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Education

Tux on the Upper West Side 151

Posted by emmett from the linux-in-education dept.
The Beacon School is a selective secondary public school on West 61st Street in New York City. It is a place where students are encouraged to work with computers and technology, not just to run educational software, but to write code, administer networks and troubleshoot hardware. Long on knowledge but short on cash, Beacon is a textbook example of how Linux and Open Source make the impossible possible in education.

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.
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Tux on the Upper West Side More

Tux on the Upper West Side

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  • 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 school sounds like the high school I attend, although more computer oriented. My school, the Science Academy of South Texas, specializes in technical classes, sciences, and math. We differ from other schools in that we have a set of required electives referred to by the students as the tech classes. They range from freshman technology systems, where students learn about different systems, energy sources, and applications, to senior research and development, where the students find a problem, research it, and provide a solution. We also have several architecture and engineering graphics classes, as well as an electronics class said to be similar to college digital I. Our school district is rather poor as well, but we do manage to get along. Students are encouraged to learn above and beyond what is taught or whatever falls in their interest areas.
    For example, a friend of mine and I are currently in the process of building a small linux network from computers that are about 10 years old. The great thing about that is we probably wouldn't be doing that if we went to a regular school because we wouldn't be allowed free reign over the equipment.
  • Say it with me now:

    Hell YES!

  • As much as I like Perl, it seems poorly suited for an introduction to programming. Really, if you take a bunch of kids who are just learning how to code and drop them into a mess of Perl, it's much more likely to frighten them than anything else. More often than not, it still manages to scare me. Really, a more 'standard' introduction to programming, leading into the actual useful stuff (such as perl) might be more appropriate.

  • MBHS (Score:1)

    by SuperJ ( 125753 )
    Where I go to school at the Math Science Computer Magnet at Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, we've had a Linux server for at least 5 years. We students get to do coding with gcc, send email, etc. There is a sort of geeky community which has developed around the server. We have classes from Java to C++ to Networking. We also have a LUG (MBLUG) which I founded :-) We currently have 3 Linux machines (not including the server) on the network. We had about 10 students and 2 teachers show up for Linux Demo Day. Power to the other geeky high schools out there!
  • Some URLs:
    Main MBHS page [mbhs.edu]
    MBLUG page [mbhs.edu]
  • The school I went to for middle school took only the top few hundred children in the school district, and then put them in special classes, etc. We generally had better computers and more access to them than the children in the other schools in the district, at least in Montgomery County, MD.

    Walt

  • You're blowing this just a bit out of proportion. When I was in High School, one of my fellow nerds said, "You wanna take this class, I think it's going to be important. A lot of businesses will be using it.". My response was "no" because I figured that by the time I graduated college and got out into the "real world" any technology I learned in HS would be obsolete, and that I could learn just as much about computing in general (and have more fun) by hacking my C-64. Oh, the class he wanted me to take? It was PL/1. sigh... I remember that like it was yesterday.

    Anyhow, the point is that they are learning universally applicable skills, not just specific systems. Who would you rather hire: Someone who knows all the keystrokes for Word, or someone who can sit down in front of any piece of software and become proficient in a couple of weeks.

  • It seems unlikely anyone (including yourself) is going to read this, but I'll post it anyway.

    The reason that Win2k/SQL Server 2k was not brought into the conversation was because the initial poster obviously came from an established company that had had the IX solution in place for awhile.

    If you take a look at TPCs results from last year for database benchmarking, you'll notice that the Win NT / MS SQL Server benchmarks were, while cheaper, drastically less capable of processing numerous transactions.

    As well, IX systems offer more scalability than Windows. Beyond that, and relating back to the initial poster -- the cost of transferring entire systems over to win2k/sql 2k is extensive. You might want to take a look at executive summary and full disclosure on that site as well. For enterprise systems, until Win2k proves itself, I'll recommend IX, I'm afraid.

    Another interesting facet is that most of the other companies in the top 10 have not submitted solutions in quite some time. Microsoft submits to TPC religiously (and has had some hubbub over fudging results), whereas other vendors do not.

    The price of IBM / Sun, etc systems are falling, albeit slowly. If you want a system that can deal with 5000 simultaneous users, I'd doubt it's even possible to scale Win2k to handle it. If you've any literature to the contrary, I'd appreciate your sending it on to me.

