Actually, my opinion is that Medhi Ali and some of the crew at Westchester did. I will never forget the "Computer for the Human Bean" booth at NECC featuring jelly beans for booth visitors.
They seemed determined to kill the platform and drive off our customer base. While I am now a Windows and Linux user, I plan on visiting this site. My wife still yearns for Zoom, the only computer game she ever loved. Personally I liked Battle Chess.
--Former Commodore/Amiga Dealer.
Absolutely. We just finished our 10th year of our IT Internship Program in Louisville. We had our 300th student hired and we earned our millionth dollar. This years 36 kids earned 96,700 dollars and many are still working as co-ops during the year.
So, YES employers DO hire certified, well-schooled students. Email me back at scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us for more info
Wetdog,
I am a resource teacher for the CTE computer programs at our 20 high schools. Here is what we use: A+-----Mike Meyers (Total Seminars) and Jean Andrews (Course) Network+---------Mike Meyers (Total Seminars) IC-3 --------Total Seminars IC-3 Text by Jernigan and Courseâ(TM)s IC-3 book
We support these three with the Total Seminars/LearnKey Video Series which we put on our servers and stream out to our schools.
We generally get about 60 kids a year certified in Network+ and A+ and a hundred more on IC-3. We will see how we do after employing the video support this year.
If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email. I am very active with both CompTIAs E2C program and ISTEs SIGCT, which is right up your alley. You are not alone.
Also, Avail yourself to two GREAT training opportunities... In early August every summer CompTIA hosts Breakaway (next year in Las Vegas). They have 1.5 days of preconference training WITH the authors of the above books. Plus other teachers and SMEs run sessions throughout the sessions. There is a nice exhib hall and all meals are on the house so that you can concentrate on sharing with your cohorts. It is AWESOME!
Also every June ISTE sponsors NECC, the granddaddy of all educational conferences. The SIGCT hosts many events and sessions that deal with your topics. PLUS it is the biggest EXHIB hall since Comdex closed down. Next June it will be in Washington DC, so should be huge (ie., 17,000 folks)! Both are great, though different.
While some may say just hop on the internet, be aware that at home that may be fine, but lots of the great sites are off-limits to schools due to the cussing on the discussion sites. Also, the support you will get from Mike and Jean's sites are what you will need. There is a reason that they are the top two authors in the field. Once you meet them, you will really understand.
Scott Horan, IT Internship and Resource Teacher
School to Career Office
Van Hoose Education Center, 3332 Newburg Road
Louisville, KY 40218
(502) 619-3132 cell 485-3320 office
scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us shoran@insightbb.com
People from outside KY don't know that. I'm proud of my wildcats and cards... and I'm proud of my state... most people don't know jack about us except by what we tell them. We don't get jobs here because people have images of who we are based on jokes. I owned a computer store for 15 years and when I competed outside of KY I had to contend with the stereotypes about our state. So, sorry about not laughing. I won't call you a moron, 'cause you read slashdot... you must have something going on. Hope you can appreciate the bigger picture
Gun Range? I live in KY and have been to Geek Squad City a number of times. You doofus, Geek Squad moved to Brooks, KY because it is a suburb of Louisville and just south of the largest UPS hub in the nation. They take in 2,500 computers a day, fix them and ship 85% of them out by nightfall. Those computers land on the dock at 5:00am and get picked up by 6:00pm. By nightfall they are on a plane getting ready to fly back by morning to every major city in America. They employ about 850 multiple industry-certified techs who use state of the art techniques to fix the computers we consumers screw up. The place is like a giant airplane hanger filled with conveyor belts and 50-yard tech benches. Each row/line is dedicated to a different model or brand. It is a sight to behold. Parts department alone has over $4 mil in immediately available parts so that repairs don't have to wait on shipping.
One other thing... Geek Squad has taken an ambitious and proactive role in helping local school district tech programs. My students have been over there on tours; they have gotten jobs there after graduation; their "geeks" judge and help sponsor local tech competitions. I couldn't imagine a nicer neighbor.
The appropriate question is whether broadband brought GeekSquad or UPS did. As a local, I can tell you it was not the broadband.
As one of those teachers who has won many of those awards (Math and IT, not physics), I can only echo his points with one or two additions I have gleaned doing this since '82.
Lawsuits. Our public classrooms are hamstrung by the fears our districts have of being sued. Most our our networks are so tied down, students can do little of what they do at home... and while that protects us all, it also serverely limits the top 50% of our kids.
Computing... We need to redefine our Core Subjects and include IT or Computing or whatever a local municipality wants to call it. We require students to know many IT topics, but do not require that it be taught. Most Districts seem to think this will come via osmosis. If you look at the educational computing industry, it is less about "the ABOUT computing" and more about teaching "WITH" computers (how can we use computers to jazz up History).
