Funding for Technology Classes? 81
SelfTaught asks; "My school district recently built a brand new football stadium and athletics field-house, both with state of the art electronics; yet when asked about implementing a computer science class district officials reply with, 'This is a property poor school district.' Apparently property poor school districts have 20 foot plasma scoreboards and multi-million dollar athletic training facilities. As a pubescent high school student, I'm not very happy with the way my district spends the money my parents pay for my education. How can I encourage my district to provide more technology classes? If I can't get technology education in school, then what would be the best way to teach myself?"
Nationwide trend (Score:3, Insightful)
But, look at the bright side, our (USA) sports celebrities are the highest paid in the world.
(Just overlook the fact that academically we are falling behind faster every year)
What is even worse (Score:3, Insightful)
It opened my eyes when I was in Europe, that when the school gynastic grounds were not in use (after school, weekends), the people of the community could use it. More often than not, they were not even "school grounds" officially, but community grounds that the school happened to be nearby and would thus use for their athletes.
I know there will be cries about pedophiles and such, but as a society, we tend to seg
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AFAIK, I, a non-student, can use the school given permits and the like. When I was in school (a 1991 graduate) we had an indoor pool and weightlifting room with public hours, the track and football field are open to the public except for event nights and with some minor (read: common sense) restrictions.
I can't say anything for your school district but ours is fairly open. I'm in the US as well.
Despite the s
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When faced with that sort of image of geeks, I can understand why more geeks don't automatically think of fundraising like that.
I'm not saying it wouldn't work though. I've raised plenty of money for other geeky endeavours (LARP), but those have been most
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And what the hell are you talking about, segregating ourselves away? This is the age of the attention whoring myspace user. The world needs more introverts.
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And 3200 people, of no fault of their own, died by the hands of cowards.
It continues to puzzle me where Americans, who kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians by dropping bombs onto them from great altitude, out of airplanes, without any threat to the health or well-being of the bomber, get the gall to use the term "coward" in reference to people who were willing to die for the completion of their mission. Whatever the 9/11-perpetrators were, they were most ceratinly not cowards.
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Mens sana in corpore sano. Mind, body connection, if you will.
Attention whoring yourself out on the internet does not mean you are any less isolated from real human contact. Perhaps attention whoring yourself out on myspace is a symptom of isolati
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"As many have stated they are based on seprate budgets and athletics (especially football and basket ball) make money and recieve a fair ammount of cash from sponsors and donations."
This seperate budgets you speak of start out in the general budget, then the school's administration assigns it to different departments- this i
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Public money should help fund athletics to the point at which it helps the general student population. Athletics do teach competitive values which are valuable throughout both academic and professional careers. All of this
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I'm pretty sure it was the latter in my example.
You mak a strong, reasonable argument. Am I mistaken that you mentioned you went to a private school?
If not, I wonder what bearing this may have on our discussion. If so, then we both have seen different aspects of our current education system. (disclaimer: I graduated high scholl in 1976, but
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Yes, I did attend a private high school for the last few years.. I also went to public schools and have spent a long time in public universities. It took me 10 years to get around to finishing my undergrad (take a couple of classes, take a year or two of, repeat the process until one day I woke up and said I need to get that piece of paper.) Now I am in grad school and work for the University. My college i
Unsightly truth (Score:1, Informative)
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As to the original question, you may be able to use a local community college to get the classes you want. I know my high school offered that. If you have a cool teacher and aren't a douchebag student, you might be able to convince your school administrators that you can self-tea
high schools? (Score:2)
glib, but truthful advice. (Score:2)
You can't. Even if you could, the changes would happen long after you've left.
> If I can't get technology education in school, then what would be the best way
> to teach myself?"
Pick something you want to learn. Download it, RTFM, and play with it.
You'll have better luck if you have a concrete objective in mind, i.e. learn about databases by setting up a simple database to track your comic book collection, run queries against it, m
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(Its OK you get the last laugh when you employ all your old school mates as cleaners, pool attendants and chauffeurs when you hit the big time..)
