By Shannon Barry, Milpitas Post
Posted:  1/11/2012

William Burnett Elementary School is giving its students the tools they need today to become the tech leaders of tomorrow through a new club.

MOUSE Squad meets an hour after school every Friday, with a goal of giving students the skills needed to survive and thrive in today's virtual world.

The club, composed of 18 students between fourth and sixth grades, is the first of its kind in Milpitas but one of 27 in Santa Clara County all with a universal goal of being "an innovative youth development organization that empowers students to provide technology support and leadership in their schools and communities," according to the MOUSE Squad of California website. MOUSE stands for Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education.

Milpitas Unified School District parent Robert Jung proposed forming the club at the district's Strategic Planning meeting last June while talking with Burnett Principal Catherine Waslif about how the school needed an updated computer lab. They were "also discussing how badly understaffed our IT group was due to the budget cuts," Jung said.

"I had been familiar with the MOUSE Squad concept a while ago, and thought it would serve a dual purpose," he said. "It would provide Burnett students the opportunity to learn about computers, and potentially have the students maintain them while serving as a showcase for local businesses to see what our kids could do in hopes that they would be willing to invest in Burnett and Advertisement MUSD."

Following the conversation, Waslif called Burnett fifth-grade teacher Daniel Sievert and asked whether he would be interested in leading the weekly group.

"We have tried a few other technology based clubs in the past, but they have been far less structured and we as teachers have had to come up with all of the programs materials and lessons," Sievert said. "An advantage of joining the MOUSE Squad program is that much of the lessons have been pre-designed ... making my job as the program director much easier."

So far, Sievert has taught the students about the inner workings and hardware of computers in a hands-on approach. They completely disassembled some of the school's obsolete computers in pairs, learning the individual parts along the way by drawing their own maps of what they saw inside and sticking notes on the designated desktop.

Last Friday, many of the students' maps lay out on their desk as they worked to re-assemble the computer that week's task.

"Hopefully they will still work," Sievert said. "We work as though we are technicians working in a repair shop servicing a customer's computer."

Fourth-grade brothers Ahmed and Yusef Ahramahi were working together. They began by unfastening the computer screws, taking the computer outside to dust out where they would later place the parts and came back inside where they laid down the computer and put on anti-static wrist straps used to safely ground a person working on electronic equipment before beginning.

"Our dad usually fixes everything," Yusef said of why he and brother Ahmed decided to join MOUSE Squad. "So I thought maybe we should start learning about how to do it so he doesn't have to worry about it."

Nearby, fifth-graders Ilene Martinez and Amber Banks were trying to find where to put the floppy drive.

"We've been working together to remind each other what each thing is," Martinez said. "...It's amazing to use friendship as a way to figure it out."

She said before joining the club, she recognized many of the hardware names like power supply, hard drive and PCI but Banks said it was mostly all new to her.

"You get to have fun, you learn a lot about computers that you haven't learned before, it's exciting," Banks said.

They both say they have learned a lot so far and are looking forward to sharing more of their knowledge with others as the year goes on.

"My grandpa is really good at doing stuff with computers and I want to be kind of like him, and I can maybe when I'm done with this..." Martinez said.

After learning about the hardware of the computers, Sievert said the club will move on to learning software applications such as presentation, word processing and spreadsheets.

"I hope to expose them to several formats such as MS Office, Google Docs and Open Office," Sievert said. "I also want to expose them to networks and if time allows maybe even expose them to some web page design or the installing of an operating system such as Linux."

For more information about MOUSE Squad of California, visit http://www.mousesquadca.org/.

Contact Shannon Barry at sbarry@themilpitaspost.com or 408-262-2454. Visit us on our social media sites at facebook.com/milpitas post and twitter.com/milpitaspost.

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