deal with, etc. Open Source software would have not only made their projects (and lives) easier due to the reliability, but would have let the students learn more and become more familiar with something that is very useful.
I know I'm pretty much preaching to the choir, but I just wanetd to share my thoughts on Linux in High Schools and especially on the level of interaction and learning of the students.
I say let's see more of this!
-Max
-Max
Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.
I would assume that means something like a "magnet school", where kids from all around the district go to a school with a unique program.
Places like the High School for the Arts (where everyone takes lots of painting and dancing and music classes) are examples of the magnet school concept that have been around for a while...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I whole-heartedly agree. Help them build their system. Take the Slash code and help them set up their own discussion of topics that are important to them. A few months later, they may be running a server for their city to discuss community issues. That would certainly be good PR, wouldn't it?
The original article did say:
It's great that they aren't just using their computers for educational software and word processing. However, there is a market for good educational software. Is anyone working on open source educational software? I've got two kids, so I'm interested in participating, but I don't have the background in education to create the content.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Firstly, you should realise that these two OS'es are meant for different things. NTs are probably used in your environment for non-critical stuff. Solaris is used more for more robust requirements. For example, take the difference between your own personal computer going down, and your company's e-commerce server going down. So simply put is that the Solaris OS includes a lot more failsafe than an NT box. This accounts for your expensive Unix admin. since it requires a lot more technical ability. Who says that NT doesn't require administration. If so, then who set up your computer for you? If your customers complain that your e-mail service is slowwww who is going to fix the problem for you? Administrators? Nahh.... and for the 'tuning the mbuf kernel inode for asynchronous IO' probably has to do with filesystem performance tweaking.
Ewww... there's some icky thing moving in my keyboard.
I guess someone is trying to prevent an /.ting from happening, but it's interesting nonetheless, there are some really cool webpages there. And, in the middle of this page you'll find some familiar names...
Rather than jumping all over the first poster of this thread as a "lame suit who doesn't grok," I have seen someone sympathize, respond courteously, and offer an additional point of contact for continued discussion.
I had thought that polite behavior was a thing of the past. I am so delighted to be proved wrong! :)
(N.B. My usual .sig does not apply in this case. In case there was any doubt, I intended no irony, satire, or sarcasm in my commentary!)
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I think the point is that Perl does have a large syntax with some very arbitrary constructs which have come from features being added well after the initial design of the language. I mean you can do OOP in Perl, but the syntax is somewhat clumsy compared to other languages, Pyhon especially. And then there's the Perl motto - "There's More Than One Way To Do It" (IIRC) - which means that for a beginner code can be confusing simply because it is coded in a different manner than what the student has seen before.
Also while I'm sure Perl can be used for large projects it doesn't really shine here. It's great for CGI scripts and other small standalone applications, but it can easily get unmanagable for a large project.
Before the flames begin, note that I'm not bashing Perl in any way, I'm just saying it wouldn't be my choice for a first language to teach students.
Just having the source, and having documentation of all the protocols and data formats, can foster an atmosphere that encourages experimentation. If you want to know why something is done a particular way and no another, change the code and watch them side by side. Measure the performance, sniff the packets on your net, etc.
I've learned more by experimentation and research to solve problems I've encountered than I ever learned from lectures, by orders of magnitude. I have no reason to believe that I am unique in that. Read what the section Mappers and Packers in the first chapter of The Programmers' Stone has to say about how children learn. Give them the source and watch where they go with it.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
"Python as a standard teaching language?" Not going to happen. Using python as a teaching language was a popular topic at the most recent Python conference, in two papers by Jeffre y Elkner and Fra nk Stajano. But there is no standard programming language used in US high schools. The closest is, astoundingly, C++, because the standardized tests switched from Pascal to C++ a few years ago, and many schools teach only with an eye on the test. Wonder if this is giving students the impression that programming is painfully difficult, and frightening them away from the field?
Really, I think that it's important to get kids programming first. They can learn more structured languages when they're ready; more exposure to formal mathematics, for example, will help them a lot, but you just don't get that in high school. Perl gives them positive feedback very quickly, and lets them do useful things from the get go.