    -l
  • Stuyvesant in NYC, and I think Lowell in San Francisco (or, as we UCBerkeley students call it, "the City"). I think these, and others, are established selective public schools. I was always a little envious...

    When I went to the national high school journalism competition in SanFran four years ago (was high school that long ago?) The kids from Lowell had a very kick-@$$ web page up documenting the proceedings. It was so cool. I wanted to go back with them instead of back to Lodi!

  • Man, I'm going to have to start a program like this in a local school when I get a chance.

    If the truth be known, I am a Senior at a Private high school. I am also trying to get Linux integrated into the system here(no distro mentioned, flame war bad). I have had some luck getting the Sysop to approve Linux on one box, but I now have to get a proposal approved to get it officially integrated into the network. Good job emmett.

  • 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)

  • No. The Beacon School is a *public* school.
  • Did I misunderstand something, or are you saying that perl is not a good language to start with, because one can do 'bad code' easily with perl? Perl encourages people to do things the easy way. If these students have a good teacher, I don't know better language to start with. In perl, there are very few rules to learn and you can use (teach) same language for scripting and 'serious' programming.
  • I have seen the same mentality you've just expressed running rampant in universities lately. It sounds great in theory, but in practice it results in students who are nearly useless as programmers. I won't argue the theoretical merits of teaching higher level concepts to students, because in theory, I agree with you. Unfortunately the idea of teaching higher level concepts and abstract issues of design to a student first, does not work all that well.

    Why? Because they have nothing to relate this new knowledge to. Again and again I've seen students walking out of classes taught the way you mention completely confused. Never having seen how design is applied in the real world, they fail to truly 'get' it and fall back on wrote memorization to learn enough to simply pass the next test. Once the class is over, they promptly forget what they 'learned', because this knowledge never really made much sense.

    The people who really seem to make use of the more abstract programming concepts, are the ones for whom basic issues of programming syntax and logic are no longer a mystery. These people can comfortably transition from programmer to designer, because they now have a context in which to apply the abstract concepts they will be taught.

  • I'm confused.. just how do the kids load AOL on those linux machines? And how are the kids loading games?!?!

  • Re:Long on Knowledge - short on cash ? (Score:3)

    by lblack ( 124294 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @06:09AM (#1228252)
    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)

    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 [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 /that/ much effort to word things in English. Everybody who has ever tendered a proposal has had to do it at some point.

    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
  • Chris:

    This is fantastic. I like the idea of letting kids explore interests, but keep good perspective. Computers used wisely can really make subject matter come alive. (Especially in science. I taught a beginning college physics lab where visualization and data analysis tools improved course content significantly...)

    Have you and your comrades ever thought of attempting some open source educational programs? (Some physics demonstrations, perhaps?) I think this would be a great application for high school students to pursue. (Or myself, as a matter of fact...)

    Have you also encouraged your teachers and administrators to publish a paper or two in some educational journals? (Curriculum developers often don't see the generic articles...)

  • Too much emphasis on books can also be a bad thing. The last thing schools need is to become a school for a "society of book critics."

    I agree that public schools are becoming too "vo-tech" oriented, but I don't see how CS classes to learn to use the "tool"that is the computer are any different from a Lit class. It is a class to learn to get the most out of a tool, and an opportunity to learn to think critically.

    I think that this is an important point, because critical thinking has taken a back seat to "don't do drugs" and "use a condom." Perhaps exposure to the uncompromising logic of computers will yield a generation who do not have to be told that "drugs are bad, mmmkay."
  • Olympia, Washington's Capital High School is implementing a program which utilizes donated equipment to run linux. This is a public school, so there's hope...
  • A public school finally worthy of some praise!!
  • I have seen AOL applications for linux now. I for one use gAIM, which is the gimp Aol Instance Messenger. That is one of the things AOL is trying to over come so they can be run on all platforms. Which I do not blame them. I have also played Quake on my linux box's for some time now. So beleive me there are also many deversions out there for Linux just as there is for M$.
  • Yeah, I saw Mr. Lehman talking about the same thing about how he helped built the e-mail services in the Beacon School and getting a static IP even with the bureaucracy in New York City's Board of Ed. (/me applauses.)

