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Would A Youth-Run Computer Lab Last?
Dragon218 writes "Recently, I have been chosen to be part of a team of computer savvy youths who have been tasked to build and maintain a computer lab. We are probably going to get around $100,000 in grant money. The idea is to have it be a public lab, the trick being the users would help in commercial Web design or other projects to raise money to keep it active. I'd like a reality check on this. Also, if any of you have ideas to help this thing along, I (don't like to use the pronoun 'we' without the group's consent_ would appreciate it. If you would like more information about the group sponsoring it, you can check out http://brycchouse.org." Assuming the people in question know what they are doing, I don't see a problem with this at all, do you? Good luck, Dragon218.
If you limit the lab to running either Linux or Windows NT, you can limit who has access to those who can be trusted (you'll learn in a hurry). Windows 2000 is more secure by default than NT 4.0, but if you do use 4.0, grab these command scripts I created in my last job. They were designed for NT 4.0 running IE 3.0, but it gives you a good idea of how to set directory and file permissions. They'll require some updating to work with NT 4.0 and IE 5.
When the lab I used to run (on a campus) was running Windows 95, I'd spend at least 8 hours a week rebuilding and reinstalling. Once we went to NT and I got secure directory permissions (secure permissions being the key), I was in that lab 1-2 hours per month.
(An no flames about using Linux. This was in pre-1.0 kernel days, and the software we had to run still isn't available on Linux. The real challenge is not to make something work, but to make what you've been stuck with work perfectly.)
You can't make money if the resource isn't available.
I was the systems manager for a large student organization last year (no link, the website's down *sigh*). Most of my headaches came from users, and the odd things they thought of to do to my computers in their spare time. And that was with a relatively restricted user base of about 50. If you have more users which change frequently over the space of a year, I think they'll be even more trouble.
I'd say the difficult thing is not getting teenagers to properly administer and staff a computer lab, but getting teenagers to be good users. Here is where your OS can be your best friend or your worst nightmare. Maintaining a multi-user cluster of computers is much easier with a multi-user OS. Which one you pick depends on the knowledge and needs of your users, but I would highly suggest at least getting Windows NT, if not something beefier. Having a clearly defined policy on recreational use helps, too. Is web surfing okay? Would game-playing be tolerated? What about pornography (yes, it comes up!)? When users know what's expected of them, a large majority of them will try to fulfill those expectations.
Another thing which will make maintaining your computers easier is separating the duties of those involved. It sounds as if you in the sort of environment where everyone knows everyone else and they all get along. Trusting one guy to be completely in charge of purchases, for example, and another to handle installations means that your team won't be working at cross-purposes. Nothing is worse than having to spend hours of your time to fix someone else's 'fix'. Find some way of identifying what each person is responsible for and make certain they stick to it. The former because people get very unhappy when they perceive someone else is doing their job and the latter because people get very unhappy when they perceive they're doing someone else's job.
Jonathan David Pearce
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
http://www.harambee.org/
http://www.harambee.org/news/ps n_lab_earthlink.html
I admin a computer lab at a College that is part of a community access program. After high school lets out every day my lab floods with porno-surfing, mouse-ball stealing teenagers. I have been very patient thus far and have not secured the win-terminals completely so that they can have the experience of dabbling in configuring them. About once a week a major fsck-up occurs and here is my solution:
I make the kid who messed things up fix it with me. They all know the policy and know that they are obligated to spend a fewe hours if they mess up. I've yet to have a major problem (that can't be fixed with a little work) and I've seen some of these kids helping each other out when encountering similar problems. Last week I had one kid install policies on his friend's machine to keep him from messing it up. LOL, exactly what I was avoiding, but it was nice to see him take the initiative and figure out how to do it. I hope that eventually I'll be able to let them run it on their own.
So far all the comments have been about the technical side of things, which looks, from here, to be pretty cut-n-dried. The real issue is the human engineering one.
This project -- any volunteer project involving more than two people -- has serious People Issues. I speak from experience: I often organize hoardes of volunteers in my spare time, sometimes even to do pro work to raise money for our organization.
First, you're talking about getting users to contribute work. Since you're talking about selling these services, they'd better be pretty professional. You're talking some pretty heavy management burden here. Getting amateurs/volunteers to put out high quality work consistently can be hard, because volunteers take (all too often) the attitude "you should be grateful I did the work at all".
Second, you're going to have to convince people that it's worth while. Note that the OS movement is powered by the "scratch my itch" dynamo. Is it anyone's itch to make corporate web pages, to keep a public lab open? That strikes me as a very hard sell. You might get someone to do it once, but will they keep doing it?
Third, speaking as someone who does web production professionally, it's a bitch. Not the technical side -- the business side. The businesses are constantly coming back with piddling copy revisions, trying to get you to do free work ("it's just a little change"). And, BTW, my agency bills ~$50/hr for my time doing DHTML, and I am considered a jr. level DHTMLer. Boston. And I don't even do design, just implementation. Just in case you were planning on charging $20/hr.
Fourth, you're talking about drawing volunteers from the public. You don't even have any filters between you and them (such as all belong to the same club or some such). You're going to have a hell of a job making character judgements of the strangers that walk in your doors, and you're going to have to make hundreds of them, constantly. Not merely "Do I trust this person not to loose the next Morris worm from my machines?" but "Do I trust this person not to flake out in the middle of doing a customer's project?"