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I went to high school in a very small town (less than 2,500 registered) in a relatively poor Bible Belt county. Athletics and religion were the primary focuses of the education they offered. In fact, one of my
Petitions (Score:1)
After you get the petition going, attend a district meeting and spea
Get Real (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind most southern schools have "Booster Clubs" which are responsible most of the time for raising funds for the sports specifically. The only "booster club" for academics comes straight out of the general budget for the district. Meanwhile, you've got a bunch of meat heads washing cars, taking donations, etc, in a town full of people who are more than willing to fork over money for their friday night football game.
In most districts (i have lived in), sports and education are on different budgets.
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Did members of said club go on to be active political party supporters (left or right)?
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That said, most of the booster clubs in my area tend to go right, but that's just the fact that I live in surburban Texas, smack dab in the middle of the Devil's Own Country.
The Dillinger Answer and the Math Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
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This sounds good! You'll be doing a lot of legwork, but that's healthy experience for later in life too, and it looks good on a college admissions questionnaire.
Don't forget to document the whole experience. Keep notes on who you talked to, and what sort of support or advice they offered. When you get the club off the ground and the local newspaper wants to d
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What "technology classes" do you want? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can I encourage my district to provide more technology classes? If I can't get technology education in school, then what would be the best way to teach myself?"
Well, you'll need to define what "technology classes" you want before you get the school board or most of us to listen to you. Do you want an "Intro to PowerPoint" class? Programming classes? Computer hardware classes? Actually, 'technology' could mean anything, not just computers. What are your goals? Be more specific.
My school district recently built a brand new football stadium and athletics field-house, both with state of the art electronics; yet when asked about implementing a computer science class district officials reply with, 'This is a property poor school district.' Apparently property poor school districts have 20 foot plasma scoreboards and multi-million dollar athletic training facilities. As a pubescent high school student, I'm not very happy with the way my district spends the money my parents pay for my education.
BTW, whining about money spent on athletics isn't the best way to get the school board to listen to you, although I'm sure you'll get lots of sympathetic responses here. High school football is a really big deal to most kids and parents so it will always be funded at a much higher level than classes. Forget about trying to take money away from athletics and put it into education. Your best bet is to make a compelling case for why your school needs a class on X and bring it to the school board. If they are convinced of its importance, they'll find a way to come up with the money. Trust me on this: complaining about something that is very popular will cause people to stop listening to you.
I'm not trying to be hard on you, but saying you want money allocated for something specific (scoreboard) to be divered to something nebulous (technology classes) just isn't going to work. You need to say exactly what classes are necessary and then provide compelling arguments why they are needed so badly.
Good luck, Kid. I'm not a fan of technology in the classroom at all, but I don't want my personal opinions to get in the way of advising you. If you want to fight for this, fine. Just be a bit more cautious about how you go about it.
GMD
Gifts & school programs (Score:3, Informative)
It's easy to see that your team is winning by having the best technology and edging out another school with every advantage that you can get. Investing in the students themselves is always a complicated situation and the results tend to be poor.
What you should do is go to the public comment period of your next school board meeting and ask if matching funds were put into classroom improvement for each dollar spent on improvement of the sports program, and are they willing to stipulate some sort of matching dollars ratio for classroom improvement in the future. Don't expect 1:1, but if you even had 5:1 (sports:classroom) I suspect the improvement would be significant. There's also a sustainability aspect. If I write a check for $1m to my local school for a new stadium, they may already have the budget for maintence of it set aside. The operation expenses, training, etc.. for a new computer lab is not insignificant, think about the power consumption of all the lightbulbs in a classroom compared to 25 computers with 400w power supplies, a few laser printers, etc.. The electric bill may surprise you.
But honestly, this is an excercise in your civic duties (you can even get extra credit if you're taking a government class), attend the meetings, as booring as they may seem, you may be able to create some impact. You may be able to convince those that do attend the meetings and vote for your local school board that these things have value to them as well and see things change, perhaps not while you're still there but for others.