    However, I still want to see Linux as the client in the computer labs AND the servers. I am even willing to bring my computer from my home office to my workplace (a computer lab in college). Can that be done?
    --
  • Interesting thought. Here was my evperience today from a middle school running 2 Linux servers (proxy/communication, one file/user network authentication). These are students (grades 6-8) who just moved from Apple to Win 98 boxes with far fewer problems than the teaching staff. They were researching carreers while I was busily installing Dual boot RH Linux and win 98 capabilities on the machines. They were having an argument on how to spell Linux. One of the 6th graders is teaching himself at home. I wandered over and told him what I was doing. He eagerly agreed to be one of my desktop testers. How do they save M$Word Documents? Simple. we have Star Office installed on both Desktop OS's. It will save all documents that students would be able to create, and it saves them as MS word, to be pulled up on a Mac or Windows platforms. We've already tackled the platform war. and trained students that the software that is running is the main issue. If you know how a computer works and how to use logic and reason, you can figure out how to use any Office suite (Oh, they use AppleWorks too!) So far, students have learned from the Linux on the district servers (all 25 of them, with 10,000 users), that: 1) Linux saved enough money to let the district buy 2 labs full of "real" computers. 2) Linux doesn't crash the server everytime an entire class saves hyperstudio projects at once. They brought down the NT server last year, when the recieved timeouts. It appears that Linux has less overhead on the same hardware. 3) The quickest way to speed up logins is to install Linux. 4) Zero Administration is a marketing ploy aimed at executives wanting to remove IT staff. An enterprise network has thousands of parts and individual users. A well designed network and an OS that has been tested by a large number of people before release will help reduce downtime, but not eliminate it. The district does have an RHCE on the staff of the network conultants and the students have picked him as the head geek and ask him all kinds of questions that they get from their home Linux systems. They have become so interested that they want to the school to offer an RHCE program. The RHCE300 test is real life server trouble shooting and setup, rather than an electronic pencil and paper test. If you want the opportunity to see what students can do, Ford Middle School in Brookpark, Ohio, will be the host site for a Linux in schools presentation. We'll be reviewing the Linux servers and desktops in schools, warts and all. Sandy McGuire, System Administrator, Berea City School District, SSNI

  • marketable skills? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:14AM (#1228262)
    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?
  • I'm in this same type of school district, but our whole district is run by NT (yuck!), and I finally got a linux box in the network admin's office.. I love open source and linux, and wish our whole network would do it, but our district is pathetically low on funds, they wont even use free opensource software to run the network.. and the fact also they have to have that crap cyberpatrol on the network for the kiddies.. I haven't found a linux porn filter proxy yet, but pretty much our network admin is scared of Linux, too and they wont pay for him either to get training on it. I was the technician for our high school, fixed everything for everyone.. then finally got fed up with the crap of the other tech administrator, and quit.. if they are trying to teach kids how to be successful in school, why dont they have the tools that are most used in the workplace now like linux which is free, and not having admins jump down someone's shorts for the free help... It is pathetic.

  • Grass root efforts are better (Score:3)

    by 348 ( 124012 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:15AM (#1228264) Homepage
    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.

  • Public HS (Score:3)

    by maxmaxmax ( 107666 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:16AM (#1228266) Homepage Journal
    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
  • 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.

    You'll probably find that the Unix guys have an inverted sense of the corporate social structure. This means that people like you who don't directly affect them are considered worthless, whereas the guys who take the trash out are treated with great respect, because they know they don't want to do that job.

    Anyway, it could be that the NT machines are being used for a totally different purpose. They could even be costing more. If there's a problem with an NT machine then the person who uses it could probably fix it, but how long does that take?

    Of course, the wool could be being pulled over your eyes. It all depends. What are these machines being used for?
  • 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...
  • These days, some public schools are reinventing themselves, and new schools are being born, as 'selective' -- trying to appeal to the segment of the population that might otherwise send kids to private school. "Magnet schools" and "charter schools" and specialized academies choose students from a pool of applicants, which is almost always huge in a big city because regular public schools generally have a bad reputation. I'm not quite sure as to the criteria that selective public schools use -- probably potential for learning and low-income status and possibly sometimes ethnic diversity. Perhaps the beaconschool.org website might tell you.

  • 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.