Building enthusiasm for programming (not to mention raising its social cachet) is the best thing that could come out of this. Those kids are not professional programmers, but this should not be confused with academic or professional training. It's a light introduction. When they move on to their freshman year of college, they'll have broken through the major barrier of computer education - fear of the computer - and will be ready to learn properly.
Btw, I know/knew Chris Lehmann - he's quite a guy. Those kids are very lucky, even though they probably don't realize it now.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Hmm... I suppose the most interesting plural would be Coxen, using the Saxon plural? I quote the Jargon File:
Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
you should be able to find, beg or borrow a real inexpensive 486 or P100 or something w/ a CD, 8 megs and maybe 200 megs disk, get a set of the latest distro and got for it. I've even installed FreeBSD from floppies. You can really do a lot w/ linux on obsolete gear, as long as it's not broken or intermittant. I spent nearly ALL my 1st job income on computer stuff, and the closest thing my school had was a programmable calculator.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I think this is a wonderful story and these folks are definitely Getting It Right (tm). I do agree with one of the other /. posters that the downside is that this kind of environment is not available at more schools.
And there is a danger...
Too much publicity of this fine school doing The Right Thing (tm) and M/$ will swoop in with an offer millions of dollars in hardware and free M/$ junkware if they agree to get rid of what works (and works well) and adopt an M/$ only policy.
All for the sake of FUD and the publicity machinery.
They'll use the excuse that PERL and open source will not prepare these students for the "real world", only M/$ products can do that.
While I'm sure that the teacher in charge of the technology would tell M/$ to blow, school district board members have a history of not being quite so discerning when being offered money or goods.
I suppose it could be one of those battles that, if the school holds it's ground, could be good for our side. And more importantly, good for the kids.
Perhaps they can resist assimilation at the hands of the M/$ Borg.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
That's a highly warped example.
It's just as valid to say this:
User: My copy of MS Word crashed in such-and-such a situation and lost all of my work.
Tech Support: Sure, the problem is known and has been fixed in SP1, you can download it here and you might want to refer to the KB article 12345, I'll email you a copy.
versus
User: My copy of Gimp crashed on me when I tried to print with my new laser printer. I think it's a kernel or driver problem.
Linux Gure Tech Support: It's your fault. Fix it yourself, you have the source. Your laser printer is a crappy windows printer, buy a new one. The next kernel release will fix all this and also make green eggs and ham sandwiches.
See my point? Basically, you can warp anything out of proportion. Obviously there can be some bad support, but then that happens everywhere, not just in windows, and not just with Microsoft. BTW, since when was the software industry called "The M$ Model"?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Emmett is now my favorite story poster. With this gem and the library filtering stories Slashdot is enjoyable again. This is the kind of uplifting story we all need to hear while the regular media plays up the 6-yr old killer in Michigan. Mentoring children is always a good cause and especially so when those children are bright and need a challenge to prevent them from being destructive.
I think we all wish our Public School experience had been this way. My teachers were nice and helpful, but busy with the lowest quarter of the class. The bright students were at least grouped together and allowed to excell on their own. I was in an advanced spelling group in elementary school and we chose our own words from the dictionary, an advanced reading group that was allowed to work into the next several grade levels, math groups that went into Algebra early, and a gifted student program where we met a couple of times a week to study other languages and science topics. This sort of stopped in high school, the special treatment that is, I just took math and science classes a year or two ahead of my peer group. My high school did have programs for people in their senior year to take college Calculus, Physics, History and English though.
I'm glad that my school district didn't hold us back with everyone else, but we didn't much supervision either. We did most of this on our own. The one area I wish they would have done better on was in computers. The teachers for programming Basic and using apps were learning at the same time and most people couldn't afford their own home PC or couldn't justify the expense as an educational tool. So now I'm teaching myself networking and troubleshooting hardware at 28 while married w/ 2 kids and changing careers to be a Sys Admin.
I'll end my rant as it probably won't get read, but Kudos to Emmett and the Beacon School. And to the young people out there who may read this, NEVER, EVER GIVE UP!!! I can't say that enough. Read everything you can get your hands on. If you are not being taught to, then teach yourself. Knowledge is power, it's cool, and it's out there for the taking.