This summer a number of my IT Interns created the Internet Cafe for the Senior Games (Olympics) held here in Louisville. They customized a Unbuntu distro so that ALL the users could do was logon to the internet and browse and turn the darned thing off. It was perfect. We did this on donated P-III machines. If you would like to contact me, our Student Technology Leadership Program (Beta club for geeks) would love to work with your local school district to get locally donated machines and use our solution at your site. You would have to have an internet drop in the room, or better a drop and a switch and router with a row of computers in the community room of the assisted living facility. For a local bunch of high school kids, it is a no-brainer. We could pen-pal with them, or IM for any tech support they would need. But they would need to be the bodies that carried in the computers and physically set them up. A local church Youth Group could do just as well.
In a worst case scenario, we could prepare the machines, have them shipped to you and help with minimal tech support. You (or whomever the beneficiary would be) would need to pay for shipping in this scenario. For us, the main thing is having a computer based service project.. which we would love.
My email is scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us
If your below story is true, with the sum of Gateway and Acer's notebook sales combined, won't that jack them quite a bit past Apple? Just a couple of months ago, Acer alone was just even with Apple notebook sales.
Reply after reply seemed below seemed to reflect the worst uses of technology to prove their anecdotal points... kind of like saying your schools were bad because you remembered some coach who read the paper and cussed instead of taught. The problem is not technology but its proper execution toward learning in schools.
There are many schools that let math teachers teach math and english teachers teach english and have IT teachers who teach the skills kids need to use the computers to do their work both at home and in the classroom. Back in the 90's political correctness saw one computer in every classroom! How the heck would that work? Yet our president and his whole education department poo-poo'd labs because they were too cheap to fund them.
I agree with many of the open source advocates who have spoken on this topic. PXES and other Linux solutions provide inexpensive ways to bring massive numbers of inexpensive boxes to the masses of kids who need to write and calculate and problem solve. Kids don't need brand new laptops in a one-one configuration (unless they own them) when schools can be technologically rich with labs for a fraction of the cost. Our school is a recycling center for companies who donate their P-IIs and P-IIIs by the hundreds! We have over 20 labs for a school of 1800. We use DANA Palm devices for english classes. We allow students to bring in their laptops & PDAs from home. We loan out computers for kids to take home (we have a very diverse school). We are a Microsoft Academy, a RedHat Academy, a Microsoft MSDNAA, Microsoft FreshStart Program, and a CompTIA school... with both VUE & Certiport testing centers. So lots of kids get certified, lots get summer and afterschool IT Internships, and lots get to take multiple computer classes (1475 of our kids take at least ONE full time computer class in a lab daily). In addition all of our departments use computers in the class and visit our many writing labs.
Yet in this "sandbox" kids have a good time, they learn alot, and they go to college in very high numbers (85+%). We have the highest rate of CIS/Engineering majors in our large district at our local colleges despite NOT being a magnet school or pre-engineering program.
The main thing we do that differentiates our approach is mandate a minimum of two years of computer classes then after everyone is on the "playground", offer them the tools and the courses to progress up the ladder. That ladder includes over 37 AP courses (Newsweek rated us 300th out of 27,000+ American High Schools), and 12 Technology Majors. We have large numbers of females and minorities in our tech classes, so it is not a white mail enclave.
The main thing is that we do not break any budgets doing this. We do not "Admit" only smart kids. We just execute a well-thought out program. This is a program that could be replicated just about anywhere....
No spaghetti code here.
-- Eastern Eagle
I teach in a high school and here are some ideas that my kids have talked about:
(if you sponsor something, have great prizes like awesome video cards or ipod mods or other gearhead gadgets). Make the contest either national (run it with CompTIA or somebody) or in a metro area (like Louisville, KY).. statewide contests bomb. Your role is that you gather the prizes and be the judges.
1. Sponsor a computer repair bench competition in the gym of a school
2. Sponsor a modding contest for educational adaptations of a computer or PDA (like the Alphasmart DANA)
3. Sponsor a software contest for school needed handy utilities (like teacher sign-in box, or parent tardy sign-in kiosk, or security guard hallpass checking wireless PDA software that creates passes on the fly), or a host of a million ways that IT could actually improve a school but doesn't because the people who run IT are in central office instead of center hall.
