Student tech support: Win-win

As computer use grows the burden on school IT departments isn't - at least not in the Natchez-Adams School District in southwestern Mississippi. There, 25 high school students provide tech support for the entire district, the Natchez Democrat reports. Their work in classrooms and offices is the hands-on part of a two-year "computer system technology" course the high school provides, one of 10 such programs in the state. The first year is more about hardware, the second about software and the Internet. The benefits to schools, with mounting computer- and network-servicing costs, and students, with ambitions to start computer science and software engineering careers, are obvious. In fact, a 2003 National School Boards Foundation study found that 60% of US high schools have "students performing maintenance and troubleshooting on computers," according to the Raleigh, N.C.-based Centers for Quality Teaching and Learning. Here's a page about "Generation TECH," providing schools with guidelines for establishing a student tech support program. For a student perspective, here's an interview at 4Teachers.org with the "Fab 5" student tech support team for the Sedgewick, Ks., school district in 2000-01. But these young techies are probably already aware of the one potential downside, as chronicled here in CNET: the unintended life-long side job of tech support for great-aunts, second cousins, and their "best friends."