The Lincoln Academy Student Technology Team gives students an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a growing field and provides free maintenance for hundreds of school computers.
The primary focus for the team’s approximately 40 members is the maintenance of the school’s 500-plus netbooks, the small laptops distributed to every Lincoln Academy student.
The team replaces batteries, hard drives and screens – probably the most common operation – and repairs faulty wiring, all for a fraction of the cost other schools pay manufacturers or contractors.
Two years ago, the generosity of a single, anonymous donor allowed Lincoln Academy to buy 560 Toshiba NB255 computers, enough to equip every student with one of the machines.
Jim Buckingham of Computer Connections volunteered to teach Lincoln Academy Technology Educator Maya Crosby, a small group of seniors and one sophomore the skills necessary to maintain the netbooks.
A year later, in fall 2011, the informal group became a class known as the Lincoln Academy Student Technology Team. Team members receive one-third credit for a full year, compared to a full credit for most other classes.
The school does not require any student to participate in the team, and the members seem to belong because they enjoy it and because, for several members, the experience will help them pursue college and a career in a technology field.
“I’m definitely going to do something in that field for college and hopefully a career,” said sophomore Wally Morris, a second-year member.
Senior Daniel Mayer signed up this year, dropping both of his study halls in order to join the team for two periods every day. He hopes to study “computer integration with mechanical engineering,” which he describes as the field having to do with the computer systems in cars and rockets.
Technology Team alumni already include two computer science majors, an engineering major and a computational biology major.
Students also enjoy the atmosphere of the technology team space, which appears to have little in common with a traditional classroom. Instead of neat rows of desks, the large room contains long tables and work spaces spread around the walls, with a coffee maker and a comfortable-looking couch nearby.
Becca Hadik calls the room her favorite place to be.
“It’s not just someone lecturing you about how to fix a computer,” she said. Instead, students show up, find a computer in disrepair, and fix it. Hadik calls the hands-on process “much more fun and definitely more my style of learning.”
Morris agrees. “I look forward to coming here,” he said.
Almost every day, at all times of the day, students and, occasionally, a teacher, stop by with malfunctioning computers or other equipment.
Some problems are more complex than others.
Last year, the technology team made t-shirts featuring the words “Lincoln Academy Student Technology Team 2012” on the front and, on the back, a frequently repeated piece of advice: ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’
The team fields plenty of genuine repair calls, though. “Some weeks, we’ll be overwhelmed with repairs,” Morris said. “Other weeks, we won’t have any.”
As at an auto body shop, students receive a “loaner” netbook in order to participate in class and complete homework assignments while the team fixes their machine.
They do not have to wait long. Except for the rare netbook that is beyond repair, the team usually returns the netbook in working order by the end of the day or the following day.
Every Lincoln Academy student pays a $20 fee, less if he or she qualifies for free or reduced lunch, to insure their netbook against one instance of accidental damage.
“We’ve always been able to buy all the parts we need for just that fee,” Crosby said.
Lincoln Academy Director of Information Technology Nick Azzaretti speaks highly of the quality of the team’s work and its significant impact on the school’s finances.
“I’m very impressed with the work they’ve done maintaining the netbooks and keeping the technology up and running around here,” Azzaretti said. “It’s saved us a great deal of money and reduced our costs for the netbook program radically.”
“We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars other schools have had to pay for accidental damage to netbooks,” Azzaretti said.
The extent of the damage at Camden Hills Regional High School, for example, led to a $56,000 repair bill for its Apple laptops, a bill the superintendent of schools blamed on student carelessness.
Lincoln Academy is not immune to the latter. Netbooks have been crushed by firewood, ejected from a vehicle’s open window during a car accident, and forgotten in the bed of a truck in freezing rain.
But because Lincoln Academy does not participate in the state-subsidized Maine Learning Technology Initiative, which requires Apple-certified technicians to perform all repairs, the technology team is able to do the work in-house.
Because the student fee covers parts and the labor is free, the only expense for three years of one-to-one computing has been the purchase of the machines for about $320 apiece.
Lincoln Academy would have paid $726 per student to buy into the state-subsidized Maine Learning Technology Initiative for the same period, a figure that does not include maintenance and repair.
The savings help maintain the one-to-one program, and team members help in other ways, too.
“We are hoping to do some hardware replacement really soon so we can continue the one-to-one program at a high level of effectiveness,” Crosby said, and the team members have been testing options for the next generation of computers.
The students, aside from maintaining the netbook fleet, eagerly tackle other challenges. The day of the interview, senior Johnny Braley, the only sophomore to join the 2010 group and, thus, the elder statesman of the team, was adding RAM and installing a new operating system on an ed tech’s MacBook after the hard drive failed.
Morris recently refurbished a Dell computer, bought secondhand for $20, that now runs six workstations in the classroom with monitors recycled from another program at the school.
The students have also repaired fellow students’ iPods and personal computers.
The students have little formal training for this work. Instead, when faced with an unfamiliar problem, they use the Internet to find owner’s manuals and instructional YouTube videos.
“These guys are hardcore do-it-yourselfers,” Crosby said.
The “tech teamers,” as Crosby and some students refer to them, often find themselves providing support outside the technology team room.
“People know who’s on the tech team,” Braley said, and students and teachers alike are not shy about asking for help with printer set-up or a PowerPoint presentation.
The role even follows tech teamers home. “I get Facebook messages all the time,” Morris, the sophomore, said.
The home requests are common enough for another student to joke about needing an automated answering system for their mobile phone: “If this is a technology team question, press 1…”
The team members also visit local elementary school classrooms for technology activities with the young students. Last year, they went on field trips to an annual conference for student technology teams and to the National Semiconductor plant in South Portland.
Crosby and Morris sat on a panel called “Student Tech Teams – It’s About Time” at MAINEducation 2012, the annual conference of the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine.
But the primary mission of the technology team remains keeping those 500-some computers in the hands of students, a task at which the team excels.
“We can fix pretty much anything in here,” Crosby said.