Man, I'm going to have to start a program like this in a local school when I get a chance.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
Well, true it is another troll from the dmg, but unfortunately it didn't really provoke anyone and just got a load of well-informed polite responses, which is nice for what it says about /. (although it's not the norm) but not really the point of a troll, which is to expose the clueless.
With Perl, kids are more likely to experience success in making programs that do interesting and useful things, within the first week or so. Try to do that with C or C++! On the downside, you're point about poor programming practice is good. The fact that there are 'better' (more structured) languages available as well is true, but Perl has the widespread use (real world examples) and pop-culture appeal that is more likely to capture and hold a kids interest, which I take as a point in Perl's favour.
**>>BELCH
< apropos humor >
/apropos humor >
And God Damn It! No child should be permitted to graduate from High School without experiencing the Blue Screen of Death at least twice daily, lest they be terribly ill-prepared for a real world, corporate Windows environment!
Down with Open Source Education! All Hail the Fuhrer of Computing! One World, One Internet, One Operating System!
Take those penguins away and give the infidels Windows 2000 CDs immediately! (Parents will be charged a nominal $200 class supplies fee, licenses subject to cancellation at Micro$oft's discretion, supplies in our warehouses exceeding capacity and collecting dust, so Act Now!)
<
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I, among teachers, administrators, and parents, was invited to attend meetings of the School Board's "Technology Commitee". Needless to say, any input by the knowledgable people on this commitee was glazed over by what their hired "expert" said. This, needless to say made us all very angry.
After making the point that our school website hadn't been updated in 2 years, the superintendant "pressured his staff" to complete a new "interactive website" with "All the bells and whistles". Not only have these people completely missed the point, they insist on using the latest stupid things to make them look good.
The most mistaken idea our Board of Ed. has is that the webpage must be "previewed" by them before it goes up. Perl code i wrote specifically for the purpose to demonstrate what one could do was ignored. In fact, we were told at this point that it was time to "let the hired professionals do it".
There is a quasi-good ending to this story. When asked if the we could have students build computers, and use them to host linux sites for the individual schools. Unfortunatly, though, it is too "risky" to put this on the internet, so it rest on an intranet. Perhaps people will begin to notice if the School Websites are Better than the district's.
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
Hmmm, this will probably be moderated down as Flame Bait, but it needs to be said anyway. I really must question the wisdom of teaching kids perl as their first programming language. Yes Perl is extremely powerful in the right hands, but it can also be a breeding ground for poor programming practice (even among experienced programmers).
Perl encourages an attitude of "if it works, use it" - this is not good programming practice. I did hear that Python was going to become the standard teaching language in American schools and this seems much more sensible to me.
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Surely we want all schools to take this attitude. The bit about teachers and students working together is a great contrast to schools today. The school I grew up in (in Central England) was not a very teacher/student friendly place, but I think all schools could learn from this article
------------------
1) But Miss I did hand in the assignment, check the web interface out you gave me an A.
2) Of course its unreadable Sir, its Perl.
3) I know it doesn't work properly and crashes alot, but I thought you wanted it to be a real world example.
4) No Johnny using server side includes to reference another web site is NOT the same as doing it yourself.
5) Umm Jenny
Yes Sir ?
Could you tell me again why rm -rf
And of course top of the shop
6) Oh sir thats not fair, its not my fault I've only got MFC at home.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
"Being a techie isn't a stigma, it's cool. And that rocks."
:) gentlemen, ladies... this is a sign of things to come, all of the hate and oppression associated with geekdom (and I guess differentdom to a degree ;)) is coming to a close, at least in small pockets like these... let's keep nurturing them, let's keep feeding them good open source, see what they an do with it... and i can't wait to work next to people that grew up in an enviroment such as that some day.
wow. just think about that for a while. In a high school, the place most of us dreaded, and still remember not so fondly (remember the hellmouth articles? i don't remmember reading a single "I loved highschool" response), times are changing... yesturday, i met with some VC's to do a 3rd round of financing for the company i work, being the CTO, all I mainly did was sit there, and say big words, and flap my arms around, and make it all seem better to the guy with the degree in History, the guy with the degree in English, and the guy with the J.D. About halfway through, they said that we would have to set up a meeting with their lead tech analyst, and they turned to me and they said: "he's a really HUGE geek... he's awsome."