    I whole-heartedly agree. Help them build their system. Take the Slash code [slashdot.org] 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 is a place where students are encouraged to work with computers and technology, not just to run educational software


    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.
  • 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.
  • I guess someone is trying to prevent an /.ting from happening, but it's interesting nonetheless, there are some really cool webpages there [beaconschool.org]. And, in the middle of this page [sendmail.net] you'll find some familiar names...
  • I'm glad to see that somewhere out there the school board and faculty members of a jr. high or highschool level educational inststitution are finally teaching people about computers rather than just trying to control the learning curve. Where I went to school it was more like a struggle with the powers that be to learn. Computers were seen as simply a tool (like an overpowered calculator)or a black box that came prepared for whatever mind numbing predefined task we were assigned. Any thoughts of personalizing a user profile or using a computer outside the predefined parameters of: 1) checking your email (but only your school provided email of course...) 2) finding library books (i.e. PALS) 3) using your (easily disabled)proxy-neutered Internet for research or 4) Word Processing was striclty forbidden by school code (they passed special regulations just to limit our use of school computers to nil. We had three computer labs, one full of PowerMacs, one full of Dell's, and the other Misc. Pc's in the library (only two of which had web access). Of these three clusters, the only ones available for use by students outside of class was the library cluster. To see a school that actually promotes using computers for more than just secretarial work is refreshing. If every school encouraged kids to learn how to maintain a computer and program (not just brain hashing assignments but their own programs) I think we'd all be better off. For one many of the stigmas related to computers as mysterious boxes with magical inner workings would vanish. Not to mention at least a better public awareness as a whole, and we all know it's about time for that.


  • 1.) 160K is a lot of money. I agree. But you are making that interpretation based within the context of your experiences. The problem here is that you don't understand what value this person / persons bring to the organization. You admitted that you don NOT understand what these people do, so how about taking some initiative and learning something? It is exactly that behavior type that warrants 160K for that employee. When he/she does not know something. They seek out that knowledge. I do commend you for putting it out there on /. But I think your time would have been better spent by taking this individual out to lunch and asking them what they do... It is amazing what can be accomplished when people stop being so guarded with what they know.

    2.) 160K is a lot of money. BUT do you know what that dollar figure is comprised of? Let's start with adding up the some total of MCSE's u have on staff. The small army may very well not have the collective knowledge to truly administer the NT side, but are forced to chase down issues inherent in the M$ platform.

    3.) Forget everything you learned over the years about compensation. The times have changed. Supply and Demand is a powerful force my friend. Perhaps in 10 years this will be a non issue, but for now, you may just have to swallow the fact that that some "Gen-Xer's" makes more money than you do. I know, that is hard to fathom. The concept of yearly performance reviews and 3% raises just doesn't cut it. The job of Sys Admin is a 24 hour, 7 day a week job. I guarantee that the snowboarding (read = irresponsible) Sys Admin's were dialing regularly to monitor there Box's. Just because they were on vacation does not mean that they are no longer responsible for what they physically left behind. Often time this concept is lost on the 9-5 types that leave their abacus at the office and go home to Marge. Simply put... How may new CPA's are certified each year? How many Sun Certified Solaris Admin's are certified each year.

    This is NOT meant to be inflammatory, but to encourage you to take the initiative to gain a big picture understand of the forces in play here. If you are being put in the position of making technology decisions it is your responsibility to make it wisely.
  • This is off-topic, but I'd like to add that this is the sort of interaction that first attracted me to Slashdot!

    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!)

  • 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.

  • The Beacon School is a selective secondary public school on West 61st Street in New York City.

    Due to financial constraints placed on public schools, Beacon has to get the most out of every piece of technology they have.

  • Funding is everything! Teachers and administrators ALWAYS look at the bottom line and by using Open Source materials, you are way better off financially (and technically as well). Show and prove that the techniques you are learning in the existing classes could easily be taught with Linux, FreeBSD, etc. And best of all, bring a working example or just happen to install Linux on a spare partition and show them what it can really do!
  • I had thought that polite behavior was a thing of the past. I am so delighted to be proved wrong! :)

    Believe it or not, that's how USENET USEd to be.. ten years ago...

    Boy, it's been awhile...


    Your Working Boy,
  • The question you have to ask yourself is what do these servers do?

    I'm a systems administrator for a large utility and we have a range of different platforms, from a couple of OS/390 IBM Mainframes to a lot of SUN Servers (all types), to NT machines.

    It seems likely that your employer has the same scenario.

    Unix boxes have drastically more important tasks than the NT boxes, they maintain large database and run most of the mission critical systems in an organisation. They tend to be easily scalable from small dozen person operations to large national support (we have literally thousands of users).

    But it takes VERY talented people to keep a system like this running smoothly. Your Unix people can go on holiday, but thats only because they spend a great deal of time ensuring that it isn't going to break.

