11 year old is the school network administrator

As a 3 year old, Jon Penn would baffle his father when he would switch on log in and start the paint application on his laptop. It did not surprise him when he learnt that Jon now 11 is the network manager in charge of his small private school in Millbrook Ala.For Jon — who says his favorite reading material is computer trade magazines — it has been the experience of a lifetime, even getting to select and install a gateway security appliance largely by himself. "We spent $2, 158," says young Penn, describing how he picked out the McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance after evaluating it in a 30-day trial. He also looked at the Barracuda box and tried the Untangle open source product, which he said did not meet the school's needs as well. His school needed a gateway to protect against attacks, filter viruses and spam, and block inappropriate sites. Keeping costs down is important since the school is operating on a shoestring budget to keep its 60 aging computers, a donation from years ago, working for the roughly 200 students permitted to use them, along with the teachers. Along with school staff, the younger Penn has gotten involved in contributing to school policy on Web access. While blocking access to social networking sites such as MySpace was not popular with many fellow students, he had to agree the school really did not need it. Penn is now the technical support much of the time on everything from printer jams to setting up an external drive to backing up the school's most important server. He was allowed to give a few lessons to his class about basic computers, having his classmates pull out a few components from old machines.

Penn did it to help his mother, Paula, the school librarian who had computer support added to her workload a week before the school year started when the existing IT systems overseer suddenly departed. Penn's parents both believe that technical people must have "integrity and character," and should use their skills for beneficial, not malicious purposes.

Her son is precocious when it comes to computers but Paula says in the final analysis she hopes the experience with the school's network helps him realize, "It's his job to fight the bad guys."

Source