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Starting an After-School Computer Club?
Kai_MH asks: "When I moved up to my high school this year (I'm a Sophomore), I was surprised to find that there was no 'computer' or 'technology' club at the school. Sure, there's A/V, but what fun is carrying TV sets around? So, I'd like to approach my school's administration about starting an after-school computer club. I'd like to educate my peers on the alternatives to Windows (Linux and Open Source), how hardware works and fits together, job offerings in computer-related fields, and anything else that may be of interest. Perhaps we can do fund-raisers to build and upgrade a computer for the club, which could be donated to the school or community? Does anyone have suggestions on this? Has anyone tried this before? I've had a lot of support from my peers, but I'm still not quite sure how to go about it."
I hope you have a large high school, because I know at mine it would have been a fruitless attempt. (People are busy enough usually).
However, there must be some sort of form to fill out, or you can just start a club without the school's permission under your Right to Assemble. Or you can wait for college, which for me is just a giant Computer Club.
(You'd probably get more members if you made it an area club to attract kids from nearby high schools.)
(Oh yea, and don't do drugs. (For at least another two years.))
"I only speak the truth"
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I know right now you probably consider your Principal and his assistants the enemies, but they are there and do care about you and your educational experience.
Walk into the office before class starts and ask the secretary for an appointment to talk to the principal or assistant. Explain that you want to start a computer club and you need to talk to a school employee for some direction and know how.
Not only will they see you, but you'll probably get to get out of class for at least a little bit.
Explain what you want to do, and what you need from the school, also ask for general assistance and they will be more then happy to help you.
First thing I'd do is talk to the teacher that
teaches the Computer Science classes. Most schools have a teacher sponsor that helps with the club. They'll probably have some idea of what to do or at least who to go to, to get the info you need.
The procedures for starting a club are varied and you'll just have to start asking.
I don't know if it will come up but I would certainly make sure that when forming the club that you are perfectly clear that the participants in the club will not be engaging in illeagal hacking, trading mp3's warez, during club meetings or with club equipment.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Many schools don't have advanced placement computer science courses. From someone who took the test last year, I can tell you that it was ridiculously easy. As long as you know your shit, it's not hard to prepare for the examination in a quarter of the time it takes schools to do so. You do not need to be in an AP course to take the test
Push the club as something that will not only be good to list on your college application, but might get you college credits as well as teach you a few things about computers. Play around with coding and perhaps make it unconvential (but not illegal, obviously).
In the end, if you could get a few 4's or 5's out of the members who sign up to take the test, the school might take notice (having kids who do well on the AP exams is what schools are ranked on in some part) and help you out with your endeavor the next year around.
You have to get a member of the faculty to sponsor you.
That doesn't mean money, but it does involve their time and their commitment to advocate to their peers in your behalf.
The football team has faculty sponsors (they're called "coaches"), as do the drill team, band, speech and drama groups.
You need one.
Your sponsor will be the person who can get facilities for your meetings, install-fests, guest speakers, etc. They may even be able to procure a little cash from whatever student activity fund your school may have, for refreshments.
When you are searching for a sponsor, there are couple things to remember about teachers:
1. There are good teachers and there are bad teachers.
2. Bad teachers are relatively rare.
3. Most of the good teachers have been beaten down.
4. Good teachers LOVE people like you.
Go talk to the instructors in the science and the art departments after school hours. The instructors that hang around late are the good ones. Skip the english department.
Knock on the door of the faculty breakroom at various times of the day over the course of the week and tell them that you are looking for a sponsor.
Your persistance will be noticed.
Somewhere in your school is an adult that can make your life much easier, someone who'd love to help you if only they knew who you are.
--Richard
We were in the same position; I was one of the founding members of our Computer Society, which has since been flourishing - here's what we did.
First and foremost, the absolute requirement is to have a sizeable number of people who are interested. I'm afraid that in my experience 'build it and they will come' does not cut much ice in this area - we had about a dozen people, which is enough to fill a small-ish room and so make meetings to voice support seem well-attended and popular :-) Basically, by asking nicely, and by getting the support of a Computing teacher, we managed to persuade the Powers That Be to grant us the use of a lab - complete with Ethernet & power around the room - outside lesson times to do what we liked with. We also managed to scrounge a few machines that were going spare - old Macs, mostly. From little acorns...