    NT people have smaller user group, less important tasks (they tend to run the front-end user faced systems which aren't very system intensive),and tend to be a lot less talented.

    Mind you, saying that, it seems likely for that money you are employing contractors. You could do with re-assessing you employment policy.

    For some job security, and a some respect to your employees you can get some decent permies that will cost a LOT less.

    More that NT people though, like a say it takes more talent to do this job.

    OMS

  • The gain on the other hand is immense, the students gain an understanding of the real world. They have access to put forward their ideas. They have a feeling of empoewerment (icky Americanism but it fits perfectly here).


    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 [ftech.net] has to say about how children learn. Give them the source and watch where they go with it.
  • "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 [python.org] and Fra nk Stajano [python.org]. 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?

  • It's important to get them hooked first. (Score:4)

    by twit ( 60210 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @06:42AM (#1228287) Homepage
    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.

    --
  • How many potential Alan Cox's (Coxi?)

    Hmm... I suppose the most interesting plural would be Coxen, using the Saxon plural? I quote the Jargon File:

    On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in `-xen' (see VAXen and boxen in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see frobnitz) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see Unix, TWENEX in main text). But note that `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are never used; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested to general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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"?
  • It's nice to know that at least there is a school somewhere that realizes computers are not just fancy typewriters. When I started HS in 1993, our "computer lab" was all XTs (with no HD and two 5.25 floppy drives) running WordPerfect for DOS. At some point they got new computers (paying wayyyy too much for IBM branded junk -- $2500 for a pentium 100 with no CDROM when the 200s were already out -- despite my objections). Then they installed WP for Win 3.1 (when I graduated in 1997 they were still running 3.1 on all the machines). There were signs all over the place saying that it was against the rules to exit to DOS. If you were "caught in dos" you got kicked out of the "lab."

    After I graduated they got a T1 line, so it is possible that things have changed. I know one of my English teachers takes advantage of the Web often in her class, but I think in general the lab is still considered the fancy-typewriter-room.

    The guy they have running the room is a complete moron and has apparently managed to piss off every teacher in the school. They asked me to interview all the candidates for the position and give my report. There was one guy who was perfect, but they didn't pick him, they picked mister #3 (out of 4), for reasons I will never know. The guy apparently had no teaching experience and is just anal about the computers. Yay.

    They had an independent study computer programming class, where we learned Pascal, but that was sort of a joke. We had to come after school once a week, and we didn't really get taught, we just kind of read a book.

    Anyway, it's nice to see a school that doesn't treat its kids like morons -- though I must admit that that's how most of the kids in my HS deserved to be treated. Maybe if there are more schools like this I won't have to send my kid to private school.

    Check out [k12.ny.us] their webpage... one huge graphic with an imagemap. Now THAT's what I call good design!!

    _________________

  • I'm at UTS in Sydney, Australia, 2nd year...
    The first language we were taught was Eiffel (which i'm sure most of u NEVER heard of)...
    In my opinion its PERFECT for 1st language, and this is why:

    1. Layout is part of the specification - if u do spagetti, u lose marks because u aren't following the spec
    2. It's completely, absolutely and from the ground up OO. And it's taught in such a way that people who can't be GOOD programmers won't pass

    What i mean is that anyone with half a brain can learn C (our 2nd language btw), but first we weed out the ppl that can't understand concepts like inheritance, polymorphism etc..
    which seperates the Derek Smarts from the John Romeros :P
    and once we understand the processes BEHIND programming we can learn RealWorld (tm) stuff like C without it fucking up our programming styles :)


    ------------------------------------------
    Cheo ps' law: Nothing ever gets built on time or within budget.
  • Hmm... When I read one of those Windows-oriented rags, like PCWeek or Family Computing, I often feel like I'm reading something in a foreign language. Maybe those should count.
  • Did anyone, before extolling the virtues of *IX, think to ask why a non-technically minded accountant for a major US corporation would be posting on (much less READING) Slashdot?

    By the way - I really liked the line about "tuning the mbuf kernel inode for asynchronous IO". That was a hoot.
  • You wrote rote wrong.

    Getting kids excited about programming is more important, IMHO, than getting them to do it "right" (or write if you prefer (-:).

    --

  • Check out SEUL/edu [seul.org], where `SEUL' is ``Simple End-User Linux''. They offer a page to search Freshmeat [seul.org] for educational SW.

