11-year-old takes school network by the horns - Network World

11-year-old takes school network by the horns - Network World

Here was my comment on the article:

First, hats off to Jon! You did at 11 years old, what most of us adults would have done: needs analysis, systems design & implementation, then evalutaion (Deming / Shewhart PDCA Cycle). I suspect this is due to the influence of a Civil Engineer dad. Kudos to Jon and parents!

Instead of kudos to the school, a criticism. Shame on you for allowing your school network to devolve into the mess that Jon inherited. You have a responsibility to protect the computers from malware, but above and beyond that you are required by law to protect the students from the dangers of the Internet. The fact that most proxy servers / Internet filters also take care of malware, and that the school was riddled with malware, leads me to believe the school's Internet filtering may have been nonexistent. In which case shame on the school!

As a parent and a former Technology Educator for a small rural school district, I say shame on the school for ignoring their responsibility to their students. I understand the problems small schools face with finances, but that is no excuse to allow the computers to fall into such disarray. It represents a lack of understanding of the potentially negative impact that technology can make into the lives of students.

When I inherited a mess of a network, I discovered that 8th graders were surfing porn and leaving wallpapers on desktops that preschoolers were using! This is not acceptable! I immediately fired our existing network filter and deployed my own Linux-based DansGuardian filter. Then I removed malware. The result? I felt safe to let even my own children use the computers in my network.

From this story, I would not feel safe to let my own children use the network at this Baptist School - at least not until Jon has been allowed to clean things up!

Thumbs up for Jon! Thumbs down for the school management!