MOLINE, Ill. — Most kids these days know a lot about technology, but one group of middle schoolers is taking that knowledge to a whole other level.
At Woodrow Wilson Middle School, 25 students run the "Help Desk." It's where students can drop off their Chromebooks for repairs and get loaners.
"The easiest stuff to do here, in my case at least, is screen repairs, because it's just unscrewing and then putting on a new screen and then attaching it and then restarting it," seventh grader Brady Kenneth Woodward said. "The harder stuff is battery repairs and when you have to get a whole new mainboard."
The student-led help desk started at the school five years ago, around the time all the students started using devices in class. John Deere Middle School has the same program with a group of 16 students.
At the end of the school year, teachers can recommend students for the program for the following year, or students can ask to be involved themselves. It's a class in place of their study hall period.
"They learn customer service skills, they learn repair skills, they learn some leadership skills," coordinator Michele Stanley said. "The kids are just amazing. It's so fulfilling to actually solve the problem and get something bigger than themselves. And I'm very proud of them every day."
Stanley added that the students have helped alleviate some of the work from the Ed Tech Department so it can focus on bigger issues.
The students rotate through different positions, including customer service, the repair station and manager.
"I like to see the satisfaction of being able to complete a repair, especially one that you've been working at for so long and for so hard," said eighth grader Julia McCowan.
It's her second year working for the help desk and said she's lost count of all she's learned. She agrees with Woodward that the hardest repair is the batteries.
"It's pretty fun too and especially when it's with all of the friends that I've made doing this," McCowan said. "I definitely think that there's a lot of women and young girls who are interested in doing this like me, and they don't find much opportunity to do this. So I feel like this is a good opportunity to try it out and see how you like it."
Woodward would like to have a career in coding for new-generation inventions. For now, he says he'll continue with the help desk in middle school and again at the high school.
"I never knew I could do all this stuff, really," he said, "until I finally joined it. And then it was like, 'Oh, this is really easy.'"
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