    Then there's Linux for Kids [linuxforkids.com], which is collecting both educational software and just plain games.

    If you want a wider perspective, K--12 Linux [k12linux.com] is working to coordinate educational use of Linux in all primary and secondary schools.

    Go for it! And don't forget to pass it on, and to return the favor to these sites.

  • I just gotta say -- I loved high school. No joke! (Just letting you know, there are people that *did* like high school. I had a ball.)
  • Typically in such a school, portfolios are reviewed by a panel of teachers and peers. The student has to defend the portfolio in order to graduate, much like defending a PhD dissertation.

    There's a book about the Central Park East school system in NYC called The Power of Their Ideas [livingdemocracy.org]. It's a really interesting read on ways of saving public education.

    -Alex

  • How will these kids survive in the modern world without knowing
    how to use MS Word? Can you imagine your son or daughter
    showing up at his or her first job, and then looking like a fool for
    not knowing how to use the Win95 "Start" menu? Can you
    run "Math Blaster" on Linux? No! So how are the students to
    learn math when they can't shoot laser beams at the problems?

    Besides, where's the corporation standing besides this home-
    grown Linux stuff? When the network goes down, who can
    you call for support? Microsoft spends billions of dollars
    developing innovative AI wizards for keeping their software
    running with zero administration. How can open source
    compete with that?

    (Whoaaa, too much coffee this morning:-))
  • My bad...didn't read the intro carefully...I was probably thinking of Calhoun or Trinity or something like that.

    -W.W.
  • The person interviewed for the article states that they "don't filter everything." This means that they do filter something. I personally approve; however, where are all the anti-filtering bigots now? How is it that when this school filters it's OK, but when other institutions filter it's bad?

    Gotta love the hypocracy...
  • ... my code was almost always about only 1/4 of lines compared to the listing in the books.
    Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is also the heart of elegance. Unfortunately, too many of us have had to suffer with "teachers" who aren't as smart as we are, and cannot recognize elegance when they see it. However, any teacher who marked you down for turning in work that didn't match the book should have been called on it; programming isn't just typing in the text on a page, it is the creation of a system which meets its requirements. While some of the requirements may include format and documentation, anything that produces the correct output is performing correctly by definition.
    --

  • I learned to program using C++ in college and hated it. It was too constraining and I about died when we got to pointers :-). I did make it through the courses but I never touched it again after that (no, I wasn't a CS major).

    Then the Web happened and I picked up Perl reluctantly. I was hooked after a day. It made programming simple and fun - I could actually make the computer do exactly what I wanted with minimal fuss and syntax errors. No, my first programs were not well formed - but the larger my projects got, the better the code. It at least got me into programming again and gave me a chance to learn how to do it right.

    Now I've done more work in C and Java, where you have to be more disciplined. But at least I know that now and can understand it, all thanks to Perl giving me a second chance to become a software developer.

    Now it's what I do for a living.

    Thanks Perl (and Larry)

  • 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.
  • Now this is truly "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that matters."

    I thought to myself as I was reading this, "This is so cool!" I'm 21 (will be 22 in the spring). I only mention this because it will help you understand the time period I'm talking about when I speak of my high school.

    You know what we had in high school? The original PCs! I think that they recently had upgraded to AT status (they took one of the 5.25 inch floppies out and put in a small hard drive).

    Granted, I went to a tiny high school. (It was a church school; I guess the proper term is "parochial".) There were about a hundred students total, and there were exactly 25 in my graduating class. There were maybe 2 dozen PCs total (for student use; there were more for administrivia.

    There was also a secondary education facility there. They had, I think, 486s. We were permitted to use those very infrequently.

    In all fairness, they didn't charge a whole lot for tuition (in addition to the small student body), so there wasn't a lot of money to play with. And computers weren't nearly as big then as they are now. But damn, what I wouldn't give to have gone to a high school like this!

    I guess just ignore this whole post. I kind of rambled, but I'm not going to edit it. I suppose that I just wanted to congratulate Slashdot on this story. This is some very cool stuff. Damn, if I lived in New York, I'd volunteer to help them out.

    (I just thought of something, I really need to get in touch with the principal at my old school so I can pick up some of those keyboards if they ever get rid of the old computers. IBM Model M keyboards rock! In fact, I'm typing on one right now. Picked it up a couple of days ago, used, for 8 bucks. I got a strange look from the lady when I told her that she didn't know how much this made my day.)