It's happening everywhere people, from the highest mountaintops of corporate finance, to a very forward looking school in New York, it's happening everywhere... the revolution came.... and no one even saw it happen. I applaud all of the students of the Beacon School, their attitudes, their atmosphere, their ability to see, is enlightening, refreshing, and wonderful.
In these times of trenchcoat mafias, and 6 year olds with guns, isn't it amazing to see people cooperating and learning, and feeding off each others good intentions, and embracing the concept of open source, not just for softare, but as a rule of life?
The best hackers in the school work for the tech staff.
- They have to be able to read a magazine in a foreign language.
- They have to be able to apply Geometry, Stats, Algebra, and Trig.
- They have to be able to present and support a logical argument.
- They have to present a formal research paper.
Overall, I have to say they have higher expectations than my high school's, even without figuring the computer technology stuff into it. Must take a helluva long time to review all those portfolios though.Personally, I think it's great that these kids can gain a strong background in programming and other computer-related skills in high school.
That said, the statement about making websites in English class did disturb me. When I was in high school, English class was about gaining insight into literature and learning how to express oneself clearly. Doing this can certainly involve HTML, I suppose--I just hope that important lessons aren't being skipped in favor of teaching a fairly trivial markup language.
I'm sorry that your high school didn't have a good programming class. I sympathise. In ancient times, when I was in high school, we had to use Commodore PETs that didn't even fricking work most of the time. I should have taken a study hall instead, I would have learned more.
However, who elected this mayor? It's YOUR TOWN. Your parents CAN do something about it. Talk to your parents about what's going on. Let them talk to their grown-up friends. Get your friends to talk to their parents. Maybe you can get some "push-back" going in your community.
Solving a problem is a lot better than just complaining about it.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders, and with a little effort, you could make a real difference for yourself. Unfortunately, most people are not like that, which may be why your school district sucks.
There are other options, and at the very least, you should beg, borrow, or creatively appropriate a computer that runs Linux for your own use. Aside from that, if you want more exposure to a better education, you can take at least one of these options that you may not have considered (I have used at least a couple of them):
1. Continuation/alternative HS: They may not offer a classier environment, but the teachers will usually let you develop your own curriculum, one which exceeds your local district standards. They like motivated students, because they hardly ever see them.
2. Regional Occupation Training Programs/Internships: They exist, but a lot of schools don't promote them because the administration feels that they will lose educational funds that the district could abuse..er, use. You could try and find an internship at an ISP.
3. Community College: Now not an option if you live in California until you are 18...but if you have public 2 year colleges nearby, walk across the street and go test and register next semester. Get some A's, pad your experience doing documentation/bug reporting for GNU projects, and get a scholarship to a decent University.
4. Local Usergroups: Find someone who will give you a summer job doing helpdesk work at an ISP or free network (private freenets exist, EMRL in Sacramento was/is such a place). 'nuff said.
5. Move: If you have relatives where you know there is a good HS, then move there. If you want to go to Beacon, find a church or local private organization and get a family/hostel to sponsor you there. You may have to work nights to make ends meet, but it sounds like you will be doing that in two years ANYWAYS if you don't change your options, right?
6. Join the Military: This should be your LAST resort, and you can sign up at 16 for the local national guard (train over the summer, advanced training at 17). If you hate your town, you can always go active duty and dissapear. At the very least, you get a disposable income that you can spend on a computer, and learn organizational skills. At best, you get college money and a guaranteed chance at learning some computer skills through military colleges (aka Roblimo). However, you may receive assignments that will cost you your morality, sanity, health, and/or life. If that happens, it could be years before you get your life back on track.
But you do have choices, just maybe not the ones you want.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
Unless you've found some new software that is smart enough to pass the Turing Test, you can't get it to understand the meaning of a page, and so you can't filter fairly. You will inevitably end up filtering out stuff that is legit, or letting through stuff that isn't.
Now, what makes this case different is that he mentioned that the 'censoring', such as it is, is done by the HUMAN teachers simply being there to supervise, and NOT by automated dumbass filters.
