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."

Baptist, eh?

[decken]

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?

[gardyloo]

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:Vista upgrade

[Naughty Bob]

>.....or MS is really taking the whole Vista damage limitation thing seriously.

If they made the schools get vista, they couldn't really install it on machines designed to run Win '98.

Also, support for Win2K ends in 2010. Microsoft has thus successfully kept a school away from the alternatives, without giving them the next 5 years free.

Kudos

[AgentPaper]

This young man reminds me overwhelmingly of myself at the same age, except in my case, it was maintaining a "shadow network" of some 35 Apple IIe and II+ machines that my school moved to the classrooms when our lab got upgraded to brand-spanking-new 486/33s, maintaining the PC network when our admin wasn't available (which was frequently, as he ran five other schools too), and managing the student Web access program. I didn't figure out Mom's work computers till age 5, though I could program a VCR and hook up a NES or a 2600 at age 3.

Glad to see that precocious geekery hasn't died out with this generation. Kudos to you, kid!

Win2k?!

[Danathar]

I thought you can't get security updates for win2000 any more? If so that's a BAD upgrade path.

Are they paying him?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article doesn't say, and if I had to guess, it would be no... so your comment may not be too far off the mark. Shoe string budget indeed. I wonder how often they pull him out of classes and interrupt his education to rescue the network. Child prodigy or child slave labor?

Dmitri Gaskin: 12 year old Open Source contributor

[kbahey]

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:Goes to show

[AlecLyons]

Remember there is a difference between responsibility and accountability. Who gets fired if the kid screws up?

Depends what the kids does...

[alexhmit01]

In high school, a bunch of my friends were helping out on the computer network, either for credit as an independent study, or just to learn it. Everything from making cables to desktop support. I befriended the network administrator, who let me do some supervised work on the servers... I used the experience to take and pass the MCSE exams. When looking for part time work as a college student, it was a lot easier to make beer money as a network guy than a lab rat, the 5x page didn't hurt

He is getting experience, and he's learning some basic skills. I'm sure the school will bring in someone experienced when they need to do something real, but what's wrong with this student stepping up and learning a bit. The school gets the network kept going cheaply, he gets valuable experience. It may not be much now, but in 3 years, he'll have plenty of experience to get a good after school job, instead of a crappy one.

Don't get your hopes up.

[k3r3nsky'sr3v3ng3]

In all likelyhood, he probably either hasn't heard of Linux, he isn't allowed to install Linux or other FOSS, or the computers are so bad that windows 2000 probably actually runs better on the machines. I live in Alabama, and did the same thing for my teacher's assistant period, albeit while in the 7th and 8th grade. Depending on the county he lives in, he's probably adminining machines with an average spec of: AMD K6 series or Intel Pentium 2/3 series processors, 128 MB RAM, integrated video, 4-10 GB HDD,CD ROM drive. Maybe (hopefully)he has something better to work with. In my county (Morgan), the majority of the computers we had to work with were donations (throwaways) from Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. As far as FOSS goes, his county likely has a mandate that his school install McAfee AV (oh the horror) on every computer in the school, networked or not. FOSS, including Firefox, was simply not allowed on the machines. The only way to get permission to use FOSS would be to climb the bureaucratic chain all the way to the county Superintendent of Education, who likely doesn't know a whit about computers and is likely to view anything free (as in beer) with suspicion.

Re:While these stories are interesting...

[spazdor]

And when these kids go to high school and college and the corporate world they'll probably be running Windows anyway

Most college networks I've ever met ran Linux.
This isn't to say it's necessarily useful to teach elementary school kids about OSS, but it's not as if no one uses it for anything in real life.

Re:While these stories are interesting...

[macdaddy]

Exactly. He's just like any other computer-addicted 11 yr old, but instead of wasting his knowledge being forced to play silly final fantasy ps3 games like most kids his age he's been given the opportunity to help his mom ** admin a school.

Average users would call him a "boy genius", slashdotters would probably describe him as "me when I was 11".

Precisely. Not to knock what this kid's doing but, just you said, this was me when I was 11, actually before I was 11.

My Story:

My mother was one of the first people in our school system to buy a Mac. She bought an Apple LC II. Prior to that it was Apple IIes and IIGs for our school (I was in elementary school at the time). I had been helping the school out with Apple II issues since I was in 4th grade. We had a IIe at home so I had a leg up on my classmates and teachers. She brought the LC II home for the summer and I tore into it. After that I became the defacto Mac guy for the school. There's a reason why I have this nickname. She transferred to another elementary school (was a teacher at mine) when I was in 5th grade.

I remember quite vividly the day the elementary school's secretary called me into the office to talk to the principal. It wasn't exactly an unusual occurrence since I was in trouble nearly daily. I couldn't figure out though which exact act I'd done landed me in the hot seat that day. When I got in there she handed me the phone. Still oblivious to what was going on I said hello. It was the principal working from the other elementary school and he had a computer problem. That wasn't the first time I'd been pulled from class to help with computers and it wasn't the last time either. I spent my remaining years in that school system as the district's IT guy. I was officially hired when I was in high school on the recommendation of Roy Keeton, an Apple Systems engineer (now deceased). My last period of the day was a career study period of sorts. I worked on the computers for the last hour of the day. I'd take a school car up to the elementary school (my old school had closed by then) and work on computers before practice started back at the HS. It became such a common occurrence that I even had a ready-made excuse for getting out of class. I could just tell my teachers that there was an emergency at the elementary school and they wouldn't bat an eye. Worked like a champ. :-)

So yes, I'm sure that many of the Slashdot readers got started at an early age like this kid or myself. We didn't have shops like CompUSA. Hell the Internet was barely kicking at the time and even then only through large college campuses for the most part. We had one of the first elementary schools in the state to have every computer on the Internet thanks for a piece of software I found (VICOM Internet Gateway). It also helped that I was 1/3 of the helpdesk for our local telco/ISP in high school too. And yes I would have been posting on Slashdot had it existed at the time. Unfortunately it wasn't created until the year I went to college.