The most important thing is go into a school and chat with the IT teachers and kids and connect them to you as well as vice versa. Most IT classes (A+, Cisco, Network+, Linux+, Programming, etc) just don't see enough real world folk in schools. For more, contact Gary Hannah at the CompTIA Jobs+ (E2C) Program (www.comptia.org).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, my opinion is that Medhi Ali and some of the crew at Westchester did. I will never forget the "Computer for the Human Bean" booth at NECC featuring jelly beans for booth visitors. They seemed determined to kill the platform and drive off our customer base. While I am now a Windows and Linux user, I plan on visiting this site. My wife still yearns for Zoom, the only computer game she ever loved. Personally I liked Battle Chess. --Former Commodore/Amiga Dealer.
Absolutely. We just finished our 10th year of our IT Internship Program in Louisville. We had our 300th student hired and we earned our millionth dollar. This years 36 kids earned 96,700 dollars and many are still working as co-ops during the year. So, YES employers DO hire certified, well-schooled students. Email me back at scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us for more info
Wetdog, I am a resource teacher for the CTE computer programs at our 20 high schools. Here is what we use: A+-----Mike Meyers (Total Seminars) and Jean Andrews (Course) Network+---------Mike Meyers (Total Seminars) IC-3 --------Total Seminars IC-3 Text by Jernigan and Courseâ(TM)s IC-3 book We support these three with the Total Seminars/LearnKey Video Series which we put on our servers and stream out to our schools. We generally get about 60 kids a year certified in Network+ and A+ and a hundred more on IC-3. We will see how we do after employing the video support this year. If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email. I am very active with both CompTIAs E2C program and ISTEs SIGCT, which is right up your alley. You are not alone. Also, Avail yourself to two GREAT training opportunities... In early August every summer CompTIA hosts Breakaway (next year in Las Vegas). They have 1.5 days of preconference training WITH the authors of the above books. Plus other teachers and SMEs run sessions throughout the sessions. There is a nice exhib hall and all meals are on the house so that you can concentrate on sharing with your cohorts. It is AWESOME! Also every June ISTE sponsors NECC, the granddaddy of all educational conferences. The SIGCT hosts many events and sessions that deal with your topics. PLUS it is the biggest EXHIB hall since Comdex closed down. Next June it will be in Washington DC, so should be huge (ie., 17,000 folks)! Both are great, though different. While some may say just hop on the internet, be aware that at home that may be fine, but lots of the great sites are off-limits to schools due to the cussing on the discussion sites. Also, the support you will get from Mike and Jean's sites are what you will need. There is a reason that they are the top two authors in the field. Once you meet them, you will really understand. Scott Horan, IT Internship and Resource Teacher School to Career Office Van Hoose Education Center, 3332 Newburg Road Louisville, KY 40218 (502) 619-3132 cell 485-3320 office scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us shoran@insightbb.com
People from outside KY don't know that. I'm proud of my wildcats and cards... and I'm proud of my state... most people don't know jack about us except by what we tell them. We don't get jobs here because people have images of who we are based on jokes. I owned a computer store for 15 years and when I competed outside of KY I had to contend with the stereotypes about our state. So, sorry about not laughing. I won't call you a moron, 'cause you read slashdot... you must have something going on. Hope you can appreciate the bigger picture
Gun Range?
I live in KY and have been to Geek Squad City a number of times. You doofus, Geek Squad moved to Brooks, KY because it is a suburb of Louisville and just south of the largest UPS hub in the nation. They take in 2,500 computers a day, fix them and ship 85% of them out by nightfall. Those computers land on the dock at 5:00am and get picked up by 6:00pm. By nightfall they are on a plane getting ready to fly back by morning to every major city in America. They employ about 850 multiple industry-certified techs who use state of the art techniques to fix the computers we consumers screw up. The place is like a giant airplane hanger filled with conveyor belts and 50-yard tech benches. Each row/line is dedicated to a different model or brand. It is a sight to behold. Parts department alone has over $4 mil in immediately available parts so that repairs don't have to wait on shipping.
One other thing... Geek Squad has taken an ambitious and proactive role in helping local school district tech programs. My students have been over there on tours; they have gotten jobs there after graduation; their "geeks" judge and help sponsor local tech competitions. I couldn't imagine a nicer neighbor.
The appropriate question is whether broadband brought GeekSquad or UPS did. As a local, I can tell you it was not the broadband.
-- IT Teacher in Louisville
As one of those teachers who has won many of those awards (Math and IT, not physics), I can only echo his points with one or two additions I have gleaned doing this since '82. Lawsuits. Our public classrooms are hamstrung by the fears our districts have of being sued. Most our our networks are so tied down, students can do little of what they do at home... and while that protects us all, it also serverely limits the top 50% of our kids. Computing... We need to redefine our Core Subjects and include IT or Computing or whatever a local municipality wants to call it. We require students to know many IT topics, but do not require that it be taught. Most Districts seem to think this will come via osmosis. If you look at the educational computing industry, it is less about "the ABOUT computing" and more about teaching "WITH" computers (how can we use computers to jazz up History).