That is why you haven't seen protest about it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
If they are doing any filtering, it would seem that they themselves are choosing a small set of sites to filter, rather than purchasing a large, flawed pre-packaged blocklist.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Here is a perfect example of the potential of free and open source software. It can allow our schools to freedom to encourage the next generation of technical people. As the article stated, it is a great fit for schools because it is free, which means that a school can afford to stay with the current technology (meaning that the students aren't learning stuff that is 5 years old and useless in the real world). There is only one problem with this scenario, which is part of the reason the school mentioned in the article is the exception rather than the rule, most schools don't have anyone to guide them down this path.
This is where all of you come in. You have a chance to influence the next generation of techies to use, support, and possibly even contribute code to the software you love. Volunteer your time at your local school. Help them setup and maintain their networks. Offer to speak on technology issues in classes and clubs. Make yourself available to mentor students with an interest in technology.
Schools won't use open source and free software unless someone shows them that it is an option and explains why it is a good option, be that person.
Let me explain my position. I am an accountant (some would call me a bean-counter) working for a large corporation which has a mixture of hardware and software platforms, including Solaris, HP-UX, Windows NT Service pack, and Windows 98 (OSR 2.1) Something has been puzzling me for a long time, and nobody in our IT department seems willing or able to come up with a satisfactory answer.
I am continually asked by upper management to justify why it is that we have to pay something like $160000/year for a Solaris administrator, and yet a lot of our NT systems do not require any administrator at all. Management think that the wool is being pulled over their eyes, and the stock holders are starting to ask some pretty tough questions. Since ultimately it is accountants who carry the can for technology overspending as you can imagine, I am getting a bit worried.
I asked some of the senior IT managers why there is this discrepency, and they said someting about the "zero administration initiative" and "SMS". (I thought this was a mobile phone thing). But it still does not make sense to me. I'm always hearing the Unix admin guys going on about how superior their platform is, but how can it be better if it needs an expensive administrator and NT does not ? After all, Sun and NT are both operations systems, don't they do the same thing ? I am not a computer expert, I'm an accountant, but even I understand that a computer basically does what you tell it to when you program it, there cannot be that much difference between a Unix server and an NT server. The other thing is (and this is what I really don't understand), the main Unix guys all went on vacation snowboarding for a week, and nothing stopped working, so again I don't understand what it is that they do, exactly, and why NT does not need any administration.
I really appreciate anyone who could explain this in language that a non-technical person could understand, as I just don't get it.
Unfortunately I cannot give my real name, as I don't want to expose my technological ignorance for all my co-workers to see, as I am quite old, and they are all quite young and "tech-savvy geeks" :-( unlike me. I find that the MCSE's we employ tend to spout a load of incomprehensible and intimidating buzzwords and acronyms whenever I try to get a straightforward answer to my questions, and as for the Unix guys, they seem to think they are above talking to a mere "bean counter" or "suit" as they often call me.
To be blunt, the costs of administrating Solaris or any other form of Unix (Linux included) is likely to far exceed any savings made. This school should play it safe and go the Microsoft route, they have substantial bulk licensing deals for educational establishments.
Finally, can anyone explain to me what 'tuning the mbuf kernal inode for asynchronous IO' means (in non-technical layman's terms) ? This is another answer I am always hearing when I ask about costs. Its almost like these guys don't want me to understand what they do. Sometimes I think they just make this stuff up to try and fool me.
Thank you
Personally, I have never held to that belief, and I'm very glad to see that there are others who don't, too. I wish the people involved the very best of luck, and hope the students blow the socks off any and every "traditional" school around there, in terms of what they -really- achieve.
The day that power, intimidation and "might makes right" finally vanish from schools is a day to look forward to.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
At least one school in this country "gets it."
At my high school there's porn filters all over the place (a amateur radio site I go to is filtered out at school) as well as having the SSH and IRC ports blocked. Also there's only several computer classes, all which are boring to me (computer repair, VB, computer applications, and computer networking)
I'm also the VP of web design at my computer club, which has gone NOWHERE because everyone's into games. Oh well.
I'll print out this article and give it to the technology director and tell him how badly the school's off technologically.
What would be the first thing I should do to make the school exactly like Beacon?