  • I can only encourage the readership to participate in this or other mentoring programs. I am in my second year of working with students at Beacon and I've found that mentoring is thrilling, frustrating, exciting, difficult, and challenging. In short, it is an altogether human experience. http://www.plinth.org/mentor/

  • 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.

  • Not really. One of the things that it is felt that you are paying MS for when you get a copy of Word is that they will fix problems. (unfortunately they don't, and they are attempting to pass legislation which will absolve them of any legal responsibility to ship a working product)

    With OSS you can get it for free, and while other people are likely to have the same problem you do, causing them to fix it, this is not at all a given. OSS relies on a distributed effort taking place to fix bugs and add features. If you alone have a bug, it is no one's problem but your own. Many other people are likely to fix it b/c they don't want any bugs, but if you absolutely want someone else to fix the problem, be prepared to pay $ for it.

    TANSTAAFL
  • All I can say is that this is a common attitude. I'm not going to excuse it or justify it because if they're intelligent then they should be able to explain things to people who aren't an expert in your field, rather than saying "You wouldn't understand".

    Although I can't beleive that you're earning "a pittance" as an accountant but I think I know what you mean. Seems strange though. I would have thought it was a lot harder to find a decently experienced bean counter than some people with a generally good UNIX understanding. Peoples value is just subjective.

    (Flamebait on) Anyway, IT techs are just jealous because they couldn't get a job that requires a REAL understanding of computers.
    (Flamebait off)
  • For example, you mention that the NT network doesn't require any administration at all, but you then mention the MCSEs you employ. Aren't they admins?

    I'm an NT admin by day, and I can tell you that NT definitely requires administration, and lots of it. I would suspect that the MCSEs you hire are doing more than what you think they are in keeping the NT network humming. And if you hire more than about two MCSEs, you're probably paying more for NT administration than you are for Solaris administration.

    There was a study done (sorry - don't have a cite, though it may be findable on the Web) that suggested that Unix admins are more cost-effective than MCSEs, even given their higher compensation. There were many reasons cited - fewer admins needed, greater efficiency, less downtime (planned or not).

    That said, I'd have to say that your technical staff is clueless in at least one respect. Anyone who alienates the non-techies in their job is just asking for the axe to be taken to their projects and ideas. Perhaps you should talk to their managers or whoever and educate them on the importance on at least being polite and attempting to explain things. It's not always easy for techies to "dumb down" when explaining things to non-techies (witness your MCSEs), but an honest attempt should be made, at least.

    (I've done Linux advocacy in every job I've held since '93, with great success in every case. I've saved my employers money and provided more efficient and reliable service by doing this. This couldn't have happened if I had copped an attitude with all the "suits" I associated with. Most of them may not understand "mbuf kernel modes for async I/O" (ROFL!), but most get the picture with comments like "the NT solution will cost $25,000 and the Linux solution will cost $3500.")

    Like the other guy said, E-mail me if you have more questions.
  • Most high schools start out teaching BASIC...mine did. Maybe Perl isn't the most structured language, but it's far more useful than BAISC ever will be. Perl can be quite difficult to read and understand, and like you mentioned, it's easy to hack a solution together. However it's flexible enough where it doesn't have to be a hack and it doesn't have to be unreadable (that is, if you stay away from regular expressions. ;) )...it gives you plenty of oppurtunities to seperate code into functions and even objects.

  • This is what I've been hoping for in a computer program all through school. Now I'm in Grade 12, and it looks like I'll have to wait until university. Unfortunately, the attitude towards computer courses in most Nova Scotian schools seems to be that they're not "real courses" and are "only playing with computers." So they get less money devoted to them , worse teachers, and crummy curriculum. I hope Beacon's method catches on.


    -RickHunter
    --"We are gray. We stand between the candle and the star."
    --Gray council, Babylon 5.

  • A noteworthy point, BUT... (Score:3)

    by Skip666Kent ( 4128 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @09:44AM (#1228321)
    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.

  • NPR had a story this morning about two schools. One had a lot of cash and used the Web for just about everything. The other didn't have much cash and didn't even have an outside internet line. What they did have was a LAN and a bunch of machines that the kids themselves put together and keep running.

    "Heres the article (real audio file)" [npr.org]
  • I also am a high school student who lives in a school without any programming classes. It is not good. Because of that the majority of the programmig I have learned was project specific and for a while I learned VB.

