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Squad SpotLight: Thomas Edison
Number of Years Running: 6 Years
Squad Coordinator: Mr.Bell
Latest Accomplishment: 50+ Tickets before November
What’s Next: Moving to CaseTracker for online ticket / case management
The MOUSE Squad at Thomas Edison High School has been running for 6 years and has won the MOUSE Squad of the Year award twice. I recently had the opportunity to meet with the squad as they were getting started for the year. In a couple of short weeks they had recruited 13 all new students who meet up every school day and usually work during lunch, after school and whenever they have a free period.
Mr.Bell is a serious and efficient MOUSE Squad Coordinator whose goal is to have his squad win MOUSE Squad of the Year. He is already planning 2 events where his squad will be providing the tech support. To him MOUSE Squad is a job and demands professionalism from both his students and the faculty at the school.
The students in the past have worked on a number of projects throughout the school such as installing SMART Boards and projectors in many classrooms as well as doing extensive work repairing broken down computers through reimaging, defragmenting hard drives, removing viruses and generally solving software-related issues they might have. The squad has already resolved a stack of more than 50 service calls before November. They are continuing regularly scheduled maintenance and upgrades to their network by replacing old Ethernet cables with new ones they’ve made themselves, and by setting up the wireless access on school laptops, and installing network printers.
Currently, the squad keeps track of all of their work with a paper ticket system, but has recently started transitioning their case tracking system to the MOUSESquad.org CaseTracker. After graduating from Thomas Edison High School many MOUSE Squad students get jobs or study in the tech field. One Thomas Edison alumni volunteered to work with us at the MOUSE Squad Summer Academy and is an Agent with the Geek Squad.
Thomas Edison High School is a long time partner with MOUSE and one of the many success stories from the field this year. If you have great things happening in your squad and want to share please e-mail our Field Support Representative at juan@mouse.org and make an appointment for MOUSE to visit YOU. If your squad is in another state, contact your region coordinator to have a “Spotlight” submitted from your site.
NYC MOUSE Squad Team Trainings: Next Week!
There are still spaces left for you and your MOUSE Squad to attend one of 2 available full-day MOUSE Squad Team Trainings: One on Tuesday, November 11th and the other on Saturday the 15th.
Click here to register your squad now: http://www.mousesquad.org/node/7414
More info:
MOUSE Squad Team Trainings: Nov 11th or Nov 15th
Hosted by Lower East Side Prepratory High School
145 Stanton Street (btwn Suffolk & Norfolk Street)
New York, NY 10002
TIME: 9:00 AM - 3:30 PM
This year, we are doing combined educator & student trainings. Bring your whole squad to meet and network with other squads across the city, share best practices, and get oriented with workshops in Networking, Hardware, and all new mousesquad.org tools.
Students and Coordinators will participate in hands-on tech skills activities, games and team-building. Together, Squad Members and Coordinators engage in team- and skill-building activities to expand know-how and enhance Squad culture.
Next Tech: USB 3.0
What is USB 3.0?
Well, you might be familiar with its younger brothers USB 1.0 and USB 2.0. The difference between these three versions is speed. USB 1.0 only goes at 12 Megabits/second which is great for a keyboard or Mouse, but USB 2.0 goes 40 times faster than USB 1.0 at 480 Megabits/second. USB 3.0 will go at an outstanding 5 Gigabits/second; with that you can imagine an entire DVD copied in 1 second. The difference between the 3 is like having Horse(USB 1.0), Sports Car(USB 2.0), and a Jet going twice the speed of sound racing each other.
Why do these numbers matter?
Imagine an 80 GB iPod that you want to fill up, copying 1 song takes a couple of seconds, but if you wanted to transfer ALL the music to your iPod at once using USB 1.0 it would take up to between 40 and 60 minutes. Using USB 2.0 it takes about 10 minutes.
Now, With USB 3.0 you can copy a full 80GB iPod… (drumroll please)… in under a minute!
So what does it look like?:
Notice something it looks no different than any USB port you have seen before. That’s because USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.0, which means that all your existing USB technology, such as your printer, mouse, keyboard, and external hard drive will work with USB 3.0.
How will we see it introduced?
We will start to see USB 3.0 products in mid 2009, and will most likely be seen first is external hard drives, and external Blue Ray drives for the computer. There are also plans to include this technology in iPods and smart phones. At the same time most if not all-new computers will start to incorporate the USB 3.0 ports, and older computers will be able to purchase an upgrade to install on their computer.
Look for this Logo to make sure your getting a USB 3.0 product.