We used to hang around in there and experiment a bit, and very quickly the mini-network we had established (totally separate, as an imposed requirement, from the then-repressive school one - and so without any internet connectivity etc.) began to grow. People donated parts or computers; someone's Dad's surgery was clearing stuff out, so we got a server and a whole bunch of Vectras; we picked up arcane things like ancient Suns and SGIs; we bought a bunch of decent Compaq desktops off a failed .com for 25 quid each. We soon had more computers - a few dozen - than space, plus a good collection of books, bits, software, etc.
We all helped set things up, fix broken things, install software, build a proper network with roamng home directories, unified LDAP logons across multiple platforms, etc. (mostly Linux, but a few other Unices and a bit of Windows and classic Mac OS on the side...) It became actually usable as a resource, and people who weren't initially interested started to use our systems to learn to program, etc., which was very hard to do elsewhere. We lent them books, helped where we could, and so on. We ran projects, like robocode competitions, which were popular even with younger members of the school. We experimented with new things, like beta releases of Mac OS X, and Windows remote desktop things, so that we now provide all of the Windows applications from one application server to the Linux desktops. And so on, and so forth. We got up to all sorts of things (like this), wrote various neat bits of code and taught ourselves a great deal in the process.
A few of us wrote some software which turned out to be very useful to the school (a fairly advanced web-based content management system) and fought long political battles over how far pupils were to be trusted with such matters - would we put secret backdoors in, and so on. We finally reached an agreement which now promotes this sort of activity (previously frowned upon but now with more projects in the pipeline), and, as a bonus, guaranteed us the continued use of our lab and an internet connection.
Anyway, I hope this gives you some idea of what it was like for us and was vaguely helpful... Let me know if you have any questions.
Note that I wrote MOST not all. I actually know two "remember to close your mouth" gorgeous girls that are CS majors. Both of them are a rather pain to deal with (usually every bit as bad mood as their male fellows). As to negotiating about movies, I don't really give a shit about movies. If I really want to see one (i.e. Matrix Reloaded), I'll go on my own anyway, I don't want anyone to bother me. Generally, I don't think it's so much being geek that makes it impossible to get girls (/boys) but much more the social anxiety that very often comes with it (or maybe it is even responsible resp, required to become a geek in first place. I'm not psy major so I don't really have a clue). Matching interests help in a long term relationship but in general, I've found that if se x is the only thing you care for, they don't help at all. If you don't share much, it's much more probable you end up just fucking each others brains out since you don't have anything worse to do... And as I'm bored rather quickly, I'm probably not the material it takes for long term relationships anyway.
I am a teacher in a public Middle school in Carrollton, TX. I started a robotics club this year in order teach students robotics design, programming, teamwork and other skills. We use Lego Mindstorms and Handyboards in our club and program them in C, specifically Interactive C and Not Quite C (NQC). We also have one system running Linux as both IC and NQC are available for Linux.
My administration is very supportive of the club, providing money and other suppport through the year. The main difficulties in the club was raising money for the equipment and to pay the fee for the Botball competition we entered.
I applied for a grant with our local Educational Foundation and received $1,000 to fund the initital purchase of equipment. Your school district probably has an educational foundation that provides grants to teachers and students. Find a willing faculty member to sponsor your club and help you find funding and support.
Before I received that grant I began teaching the students C using a free Windows compiler I found on the net. It was perfect as it allowed the students to write Windows console applications without worrying about the code over head of a real Windows application. You can find the Bloodshed complier here
After we got our initial equipment I searched the net for grants available to public school teachers to fund technology applications. I applied for an $8,500 grant from The Verizon Foundation. This money will be used to pay our Botball entry fees for next year, and buy more advanced equipment for the students returning next year. I have had so much interest in the robotics club that I will probably have three clubs next year.