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We Came, We Saw, We Conquered
A Day in the Life of an Urban Tech VISTA with the Digital Service Fellows
by Greg Dean
AmeriCorps*VISTA is a national service program in which volunteers offer
a year of their time to work for a non-profit organization that is dedicated
to education and anti-poverty issues. The PSLA is fortunate enough to be
able to utilize the talents of 12 AmeriCorps*VISTAs in our Eastern and Western
offices. These VISTAs support our efforts to provide service-learning training
and assitance to K-12 teachers in Pennsylvania. The following was written
by one of our VISTA members in Philadelphia and features
an account of “a day in the life of an UrbanTech VISTA”. We
encourage you to spend a day with Greg and his colleagues by reading this
superbly written account. We are sure you will enjoy it and want to share
it with your students.
On Saturday, December 7, 2002, two AmeriCorps*VISTA members from the UrbanTech Project and three members from the School District of Philadelphia’s Digital Service Fellows program, volunteered their time and effort to fix the computer lab in the Kensington High School library. The following is a log of the day’s events as reported by UrbanTech VISTA, Greg Dean:
0900 hours—A FRIGID SATURDAY. Suffocatingly cold weather clamped down on Philadelphia. Snow that had recently fallen was stuck in a thick grey dangerous mass on the streets and sidewalks. Steam twisted in the wind, whistling as the gusts streamed through the odd protuberances in the old industrial landscape. “What am I doing here?” I asked myself as I stood outside of Kensington High School. It was, after all, my day off, and I could be tucked neatly in my warm bed, blissfully listening to the wind pound against my window pane. Instead, it was slapping against my face, and I stood huddled within my jacket barely moving in a lame attempt to prevent the blasts from seeping through the little protection I had.
0915 hours—MISERY LOVES COMPANY. Pete Henderson, my co-worker with UrbanTech Project, and Sean Finch, a member of the Digital Service Fellows, joined me at my post in front of the school. We chatted about various things: sports, computers, work, the weekend. But in the back of our minds we were focused on one thing: getting into that building. I walked around to the back to triple check that we were not waiting in front of the wrong entrance. All I saw was a lone car with a busted front bumper in the steppe-like parking lot in the back of the school. I rejoined the two others, and we continued to wait.
0930 hours—CLICK. The impossible sound of a door opening behind us. Pete, Sean and I clambered into the dark hallway, embracing our long awaited shelter. After getting our bearings we were greeted by the principal of Kensington. The formalities finished, the three of us were led down the hallway and directed to the site of our mission, the one place that was perhaps more frightening than the cold outside.
1000 hours—THE LIBRARY. We were joined by our leader, the Educational Technologist for the Central East Region, Charles Ireland, and two other Digital Service Fellows, Angel Rivera and Max Diaz. This was our complete team for the day, and we certainly had our work cut out for us. The computer lab consisted of about twenty iMacs. They were nice computers, but only three machines of the entire lot were functional. The rest lay in various states of disrepair. Misplaced cables, uninstalled operating systems and non-functioning hardware were only a few of the more typical issues that we faced.
1030 hours—STRATEGIC SESSION. After surveying the damage, we planned our method of attack. We determined that of the twenty computers, fifteen could be saved before we left. The other five would need additional parts, such as new mice or keyboards. We made a note of which machines we could work with and moved them to the inside portion of the library. We then moved the faulty computers to the back, so that there would be no confusion over which ones did and did not work. Now that we had our plan for fixing the computers in place, we had to develop a strategy for preventative measures. After all, we did not want to fix the lab, only to come back a few weeks later to find that it wasn’t working again. To ensure that this didn’t happen, we needed to bring in the heavy artillery.
1100 hours—OPERATION DUCKIES. Operation Duckies was the brainchild of Angel, a simple, yet elegant solution to the main problems that plagued the computers at the Hyde Park High School Library. Many of the problems in the computers were caused by the unnecessary clutter on the desktop and in the hard drive that inevitably builds up when a large number of users work on the same machine. At Hyde Park, there had been no devices installed on the computer to prevent this accumulation, and the librarian did not have the time nor the technical expertise to continually clean up the virtual mess on all these machines. With Operation Duckies, we reconfigured the computers client ID settings so that extraneous programs would be prevented from entering the computers at all. The students would have access only to the programs that they needed, and the librarian would not have to deal with the technical problems resulting from the accumulation of unwanted downloads. After installing the appropriate settings to the computers according to this plan, we marked our completed machines with the “Duckie” user icon to track our progress and to symbolize our success.
1120 hours—HUMANS VS. MACHINES. Our mission clear, the six of us began to take on the machines, and restore the lab to its potential. Each person had a different style of repair, but all worked together as a seamless whole. Sean, for instance, snaked through the lab, working on four computers simultaneously, while Max pounded out commands on the keyboard with his inimitable speed typing technique. Problems arose, but our team was flexible and knowledgable enough to identify and solve them efficiently, and move on. After about an hour of focused technical work, we looked back contently at a computer lab with fifteen fully functional iMacs all connected to a central network printer.
