RE: At risk and underprivileged youth in North Fort Myers

e14 Contributor — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 04:15:38 GMT

Well, John, a little on my back ground, My neighbor I had growing up had a couple altair's and a few tandy's. So I would have to say that is when I caught the bug, so to speak. I kept plug at it with trial and error as we all do. Some good some bad. I never really ared what people said what something will do I was always interested in what it could do. I started out on basic and very slowly went from there. I honestly didn't care about the software side of things but I was driven by the hardware. during this time I didn't care about the physical size of things because as we know it was all big back then. I soon teamed up with a friend and he seamed to round me out, he was software to my hardware I could build it and he could make it all work and we both loved games. By this time The game Doom was getting very popular so we took a chance and set up a dedicated BBS I already had a dedicated room in my house just for my computers so this seamed the next logical step for both of us. I had been running a single T-1 line so It wasn't too much trouble to upgrade. I had a 8 node switch so I upgraded to 3 T-1 lines and added a 16 node switch per line. built 2 more servers and we was off to the races. He taught me how to help him build our own levels for doom and I taught him more about hardware so we could help the other pick up the slack, on our 1 yr we hosted an on-site tournament,which then became a normal monthly thing and the grow to weekly, they was BYOS parties. The os we ran at the time was a modified Free BSD with wildcat handling the network. During this time I worked for a company called Computer Land as a Batch builder and installer.

That is where it all started, and it just grew from there... By the way about the time I was graduating high school the neighbor that got me hooked was arrested by the FBI. not sure what ever came of it but I think that is what kept me from the software side for so many years, the whole thing of not sure it I could control the power that it brings. All I know about what happened was he had more money and computers than he had means for.

As for my project, that was just the path I was thinking of going then I got to think about my son and how it is hard to keep his attention when it is a history lesson so to speak. I have been playing around with a Raspberry pi and I was thinking if I could introduce them to the things that the NEWER styles of SBC then I just might be able to hold them and keep them coming back and off the streets. I could show them the drone and robotic capabilities to start with and then let them go crazy. and on the program side I would start them off with scratch from MIT. I have noticed that with some kids it is more about the results that gets them hooked instead of they whats and whys. So I was thinking of a backward approach of give them a taste of what can be done and then guide then to figure out why. I know it is not normal to teach this way but I am looking at it like this, they have to go to school to learn, so I need to do something to hook then to come so they will want to learn.

My grandfather taught me that if you hive a hungry man a fish you fed him only that one time, but if you teach him to fish you feed him every time he is hungry. Now my challenge is to show the kids they are hungry so I can teach them to fish. also because the SBC are so versatile in the things they can do it would be a great place to start not to mention I don't want to get them off the street to learn things they will not be able to afford to do on their own, Most of these kids parents are not going to be able to afford to buy them the the computers and components to do it on their own, but the SBC are so cheep they could get this money easier,

My thinking might be wrong but I feel I have to do something to turn this world around, I know I will not reach all of them nor will I reach half of them and I am sure I will in the eyes of others Fail, and probably many times over. As I see it I will not fail, I will just find many ways to not reach them. I understand that not all of us has the same love and passion for the world of electronics that some of us do. Yes there are people that don't care about how their cell phone works or how they could make it better, that they just care that it works, but if I can reach just one of these kids and turn there life positive then I did not fail I was 100% successful...

I will do my best to keep everyone up to date on how this turns out. Just remember with me that these kids are our future and we will be handing the world over to them one day soon and they will be taking care of us.

In closing I would like to add one more thing my grandfather used to say to me..."If you don't know it you never will if you don't try. And if you don't know it there is a book out there to teach you and someone else that has done it that can help, all you have to do is truly try. Now we live in the information age and you don't have to find the book or spend countless hours at the library reading about it, you just have to google it and the information will be at your finger tips. So when he are hungry we have the tools to feed ourselves.

RE: At risk and underprivileged youth in North Fort Myers

jw0752 — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 05:04:29 GMT

Hi Bradley,

Welcome to E-14 Forum. I am interested in learning more about you and your background in electronics. I am hoping to follow this thread to learn more about what you have in mind for making your project work out. One approach that might work inexpensively would be to go to a computer/electronics recycling company and buy back some of the old items that are turned in. You could have the kids disassemble these items and discuss the components and how they work together. I have used this approach with a couple of my grandkids and it has worked fairly well.

John