Slashdot Mirror
Re-purposing a Student Tech Service Group?
discards writes "I help run a student group at a Canadian University. For almost 15 years we've provided students with services such as web space, email, wireless internet on campus, cvs/svn, database access, mailing lists, etc., all using Linux and FOSS. In recent years, however, we have faced becoming obsolete. The university now provides wireless access, people get their email from other places such as Google, which also provides free svn access, web space, and so forth. Since we have a large amount of decent, usable hardware, as well as space, funding and a very fast internet connection, we are looking to possibly reform instead of just withering away and dying. We would like to ask Slashdot for ideas as to what we could do; preferably something that cultivates student research or provides an otherwise useful service to students, though all ideas are welcome."
At some point every person needs tech support. They don't know how to do something, their computer died, they lost data, are infected by a virus or some basic functionality has been lost.
Tech support would be number one on my list of helpful services.
The other thing that would be helpful is basic computer education. Yes, I know that most people in college already know how to work on the computers, however some, possibly older students, might be embarrassed to admit they don't know everything they feel that they should know. Confidential, one on one tutoring can eliminate the fear of admitting they aren't fully up to speed.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
Forget college students. Do something for inner-city youth. Gather old computer parts from your school or lbusiness, put them together, install linux and give them to schools with limited computing resources. Involve the students in this process as well. Teach them how to install linux. Then teach them how to administer their own system.
Why not take on a bigger challenge, and focus on teaching? Run small mini-classes on various topics, teach programming at all kinds of different levels, how to solve engineering problems numerically, etc. Since it is an engineering/design school, you can provide some kind of (real-life or online) forum helping people use technology to solve problems. I suppose this will somewhat depend on how your college's schedule works, but you will find that students will make time for you if you're providing a useful service. You've got the hardware -- now you just need to find a niche to add the value.
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Offer what Google doesn't; a protected data repository for the students IP. Make a local hosting source for all of the CS (and other) departments online projects, and educate them about why where you keep stuff on the 'net is as important as any other aspect. I know that all my g-mail is searchable, readable, and essentially the property of Google (if you can believe their TOS). Teach the students about Corporate and Private IP, how to protect it when it needs protecting, when and when not to hand over your rights...start discussions about why your data center is or is not needed.
I can't believe that students wouldn't rather have hosting locally rather then in some place in the USA.
Make it cheap, make it usable, make it useful.
Run tech courses, educating students about different technology.
Run LAN parties.
Do things that require face to face communication, and that people can't get some other place.
Do tech support and trouble shooting for people's websites (which they won't get else where).
Try and integrate into different departments, especially science related ones, and host data, run resource intensive programs etc.
Expand your eligibility criteria, open it up to arts students.
Also check out other student groups around the world, for example: http://www.tucs.org.au/
Most of all, enjoy.
I wank in the shower.
I'm currently a student (after being an admin for 10 years) working on a history degree. The one thing every class wants is lively out of class discussion but you never get it with the "blackboard" clones. Make available a PHPBB workalike to instructors with easy to remember URLs (eg, HIS3660.youdomain.com).
With that simple tool an instructor can post videos, syllabus, and class material that can be seen from any browser.
You could probably even offer this to student groups including the, gasp, non-school sponsored ones that don't get resources (like the history club I'm in).
Hire me...
While a clever way to comply with the law, this is wishful thinking. Most students will avoid the service because it doesn't have $RIAARTIST1 or $RIAAARTIST2.
To give some perspective: my college has a well-publicized campus radio station, but only a small percentage of students listen to it over ClearChannel stations.