Monday, December 3, 2001

Facing school challenges

By Alexander Soule

"At Citizen Schools I worked at establishing relationships with large technology companies to provide internships for high school students to work and learn side-by-side with adults.

"Citizen Schools had a lot of success with law firms and financial companies, but we were unable to develop the same relations with technology companies.

"It was tough, because in the heyday of the tech boom people were too busy to offer much time. Then when things went south, people were afraid to volunteer because they felt they might be the next ones to get laid off.

"Citizen Schools had no internal technology department to speak of, so I slowly took on more of managing the computers and network, while still doing external programs - which was a weird thing to do, a strange skill set.

"I had worked with TechBoston the whole time I was there and became excited to see what they were accomplishing within the school system. I was amazed at TechBoston's ability to grow a program so fast - in the third year, they were reaching 21,500 kids.

"It was a possibility to have a larger impact, and the opportunity to teach again. In California, I ran a computer-based children's learning center, spending several hours a week with kids. I missed the teaching aspect.

"There are three big challenges in the schools. There is a hardware problem in that the computers are getting older and older - there needs to be a plan to phase some of them out.

"We need to think of ways to get teachers up to a certain level technically. We need to design curricula that use technology like we used pen and paper growing up. And a lot of thinking needs to go into not just technology but the basic architecture of the classroom.

"I am interested in getting more young women and minority students involved. They need to realize that technology is a way for them to be able to write their own ticket."