Re:Gifts & school programs (Score:1)
Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the sucky part-it isn't fixable. It's been tried. Bread and circuses (the gladiator games, etc) is an established technique that keeps the plebes occupied and ye overlordes in power (helps them anyway), so it isn't going away, the fix is in. It's just not, so no sense beating yourself up over it. Work around it. The best you can do is self education as much as possible, and work with any understanding teachers (there should be a few who "get it")and groups of friends (rocket club, computer club, whatever).
As to getting your hands on tech..you own a computer, or can you get a box full of odd parts? Swell. A car (any old junker is fine) with an engine and transmission and probably a comlicated electronic system? Swell. Some radios and other odd electronic stuff? Swell.
and etc.
Now, go tear that crap completely apart and put it back together again *better* than it was before. Not just the same, *better*. See what you can come up with, little tweaks and twists and mods and enhancements. You won't get any grades on it, but you for sure will get an education that is practical. You'll learn to think in steps and sequences, you'll get discipline and focus. That is what is important. It will carry over to about any other job you might get.
very good! (Score:1)
My suggestions (Score:5, Interesting)
My first suggestion is to find some other students at your school interested in computer science. A school isn't going to add a computer science course unless there is a sizable amount of students who are interested. After you find other interested students, get a proposal for a new class going. Get a few signatures of students and parents (and maybe some interested teachers) and take it to the principal's office (or whomever else deals with course offerings). If it works, then great. If not, then try again next year.
In the meanwhile, I suggest that you read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [mit.edu]. This is the book that is used for the freshman computer science class at MIT. Find yourself a Scheme interpreter (and maybe even invest some time into learning Unix and maybe installing Linux or BSD if you're a Windows user. Unix, not Windows, is the main operating system used in computer science.). This book can get difficult, but you'll be very knowledgeable about the true meaning of computer science via that book. Then, after reading and finishing that book, then move on to learning C (for structured programming) and C++ or Java (for OO programming). Now that you have the theoretical background of programming understood, now you should learn some practical programming languages that you'll use for upper-division CS courses (operating systems, software engineering, systems programming, and the like) and in future industry jobs or research.
Finally, during your junior year of high school, start finding some good CS schools to apply to. MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, University of Texas at Austin, Harvey Mudd, and others that I've forgot now are very good undergraduate computer science schools. These schools are challenging enough to fully teach you computer science and prepare you for either a career in software engineering and development, or a research career.
I wish you a successful start in computer science.
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http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/ [htdp.org]
This is in the same spirit as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs but more appropriate for beginning computer programming. Scheme is a good choice so download DrScheme and have fun!
Do well in your math and science coursework now and get into a good CS program when you are out of high school.
If only I got this advice in high school.
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Don't Cross the Streams! (Score:2)
Changing those funding sources and spending controls is a long-term affair, and not
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Why MS? There are plenty of bussinesses in each city and some of those would be willing to aid. For example, a company replaces its computers and the old ones get donated to a local school. For many bussinesses these are machines not much older than 3 to 4 years. Those are perfect for a whole lot of classes. Pretty much
The Internet? (Score:2, Insightful)
Find a mentor (Score:2)
Back when I was in high school (a LONG time ago), the only reason we had a
school board meetings (Score:2)
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As it so happens, school board elections (especially in non-urban districts) have extremely low turnout - meaning that's it's not especially difficult to replace a sitting board member with a concerted effort.
When I was in high school, many of the faculty were upset over the priorities of the board (which, as I recall, was filled with the non-working w
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Attend School Board Meetings (Score:3, Insightful)
Organize your statements, as previous posters have said--define what is "technology", have concrete proposals ready.
Prepare possible cost breakdowns.
Compare science programs of other schools, communities, school districts.
Appeal to patriotism (cheap, but hey, it's America.) Sputnik caused a boom in American science education, and ChinaIndiaRussia are in the process of blowing America out of the water.