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
"Being a techie isn't a stigma, it's cool" Please be aware that this is a quote from Chris Lehman, an admirable bloke I am sure, but he is the staff member who runs the thing. Teachers often have a pretty warped idea of what is and isn't cool.
Not everyone needs to learn to be a sys-admin. I completely agree.
And importantly, we don't expect everyone at Beacon to do that. It's there as an option (either by working on tech staff, taking electives, working to help teachers develop stuff, etc...) for the kids who want to go further. What we do want all kids to do is realize how technology can make them more powerful students of English, History, Science or Math... how it can make them look at creating art in different ways... More than anything else, we view computers as tools to create.
Especially because we are a city school, where many of our kids don't have the family resources of a more wealthy district, it's very important that we make sure our kids will be able to use the tools of technology after they leave us.
And getting kids excited about computers when they realize how easy HTML is, and how powerful web publishing is to have your work reach a wider audience than just your teacher is just great. Most of these kids won't go on to be sys-admins or web designers or programmers, but hopefully the vast majority will leave here knowing that technology is a powerful tool that they *can* harness.
Of course, I'm writing this in the tech office, watching Tiff take a picture of her teammates holding a Tux penguin with a Star Wars helmet on. So there's a fair amount of silliness, too.
-- Chris Lehmann
-- The Beacon School
I graduated from High School just last year. When I started going to High School they did not have a web site, I convinced them that not only should they have one but that they should host it locally. Guess who got to setup the server.
I think that part of the key for having a school like this is the school's system admin. My last year of High School the district hired a system admin and he proceeded to lock everything down and generally make things a pain.
Luckily the web site is still controlled by the Tech Assistants, both the content and the server. But the biggest problem that they have now is that the system admin will not let them do anything (such as host community pages or any other pages for like the elementary school).
So, if you are a school tech admin please take this advice: step back a little and let these people do their thing. You will find that they often do things in a way that you were told not to do in college, but point it out to them nicely. Don't yell at them and threaten to shut down the program. Don't worry about security issues, after you get these people onto your side 99.9% of them will develop a loyalty to you and will never crack, break, DoS or do anything else to make you look bad.
In fact, a functioning program like this can only make you look good. Many times the school boards do not believe that a student can do half the things they do, so when good things start coming out of the program you will get 75% of the credit for everything they do (after all they can't do these things on their own, somebody had to help them).
END
Most curricula developed in high schools recently treat computer skills as an end unto themselves. The focus should be on using computers (and OSS) as a tool. I do like seeing things like high school kids using computers to model chemical interactions, study musical composition, perform and analyze experiments, etc. Applying computer skills to solve real-world problems should be the focus.
When I was in high school, most of the 'computer skills' I learned was a BASIC programming class and a bunch of home-grown skills. (Mostly doing with the good ol' Apple IIgs and Mac SE.. UNIX had to wait until college..)
I just don't think "the school for sysadmins" is a necessarily *good* thing. It's really neat for kids to get this hands on experience and all (and is a good application of problem solving skills), but kids today (especially techie types) really need to focus on preparing for a college education as well...
When my daughter enters school I plan to offer my services to the school in moving to an Open Source computer network. At the very least, changing the current "Microsoft: The Crash" computer class into an Open Source environment.
Let us not forget one of the main values that the Open Source movement teaches: Micro$oft and proprietary software teaches it's users that unquestioning acceptance is good and critical thinking is bad.
Versus
With the M$ model, you are only a cog in a machine you cannot control and which doesn't work. With Open Source/Linux you are that same cog, but you work with every other part in the machine to make it work. Thus learning the value of community and independant thinking.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I commend the school for it's use of Open Source software and hands on computer and programming efforts. But this article still leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.
I say this because I'm a highschool junior living in a crap school district where these kinds of things are just legends. No one ever paid attention to me. In the computer lab, I'd sit there behind a Mac LC II while my teacher explained how to use a mouse.
My town's mayor just slashed the school budget by 10%, all the while appropriating himself some funds to by a new car, which incidentally cost the same as a math teacher. Selective schools like the Beacon School are nice, BUT WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIVE NEAR ONE?
How many potential Alan Cox's (Coxi?) are out there wasting away in high school, stuck in a system that is set for the lowest common denominator, because there WASN'T something like the Beacon School available to them?