[geeks] How old am I and where do I come from...

[Tim H.]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 13:13:08 -0400
"Michael A. Turner" <mturner at whro.org> wrote:

> 	Education sucks as a field really. A lot of the tech "directors"
> 	are
> teachers that they had to get out of the classroom 5 or 6 years ago so
> they made them manage the computers. They are, for the most part, less
> than clueless. Working with them is like combining the worst parts of
> a renegade start-up company and a government bureaucracy. They have
> wild ideas that

That isn't true of public schools around me.  In almost all of them,
some poor teacher admitted to knowing how to clean a mouse, and got the
tech coordinator job on top of the full teaching load, with no
additional training or compensation.  It really is pretty sad, because
some of the school districts have some pretty serious infrastructure
that showed up via gov't grants, but are not utilizing it due to lack of
skill/time/big picture.  Stuff like districts with all buildings on
100Mbit fiber, but it sits dark and they dial up to communicate, or
worse yet, it sits there lit up, with a router on either end, but the
school network isn't using it.  

Job before last was at a k-12 school, one of the very few with a full
time tech coordinator, I was hired under a grant project where the
school was promoting internet use in the community by offering cheap
dial up service and training classes, etc.  When I left they were
finishing a capital project which would take them to >300 student use
computers, in a one building district with a student population of <700
students k-12, on a fully switched 100Mbit network, with gig backbone
between closets.  The week spot was internet, with a poorly run T1 as
the only connection.

Compare that to the district I live in, which last I knew still had 486s
in use, multiple buildings with fiber connection, but nobody knows how
to make it work, a ridiculous waste of money, and no full time tech
person.  

The difference was the school I worked at had a very aggressive pro
technology superintendent, who really understood grant writing. (had
somebody trained to do that also) compared to a "normal" superintendent
who isn't terribly aggressive about anything, and probably no trained
grant writers on staff.

but yeah, Education isn't a great field if you want to make money, pay
sucks.  And I just interviewed for a mechanical tech position at a State
University college.  Oh well, some pay is better than none.


Tim