Use sound economic logic (i.e. it's a gift that keeps on giving through alumni donations, it profiles our schools as academic powerhouses and makes it more desirable to academics, it results in statistically higher admissions to good engineering schools, whatever--do research.)
Try to engage corporate sponsorship--write letters to companies like HP, Sun, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc., they have entire departments devoted to creating PR through this sort of thing. Also, corporate matching funds tend to motivate people to spend public money.
Try to contact your school board reps directly, organized like-minded friends in a letter-writing campaign. Get your and their parents involved as well.
Get PR--write letters to the editor of your local paper, try to get someone to cover the story with a slant. "Schools neglecting science and technology education in favor of jocks" sells papers.
As for yourself? The truth is out there. You have a PC, an Internet connection and some equally interested friends? Start a club, start reading and hacking, and you're off.
Who needs CLASSES? (Score:1)
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Learning excel/word/etc -- what is commonly considered "computer sci" is a waste of time. Learning actual computer science -- alogorithms, logic, etc -- doesn't even require a computer, much an up to date one. You can learn computer science on a chalk board and with a proto language.
Athletics are irrelevent (Score:1)
OTOH, the only real expense of adding a CS class is a teacher. A new computer lab isn't necessary; you can learn all the basic principles of programming on the kind of old computers that people give away. But the school isn't gonna teach a class for on
Funding HOWTO (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the trick. Wish I had known it then. The football budget came from donors, and that's basically the answer to your question. The stadium and the atheletic raquetball and other stuff thingy building, were named after the big donor who plunked down millions. That's the ticket.
What I suggest you do is learn something about business development, which is the kung fu required to land great facilities of any kind, because unlike the programming language, API's, and OS du jour that will be a useful tool to you for a healthy 5-10ish years, savvy business development never goes out of style, and will actually help you land a fully funded, sweetly decked out lab, along with great courses.
The proper approach will depend very much upon the specifics of your situation, who you know (both students and adults), and your various superpowers. If you want me to help you figure out The Path, drop me a line, and I'll see if I can be useful.
Take your education into your own hands (Score:1)
If you're that dedicated, and you have the time to spare, you might want to look into a vocational / technical school or taking classes at the local community college. Both generally offer night classes, which you could take after school. Of course, this also depends on how heavy your school workload is and how active your social life is. Still, a community college night class two times a week might be enough
A possible solution (Score:1)
Local college (Score:2)
Olin College! (Score:1)
Shameless pitches aside, I'm afraid many American high schools like yours and mine simply won't offer worthwhile technology cou
Fighting decades of tradition (Score:2)
Want to make decent money in a high school? Be the football coach. And traditionally they'll only make you teach some "worthless" class like history or civics. My world history teacher was the wrestling coach. He'd frequently need a mid-class break to take a couple puffs on a cigar and the school let him get away with it.
One of our suburban high schools build an olympic regulation pool. Now they bitch there isn't any money for basics.
What are you going to do when American education has local control an
Say a big game, but.... (Score:1)
I propose everyone who is complaining about how crappy things were in their school also post how much money or time (or both!) they've since given to their school to improve conditions.
*cue cricket noises*
In a more positive vein, an earlier poster said to get up, get out there, bang the drum for donations, document everything, and so forth. That's the best comm
It the teachers.... (Score:2)
Welcome to Democracy (Score:2)
Just who are you to question The People's desire for football stadiums?
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Just who are you to question The People's desire for football stadiums?
A few hundred years ago, a guy named Galilei came and said "it is round" ... and *they* asked him a question quite like yours... in fact, they almost killed him for going against People's desire for "a flat one".
ThePeople is not the answer to everything and Democracy is far from being perfect.
As a pubescent high-school student? (Score:2)
Seriously.. wtf?
Daniel
It's bad everywhere (Score:1)
One Step at a Time (Score:1)
Second thing, get together a list of exactly what you are asking for,