SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the reflecting-public-accessibility? dept.
President Barack Obama says the United States needs to bring its schools into the 21st century when it comes to technology.
Obama says less than 40 percent of public schools have high-speed Internet in their classrooms. He says that's not good for the country where the Internet was invented.
Obama commented Wednesday as he opened a White House conference with school superintendents and other educators from across the country who are helping their schools and school districts transition to digital learning.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/obama-us-bring-schools-21st-century-27025796
This has to be compared with a survey conducted in 2013 which showed that 30% of Americans do not have broadband access at home, although the majority of these are aged 50+ where the desire to have access diminishes as people get older. Furthermore, some of those from this group do have access to 3G and 4G LTE so are not entirely without access to modern communications.
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Friday November 21 2014, @01:48AM
That's what my old Jr. High and High School did in my day. I remember well being invited to fix the school's PA system and run the lights and sound systems.
I got a lot of experience right there - just seeing and becoming familiar with more industrialized equipment than you would find in a home.
To be completely honest, about the most technical things I did was resolder broken microphone cabling, run speaker wires, and occasionally replace the blown tube. I got as far as taking the covers off the stuff and saw how it was made, but I wasn't ready to do serious repair ( like finding/replacing a leaky capacitor or drifted resistor ) until I was in the final year of High School. It was there I saw my first magnetic amplifiers, AKA "saturable reactors", which were used for dimming stage lights. I was always amazed how that transformer controlled several kilowatts of incandescent lamps with nothing more than the plate current of a 6L6.
Alas that was 50 years ago.
I do not think one could get an education anywhere near what I got on the high school level these days... way too many liability concerns.
It seems OK to mangle a kid if its done in the name of sport, but if it happened in the lab, there would be no end of lawsuits.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]