    I do a lot of computer related stuff for my school however. Mainly because they bought a lot of new hardware, but left the admin buget negilably lacking. If the budget has been cut then I am sure your school will be even more responsive to you volentering your skills to help out.

    When our NT firewall (version 1.23 of WinProxy), became overloaded I volenteered to set up a Linux box running IP Masquarde even though I knew nothing on the subject of IP Masqing. I read the HOWTO's and learned allmost all I needed to get it started. The point is if you offer the oportunity to make you school better will come.

    If a person does not have the initative to find expeirance they probaly don't have the inative to become a Alan Cox in the first place. That is not to say that we may loose many good people, but you are exagerating the situation a bit.

    I congradulate Beacon for utilizing the skill of their students they are setting a great example for the rest of the world.

    Nate Custer

  • Re:No! This is awful! (Score:3)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @10:09AM (#1228325)
    &lt 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!)

    &lt /apropos humor >
  • I go to school in a very small public school district [k12.ny.us] about 60 miles east of New York City. Almost unfortunatly, we are swimming in money. The school has the wrong idea about technology, and in every way.

    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.

  • Perl as an introduction to programming? (Score:4)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:18AM (#1228328) Homepage Journal
    These students are maintaining Webservers, learning Perl and rebuilding machines.

    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 [python.org] was going to become the standard teaching language in American schools and this seems much more sensible to me.

    --

  • 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

    ------------------

  • Homework assignments and excuses (Score:4)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:21AM (#1228330) Homepage

    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 /* is a bad thing to do as root ?

    And of course top of the shop

    6) Oh sir thats not fair, its not my fault I've only got MFC at home.

  • changes... (Score:5)

    by ilkahn ( 6642 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:24AM (#1228331) Homepage
    "Being a techie isn't a stigma, it's cool. And that rocks."

    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. :) 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.
  • I wad sysadmin privledge in high school. It was a Novell 3.x box. When the authorities at a school give a student this kind of "power," the students really resect the use of computers, instead of abusing them. It is the trust schools build with there computer users that makes computers in the classroom work.
  • A few people have posted bemoaning the one-dimensional student who is going to be produced by such a system. The article gave no indication of this, and if you look at the website, you'll see that part of the graduation requirements is that the students must present a portfolio proving that they can do the work. For example:
    1. They have to be able to read a magazine in a foreign language.
    2. They have to be able to apply Geometry, Stats, Algebra, and Trig.
    3. They have to be able to present and support a logical argument.
    4. 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
  • 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.

  • It's because they aren't filtering based on the trust of some third-party application that everyone already knows filters unfairly. The problem with censorware in general is the starting premise that it is even *possible* to filter fairly using an automated system.

    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.

  • The person interviewed for the article states that they "don't filter everything." This means that they do filter something.... How is it that when this school filters it's OK, but when other institutions filter it's bad?
    From the context, it's not at all clear that they do any filtering; they rely on supervision and teaching a sense of appropriate use. From the interview:
    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.

    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.

  • The future depends on what we do now (Score:4)

    by Blackjax ( 98754 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:33AM (#1228357)
    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.

  • Long on Knowledge - short on cash ? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an information technology accountant, I have to take issue with this, and wonder have they considered the hidden costs associated with the Unix platform ?

    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

  • I've heard a LOT of teachers and ex-teachers say that the only way to run a class is through power and intimidation. That a class that doesn't fear you, won't respect 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.

  • Best school for programming (Score:4)

    by mind21_98 ( 18647 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:39AM (#1228362) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • may I inject a note of realism? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "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.

  • Re:I'm all for this, but... (Score:3)

    by ChrisNYC ( 13552 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @11:38AM (#1228365)
    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).

  • I'm all for this, but... (Score:5)

    by Orville ( 104680 ) on Friday March 03, 2000 @05:43AM (#1228377) Journal
    too much emphasis on computers can also be a bad thing. The last thing schools need is to become a technical "vocational school".

    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...

  • Thanks to schools like Beacon, an example is being set for the up and coming parents of the world. (Techies are parents too.)

    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.

    User: My copy of MS Word crashed in such-and-such a situation and lost all of my work.
    Tech Support: Accept that Word crashes and loses your work. We'll fix it in next release. (Like, really!)

    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: You're right. What make and model is the printer? You need to make X changes to the kernel. Here's how...

    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 Sickens Me (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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?

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