The Tech-Support Kids

Many students know more about tech than their teachers do. But does this mean they should be part of tech-support teams? Two experts go head-to-head

• PRINT
• EMAIL

Dennis Harper

POINT: DENNIS HARPER
There are only two reasons why school administrators would not want students to help care for their technology infrastructure. Either they believe that students are too stupid and therefore incompetent to deal with a complex system, or they believe that students can't be trusted. In my opinion, neither view is valid.

There are only two reasons why school administrators would not want students to help care for their technology infrastructure. Either they believe that students are too stupid and therefore incompetent to deal with a complex system, or they believe that students can't be trusted. In my opinion, neither view is valid.

There are many reasons why students should help build, manage, and maintain hardware, software, and networks. First, students learn valuable technology, planning, organizational, interpersonal, and debugging skills that can enable them to earn a good living in the future.

Second, there is a shortage of competent adult technicians available to schools. Even if a school can find qualified technical people, they are expensive and turnover is often high. In contrast, bright, tech-savvy students are always available, and there is an endless supply of them.

Student technical support can also relieve educators of an unwanted and unnecessary burden. Many schools depend on teachers to help run e-mail systems, perform software upgrades, and maintain networks. These tasks take teachers away from what they are trained to do.

Responsiveness is another issue. Teachers often report lengthy delays between the time when they report a technical problem to the central office and when the problem is solved. On-site students can often provide much speedier service.

At the end of the 2001-2002 school year, 40 percent of U.S. public high schools were using online courses, according to IESD. With several years' worth of accumulated best practices for e-Learning on tap, now is clearly a good time for school leaders to take a serious look at making online course offerings available to students.

Real Responsibility
If you want to produce responsible adults, you have to give them responsibility when they are students. Students have shown for decades that they can handle very demanding tasks. A student technology assistant is no different from the varsity quarterback, the captain of the debate team, or the yearbook editor. When students are given responsibility and trust, they come through. Of course, you need to make sure tech-support students have the proper preparation and guidance.

These duties also teach students to respect adults. Students become part of "the team." If students are partners with the community in transforming education, they will accomplish more and be less likely to cause trouble. Why would students want to "hack" into a system that they help to build and maintain?

Thousands of schools have shown the efficacy of placing trust in their students. The Kentucky Student Technology Leaders program is now in more than 900 state schools. According to some statistics, 54 percent of schools nationwide utilize students in supporting their technology infrastructure. My own student "techies" have a hard time believing that any school official would doubt that students could be trusted to maintain the technical system and protect student and teacher privacy.

At the core of this debate is a basic question that educators and administrators should ask themselves: What is more important-empowering students to work with adults, or keeping kids away and placing all power in the hands of non-educator adult technicians? If the district answers the latter, I feel sorry for that community.

Bob Moore

COUNTERPOINT: BOB MOORE
School administrators often have the best intentions when they launch programs that involve students providing technology support. But they should ask themselves two questions: What are you really doing for the kids, and what are you saying about the value of the technology?

School administrators often have the best intentions when they launch programs that involve students providing technology support. But they should ask themselves two questions: What are you really doing for the kids, and what are you saying about the value of the technology?

Years ago, relying on students for tech support might have made some sense. Back then, computers weren't connected, there were no networks, and everything was simpler. But now, districts are putting hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions of dollars into very complicated and networked computer technology. Why would you want students on the front lines of technical support, managing such costly systems?

Try thinking of this in terms of virtually anything else you do in the school district, and you'll see that it defies logic. For example, would you spend millions of dollars on air conditioning systems for every classroom-and then turn maintenance over to students? Would you put students in charge of keeping your school bus fleet running?

We have more than 100 servers in our district. If they go down, that can affect our 22,000 student and employee computer users. We don't even want a first-year technical support person touching those servers, let alone a student.

The fact is, you're spending public tax dollars, and you really owe it to taxpayers to give that equipment the very best support-so that classroom teachers and students have the greatest chance of success when using it. In our district, we buy most of our technology with bond money, but we can't use bond money to pay for technical support. That's why we make sure that we don't buy more technology than we can afford to support and maintain. That's the whole idea behind Total Cost of Ownership.

Success, Not Failure
The role of schools is to set students up for success, not to set them up for failure. That means limiting students to tasks that they have the skills to manage. Frankly, putting students in a situation where they have to handle sophisticated systems-even if they can technically do it-is not setting them up for success. There's also the issue of security and confidentiality of data. You have to ask yourself: How much access do you want your students to have?

All this is not to say that a limited number of students can't play a small supporting role, strictly as a learning opportunity. But doing so requires a very clear task definition and very clear objectives. You have to assess the kids' skills, and you have to evaluate them on a continuing basis to make sure that they're achieving success. If they're not, you have to provide them with training. You also need quality supervision, and not every technical-support person is going to be a good match to supervise a student.

We support academic programs-such as those from Cisco and Microsoft-that teach kids real-world, hands-on skills in technical support. These programs train kids on test systems, not on the district's live networks and production systems. Students can still get hands-on experience, but you're not putting them in a position in which they are liable to cause problems; you're not setting them up for failure. And that's what it's all about.

Bob Moore is executive director of Information Technology Services in the Blue Valley Unified School District in Overland Park, Kansas, and board chairman of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN).

Dennis Harper is the founder and CEO of Generation YES, an organization that helps schools train students to provide professional development and infrastructure support. See www.genyes.org.

Forum: Just-in-Time Tech Training
It's common knowledge that we administrators must help propel teachers to the level where they are as comfortable working with technology as they are with the subject they teach. The task for school districts is to devise training processes that facilitate this end.

Texthelp Systems' Read&Write GOLD
Texthelp Systems' Read & Write GOLD

Best Practices for School Leaders: a letter from Michele Robinson, Group Publisher, Scholastic Administr@tor
Scholastic Administr@tor aims to provide you, the savvy school administrator, with the practical information you need to make the best decisions for your schools.