11-Year-Old Becomes Network Admin for Alabama School

alphadogg points out a story about 11-year-old Jon Penn, who took over control of a 60-computer school network in Alabama after the old administrator suddenly left. Penn provides technical support, selects software, and teaches his classmates about computers. From NetworkWorld: "The first thing Jon found as he leapt into the role of network manager was that he had to map out the network to find out what was on it. He bought some tools for this at CompUSA and realized there was an ungodly amount of computer viruses and spam, so he pressed the school to invest in filtering and antivirus protection. 'These computers are so old they don't support all antivirus programs,' Penn says. The school took advantage of a Microsoft effort called Fresh Start that offers free software upgrades for schools with donated computers, switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000."

But does he post to Slashdot?

No, he says he's too mature.

Re:But does he post to Slashdot?

Bah. He has the whole school eating out of his hand and he didn't even TRY to install Linux. Corporate whore.

He's probably had sex too. Bastard.

Re:But does he post to Slashdot?

He's probably had sex too. Bastard.

Well, if you controlled the whole network, wouldn't you go to redtu... Oooh, you mean with one of these females I keep hearing about.

Yeah, he's a bastard!

Re:But does he post to Slashdot?

With apologies to the Marx Brothers...

Salesman: This network is so easy to administer, an 11-year-old child could do it!

Groucho: Great! [quietly, to his aides] Quick, someone run out and get me an 11-year-old child; I can't make heads or tails of this O'Reilly guide!

While these stories are interesting...

They always play on the 'boy genius' BS. He's just a normal kid making inexperienced mistakes along the way.

BTW, couldn't he have just downloaded some free Windows or Linux based A/V rather than buying crap at CompUSA?

Re:While these stories are interesting...

BTW...crap at CompUSA

You said it yourself, he's making inexperienced mistakes along the way.

The "old" administrator...

... was 12. He was ready for a career change after so long in IT.

Baptist, eh?

Good for him, though comments like "technical people must have 'integrity and character,' and should use their skills for beneficial, not malicious purposes" and "It's his job to fight the bad guys" make his parents sound a bit loony.

Re:Baptist, eh?

Given that I'm sure the "most important server" is the one which handles their "Knee mail" (http://www.victorymillbrook.com/prayer.php), what do you think?

Re:Baptist, eh?

Great, now they'll be getting a bunch of prayer requests from /.

"Dear God, please let my next emerge go without error..."

Goes to show

That if you give kids responsibility early on, they'll step up. My last crop of interns at work were college juniors, and couldn't be trusted to make copies, much less administer anything.

Re:Goes to show

When Victory Baptist School, a small private school in Millbrook, Ala., was struggling to keep its computer network together last year, an 11-year-old student named Jon Penn stepped in as network manager.

Goes to show that if you can't afford a real IT guy, there might be a student who will do it for free. I didn't see anything in there about his parents getting a tuition break, Jon getting lunches...no kind of compensation was mentioned at all. And don't tell me "Well, he's getting experience..." He is, but I think the school is getting much more out of the deal.

Having said that, I do understand that private schools sometimes struggle to make ends meet, especially on the IT side of things. But this situation still bothers me a bit.

Translation: 11-year old's parents get him a job

Translation: his mother works at the school, and his dad's a civil engineer, no surprise that they'd have something to do with this. Child prodigy stories always gloss over the part you'd really want to know about, like how anyone in the administration figured it would be ok to have a minor sign contracts. Obviously he's not really the admin, his mom is, and he's just doing the work or something like that. An 11-year old isn't legal to work, there are these pesky child labor laws in this country (duh).

Re:Translation: 11-year old's parents get him a jo

An 11-year old isn't legal to work, there are these pesky child labor laws in this country (duh).

The child labor laws don't stop you from hiring children.(tho your insurance might complain) They limit the types of jobs and the hours they can work. I have a 17 year old working for me at my store when she started she was 16 just above the cutoff point but still regulated as to what kinds of jobs she could do. She only works weekends for a few hours a day but it gets her use to the idea of getting to work on time and doing her job (well when she's not being a giggly teenage girl).
You can find the rules here:
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/youthlabor/ [dol.gov]

Re:Translation: 11-year old's parents get him a jo

Of course it's legal - if they don't pay him! They merely treat it as any other unpaid student-held post, like Yearbook Editor or Class Secretary.

Great...there goes my business.

If any of our clients ever see this article, they're going to start hiring 11-year-olds and pay in comic books.

Bah

I'm not that impressed. I was maintaining a lab of 16 Atari 800's when I was roughly his age. If he were smart, he'd switch to a less virus-resistant platform - I mean, we never had any problems.

His fellow students won't remember him for this ..

... they'll remember him for being the sniveling little snot who got MySpace blocked.

I bet this kid gets shoved into so many lockers for being a suck-up to the administration when NetworkWorld isn't writing articles about him.

I remember this kid when I was in school. He was not a popular kid.

Uh-oh....

Wait until the PHBs hear about this one.

Network Admin: My job is hard; I want a raise.
PHB: Why? Your job is so easy, an 11-year old can handle it!
Network Admin: ...sputters incoherently...

Every IT manager will have to live with this nightmare, until the Jedi really start getting a headache.

Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Dmitri Gaskin: 12 year old Open Source contributor

I had the pleasure of meeting Dmitri Gaskin [nfshost.com] recently.

Dmitri is from the Bay Area who has been contributing to the Drupal [drupal.org] project and maintaining some modules.

The funny and amazing part is that he is 12 years old, and was 10 years old when he started with the community. The co-maintainers of the modules did not know he was that young when he started contributing patches and gave him CVS access to their modules, based on what patches he contributed already.

When Google started the Google Highly Open Participation (GHOP [google.com]) for high school students, he was too young to qualify, so instead he was mentoring the 15 year old high school kids!

He even presented a session at DrupalCon Boston [drupalcon.org].

When I saw Dmitri, I felt happy and humbled. I just did not think he is so short!

See also:

• Audio interview with Dmitri [raincitystudios.com].
  
• Dmitri's profile on drupal.org [drupal.org]
  

Re:"School Saves Money with Child Labor"

Translation:

"I'm very very jealous that an 11 year-old has the knowledge and skills to land a network administration job and I'm still stuck at the helpdesk."

Re:Why pay for the software?

AVG Free is free only for personal use. To deploy it across an entire network of computers belonging to a budgeted organisation, rather than purchase a license, is abusing Grisoft's generosity. It's not really excused by the fact that this is an educational organisation rather than commercial. I quote:

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is for private, non-commercial, single computer use only. The use of AVG Free within any organization (including non-profit organizations) or for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited.

If you don't want to pay for your AV, why not go with ClamAV rather than leech off Grisoft's update servers? The restrictions of AVG Free (won't run on server OSes, won't scan network drives, etc) probably mean it's not optimal for the school network anyway.

That said... I use AVG Free myself for my personal computer. It really is good, and I'm grateful to Grisoft for it. Oh: one other thing. AVG Free is free as in beer, but it's not open source. I suppose some people might care about that.

"11 year Old Network Gets Admin in Alabama School"

I think they got the title mixed up.

Re:Vista upgrade

If those computers were running Windows 98 they could have 64MB RAM or less.

I'm currently running the Windows 98 SE upgrade on a Windows 95 laptop with 16MB of RAM. So far it's only been upgrading for 11 days, and has already reached 10% completion. (It's a Dell Latitude P133, fyi...)

Re:Easy?

In this life you will learn that it's not about how easy something is to do, but if you get the opportunity to do it.