This summer a number of my IT Interns created the Internet Cafe for the Senior Games (Olympics) held here in Louisville. They customized a Unbuntu distro so that ALL the users could do was logon to the internet and browse and turn the darned thing off. It was perfect. We did this on donated P-III machines. If you would like to contact me, our Student Technology Leadership Program (Beta club for geeks) would love to work with your local school district to get locally donated machines and use our solution at your site. You would have to have an internet drop in the room, or better a drop and a switch and router with a row of computers in the community room of the assisted living facility. For a local bunch of high school kids, it is a no-brainer. We could pen-pal with them, or IM for any tech support they would need. But they would need to be the bodies that carried in the computers and physically set them up. A local church Youth Group could do just as well. In a worst case scenario, we could prepare the machines, have them shipped to you and help with minimal tech support. You (or whomever the beneficiary would be) would need to pay for shipping in this scenario. For us, the main thing is having a computer based service project.. which we would love. My email is scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us
If your below story is true, with the sum of Gateway and Acer's notebook sales combined, won't that jack them quite a bit past Apple? Just a couple of months ago, Acer alone was just even with Apple notebook sales.
Reply after reply seemed below seemed to reflect the worst uses of technology to prove their anecdotal points... kind of like saying your schools were bad because you remembered some coach who read the paper and cussed instead of taught. The problem is not technology but its proper execution toward learning in schools. There are many schools that let math teachers teach math and english teachers teach english and have IT teachers who teach the skills kids need to use the computers to do their work both at home and in the classroom. Back in the 90's political correctness saw one computer in every classroom! How the heck would that work? Yet our president and his whole education department poo-poo'd labs because they were too cheap to fund them. I agree with many of the open source advocates who have spoken on this topic. PXES and other Linux solutions provide inexpensive ways to bring massive numbers of inexpensive boxes to the masses of kids who need to write and calculate and problem solve. Kids don't need brand new laptops in a one-one configuration (unless they own them) when schools can be technologically rich with labs for a fraction of the cost. Our school is a recycling center for companies who donate their P-IIs and P-IIIs by the hundreds! We have over 20 labs for a school of 1800. We use DANA Palm devices for english classes. We allow students to bring in their laptops & PDAs from home. We loan out computers for kids to take home (we have a very diverse school). We are a Microsoft Academy, a RedHat Academy, a Microsoft MSDNAA, Microsoft FreshStart Program, and a CompTIA school... with both VUE & Certiport testing centers. So lots of kids get certified, lots get summer and afterschool IT Internships, and lots get to take multiple computer classes (1475 of our kids take at least ONE full time computer class in a lab daily). In addition all of our departments use computers in the class and visit our many writing labs. Yet in this "sandbox" kids have a good time, they learn alot, and they go to college in very high numbers (85+%). We have the highest rate of CIS/Engineering majors in our large district at our local colleges despite NOT being a magnet school or pre-engineering program. The main thing we do that differentiates our approach is mandate a minimum of two years of computer classes then after everyone is on the "playground", offer them the tools and the courses to progress up the ladder. That ladder includes over 37 AP courses (Newsweek rated us 300th out of 27,000+ American High Schools), and 12 Technology Majors. We have large numbers of females and minorities in our tech classes, so it is not a white mail enclave. The main thing is that we do not break any budgets doing this. We do not "Admit" only smart kids. We just execute a well-thought out program. This is a program that could be replicated just about anywhere.... No spaghetti code here. -- Eastern Eagle
I teach in a high school and here are some ideas that my kids have talked about: (if you sponsor something, have great prizes like awesome video cards or ipod mods or other gearhead gadgets). Make the contest either national (run it with CompTIA or somebody) or in a metro area (like Louisville, KY).. statewide contests bomb. Your role is that you gather the prizes and be the judges. 1. Sponsor a computer repair bench competition in the gym of a school 2. Sponsor a modding contest for educational adaptations of a computer or PDA (like the Alphasmart DANA) 3. Sponsor a software contest for school needed handy utilities (like teacher sign-in box, or parent tardy sign-in kiosk, or security guard hallpass checking wireless PDA software that creates passes on the fly), or a host of a million ways that IT could actually improve a school but doesn't because the people who run IT are in central office instead of center hall. The most important thing is go into a school and chat with the IT teachers and kids and connect them to you as well as vice versa. Most IT classes (A+, Cisco, Network+, Linux+, Programming, etc) just don't see enough real world folk in schools. For more, contact Gary Hannah at the CompTIA Jobs+ (E2C) Program (www.comptia.org).