These are the areas in which *real* head-aches arise. Basically, you need to be -- or to have to hand -- a real "people person", or more properly a "leader of (wo)men" to bear the brunt of managing volutneers.
Is something like this possible? Sure: but it completely requires some highly charismatic person to marry their souls to this project. Someone who builds group esprit, who defuses conflicts, who has a natural air of authority, who personally exemplifies the values of the organization (e.g. brilliant hacker, hard worker, tolerant with newbie users, etc.), whom people trust and follow.
These people don't grow on trees. These people have their pick of volunteer organizations to work for, not to mention their pick of 80hr/week jobs. If you are or have such a person, then your organization is unspeakably lucky.
If you don't have such a person, and you aren't prepared to try to be that person, you are going to drink the dregs of a very bitter brew. Volunteers who manage volunteers often have the worst and the most embittering cases of disillusionment and burn-out. They rail about the stupid, lazy, and vicious nature of their fellow humans, and swear never to bother trying to help someone again. They feel taken-advantage of, rattled and hurt -- and unconfident of their own abilities.
Think about the human dimensions very seriously indeed.
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-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Amount of Funding = $100,000
25 iMac DVs = $32,475
1 G3 Server running OS X Server = $6,000
5 DV Camcorders = $5,000
100BT Ethernet setup = $100-200
Total = $43,675
Don't know what else you need, but that looks pretty good to me. Don't need a *lot* of software, as each iMac comes with iMovie (DV editing), AppleWorks (works program) and PageMill (HTML editing software), along with some other software that I'm not familiar with. Of course, if you've never used Mac OS, or are somehow required to use Windows, then this won't work for you... Mac OS is pretty easy to learn though.Anyway, was just an idea. Feel free to disregard if neccessary.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
This, to me, leads me to ask a question: What is the goal of your lab? Is it just a place where kids can check e-mail, browse the web, and maybe do homework with office applications? Or is this a lab aimed at introducing computers to youth who may not have much experience with them?
The way I see it, it's a question that can't be answered with a blanket solution. If the lab is more of a 'web-cafe' for the community center, so to speak, you'd just need to have some cheap Celeron's run Netscape off the network, and maybe have some office suit installed.
Looking at the what the youth center was designed to do, however, doesn't make me believe that this lab will be just a way for users to browse the internet or type a paper. If you want to attract the interests of talented youth in your area (graphic artists, programmers, web designers, the 'people-skilled'), you'll have to give them access to tools they may be interested in, but haven't yet used.
Think about it. If you're a semi-savvy 17-yr old kid, where would you rather work? A computer lab where you get paid to sit and make sure no one steals the mice while you chat with your friends on Instant Messenger? Or a lab where the youth community is involved in computer projects they are interested in (programming software, graphic arts, web design, etc.)? I would see the lab really succeeding if it uses a mix of the different OSs. Windows for those who just need access to the Internet or want to relax with a Quake DM, Linux for those who want to fiddle with kernels, etc, and Macs with scanners and video-editing software for the digital artists. That way, you don't need to rely solely on one aspect of the lab (iMacs with DV, learning Linux) to draw in both users and motivated volunteers.
Also, I tend to agree with the poster that argued for giving users free reign of the system. Again, here. What's going to attract more users and volunteers? A place where you can't fiddle with the systems, or a place where you can try and figure out (if you want) how a system works, both software and hardware wise. Taking that a step further, why not have a couple of boxen in permanent 'in construction mode'). Not expensive systems, of course, just a place for computer users can see what's 'under the hood' so to speak. "Here's the video card... it's on this PCI slot, and you can remove it like this *POP* ... let's install an AGP card." If you have a well-stocked library of computer books (can you ask for book donations?), a lot of users and volunteers will have a place to start, and maybe something will catch their eye as well ("Perl, what's this?").
The way I see it, the more interactive a lab is, the more likely are users to flock to it, and if you can spark enough interest in the users, you can have some of them become devoted volunteers.
Just have a clear mission plan, set out before any of the equipment is shipped to you or you hire more than a skeleton crew. This sounds like an awesome project, but not one to be taken lightly. With sound planning, this is sure to be a success. Best of luck!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
This brings to mind the UNIX lab that my school runs, and maybe that could give an good model of how to set something like this up. Our lab is composed of HP workstations donated to the school, which each run HP-UX. They export a number of applications off of a server running Red Hat, which also serves to mount home directories. This organization has worked pretty well for us, and while the somewhat dated machines can be annoying, exporting displays makes up for it for the students knowledgable enough to do so. More important, I think, is the way the administration is set up. We have three roots, chosen each year, one of whom will usually be around to address any problems that may arise. Beneath them are a small group of knowledgeable users capable of helping the roots. At the school lab, this group are those who are knowledgable enough to compile and run programs not already installed, and they enjoy priviledges like expanded quotas and access to directories like /usr/local/projects. This setup has worked for us for a long time, and is in my mind the best way to set such a thing up. The only important thing is that there should be a good way for new users to get accounts, and someone to help those that might have problems with the interface.
I supppose that it depends on how you define youth. Do you mean 15-18 year olds, or do you include people in their 20s?
LK
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