[Beowulf] Re: clusters in high schools.

[H.Vidal, Jr.]

matt jones wrote:
> if there was an opportunity for clusters in high school, or secondary 
> schools (which i'm in) it would be great, people like myself are 
> actually being held back by the schools because we are far more advanced 
> than all the others in our class's. not much can be done about this but 
> in the UK because we sit IT and that hasn't really got much to do with 
> actual hardware, software or anything that could include a beowulf.

My personal thought, based on my years in the computer business,
is that the real innovators are hardly brought about by common
education. Most of the kids in schools I meet think of computers
as much more than Windows. When I sat down with my son and had
a long chat with him about computability, knowledge representation,
and other interesting topics, I closed out the chat with the notion
that this represented some real topics in computer science and related
disciplines. He was shocked, and commented that he always thought
of computer science as just involving mice and Windows.

So I am constantly pulling for these kids to get involved in their own 
projects.
But the ongoing problem is that folks like Microsoft put up a lot of money
for these schools, and would love nothing more than to get these kids
to believe that computers are truly equivalent to all things Microsoft.
Hence, the intertia we find ourself trying to overcome.

hv

> 
> in our school myself and one other in the year below even know what 
> anything other than windows is... i find this astonishing as most web 
> servers do not use windows, and we spend most of our IT lessons on the net.
> 
> so yes clustering and the opportunities of clustering unused computers 
> within schools and colleges do exist and there is a huge gap in the UK 
> education for starting people towards any sort of clustering knowledge, 
> but if it could be done those 1 to 10 of us might get the help we need 
> to actually build and maintain a cluster. which i suppose would benefit 
> the other students as they could run models through it.
> 
> matt jones, 15, YR. 11 student at a normal comprehensive school.
> 
> ps* can anyone advise me to a guide for starting a Beowulf, 'cos i 
> haven't found one yet.
> 
> 
> 
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