1230 hours--THE SPOILS OF VICTORY. As we finished, Commander Ireland brought in a few boxes of pizza, the reward for our efforts. Fired up from our victory in the lab, we debriefed about our day’s work while enjoying the food and the comaraderie forged by the successful completion of our shared mission. The icy thoughts of nine o' clock had melted away into oblivion, and I was energized with a strong sense of accomplishment as I began my belated weekend.
On Saturday, December 7, 2002, two AmeriCorps*VISTA members from the UrbanTech Project and three members from the School District of Philadelphia’s Digital Service Fellows program, volunteered their time and effort to fix the computer lab in the Kensington High School library. The following is a log of the day’s events as reported by UrbanTech VISTA, Greg Dean:
0900 hours—A FRIGID SATURDAY. Suffocatingly cold weather clamped down on Philadelphia. Snow that had recently fallen was stuck in a thick grey dangerous mass on the streets and sidewalks. Steam twisted in the wind, whistling as the gusts streamed through the odd protuberances in the old industrial landscape. “What am I doing here?” I asked myself as I stood outside of Kensington High School. It was, after all, my day off, and I could be tucked neatly in my warm bed, blissfully listening to the wind pound against my window pane. Instead, it was slapping against my face, and I stood huddled within my jacket barely moving in a lame attempt to prevent the blasts from seeping through the little protection I had.
0915 hours—MISERY LOVES COMPANY. Pete Henderson, my co-worker with UrbanTech Project, and Sean Finch, a member of the Digital Service Fellows, joined me at my post in front of the school. We chatted about various things: sports, computers, work, the weekend. But in the back of our minds we were focused on one thing: getting into that building. I walked around to the back to triple check that we were not waiting in front of the wrong entrance. All I saw was a lone car with a busted front bumper in the steppe-like parking lot in the back of the school. I rejoined the two others, and we continued to wait.
0930 hours—CLICK. The impossible sound of a door opening behind us. Pete, Sean and I clambered into the dark hallway, embracing our long awaited shelter. After getting our bearings we were greeted by the principal of Kensington. The formalities finished, the three of us were led down the hallway and directed to the site of our mission, the one place that was perhaps more frightening than the cold outside.
1000 hours—THE LIBRARY. We were joined by our leader, the Educational Technologist for the Central East Region, Charles Ireland, and two other Digital Service Fellows, Angel Rivera and Max Diaz. This was our complete team for the day, and we certainly had our work cut out for us. The computer lab consisted of about twenty iMacs. They were nice computers, but only three machines of the entire lot were functional. The rest lay in various states of disrepair. Misplaced cables, uninstalled operating systems and non-functioning hardware were only a few of the more typical issues that we faced.
1030 hours—STRATEGIC SESSION. After surveying the damage, we planned our method of attack. We determined that of the twenty computers, fifteen could be saved before we left. The other five would need additional parts, such as new mice or keyboards. We made a note of which machines we could work with and moved them to the inside portion of the library. We then moved the faulty computers to the back, so that there would be no confusion over which ones did and did not work. Now that we had our plan for fixing the computers in place, we had to develop a strategy for preventative measures. After all, we did not want to fix the lab, only to come back a few weeks later to find that it wasn’t working again. To ensure that this didn’t happen, we needed to bring in the heavy artillery.
1100 hours—OPERATION DUCKIES. Operation Duckies was the brainchild of Angel, a simple, yet elegant solution to the main problems that plagued the computers at the Hyde Park High School Library. Many of the problems in the computers were caused by the unnecessary clutter on the desktop and in the hard drive that inevitably builds up when a large number of users work on the same machine. At Hyde Park, there had been no devices installed on the computer to prevent this accumulation, and the librarian did not have the time nor the technical expertise to continually clean up the virtual mess on all these machines. With Operation Duckies, we reconfigured the computers client ID settings so that extraneous programs would be prevented from entering the computers at all. The students would have access only to the programs that they needed, and the librarian would not have to deal with the technical problems resulting from the accumulation of unwanted downloads. After installing the appropriate settings to the computers according to this plan, we marked our completed machines with the “Duckie” user icon to track our progress and to symbolize our success.
1120 hours—HUMANS VS. MACHINES. Our mission clear, the six of us began to take on the machines, and restore the lab to its potential. Each person had a different style of repair, but all worked together as a seamless whole. Sean, for instance, snaked through the lab, working on four computers simultaneously, while Max pounded out commands on the keyboard with his inimitable speed typing technique. Problems arose, but our team was flexible and knowledgable enough to identify and solve them efficiently, and move on. After about an hour of focused technical work, we looked back contently at a computer lab with fifteen fully functional iMacs all connected to a central network printer.
1230 hours--THE SPOILS OF VICTORY. As we finished, Commander Ireland brought in a few boxes of pizza, the reward for our efforts. Fired up from our victory in the lab, we debriefed about our day’s work while enjoying the food and the comaraderie forged by the successful completion of our shared mission. The icy thoughts of nine o' clock had melted away into oblivion, and I was energized with a strong sense of accomplishment as I began my belated weekend.
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The Pennsylvania Service-Learning Alliance dissolved as of June 30, 2007. The website will stay posted for one more year, so please share the resources. We are sorry that we will not be able to answer any questions you may have. Good luck with all your future service-learning endeavors!