Computers and education

When I graduated high school back in 1981 we had one personal computer in the whole school, a IBM 8088 running DOS. I never used that computer but about seven years later when I was in the Navy I started using a mainframe on board ship to track maintenance of engineering equipment that provided documentation to the Navy how well the equipment was working. by 1990 I had been using DOS on a 286 and had access to the 386 PCs on board ship. Now, twenty years later, I am a Systems Administrator working with some of the coolest computers around. At IUSB we have over 500 lab PCs and nearly 100 Macs that I support with various servers running Windows, Linux and OS X. Students would not be able to complete their studies without access to a computer and it is my job to ensure the computer systems on campus are up and running. I love what I do knowing I am helping others achieve their educational goals. Now I will be documenting what works and what needs work in the education environment. Now that macs use Intel processors, I enjoy working with macs the most because of all the remote administration features built into OS X. I find most students are somewhat familiar with Windows XP which is fine. The university does have classes to teach students how to use a computer. In some cases I feel students are too reliant on a computer instead of their brain, but that is a whole other topic. I work with very dedicated professionals who jump in and do what needs to be done to keep the systems working for the students, faculty and staff.