An 11-year old sixth grader from Sherwood, Arkansas is presently his school’s computer network administrator. John Penn of Victory Baptist School took over the school’s network when the former IT admin just left, leaving her mother, the school’s librarian, additional workload as computer support.
Penn who likes to read computer trade magazines, has always been know as the computer whiz in his school. When he took over the job, he found out that old Windows 98 PCs, all of 60 of them, did not have any anti-virus installed. He then suggested for the school to spend some money on the McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance. Before this, he had to map out the network first on his own. Now, Penn is pressing the school to upgrade the system to Windows 2000 so managing the computers will be done centrally, meaning he doesn’t have to manually update each computer.
His parents always knew that John has a knack for computers but never thought he could be a network admin at age 11. His mother Paula, the school’s librarian, is still hovering around John, since he still is a kid. This summer, John Penn hopes to get his A+ certification.
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Now, I'm sorry, but there is nothing impressive about this.
The only reason that this boy has been given this role is because he goes to a school which is not good enough to have invested in a reliable computer infrastructure and/or Network Admins.
The only reason that there is ANY media attention is because the boy has been 'given the role'.
Surely enough, if the boy had been going to the schools which I have been to, he wouldnt be in the news, as this is nothing special. Its lucky circumstances on his behalf, mainly due the school staff being non tech savvy.
We have some young staff, but this is amazing!