NWA-PCUG 07/2000 NewsLetter Article 18861 N. Hwy 112, Springdale, AR 72762-9303 This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an International organization to which this user group belongs. Charlie Paschal is a native of the Carolina's and has worked in Journalism for the last 33 years. He has had his articles published by Knight-Ridder newspapers and also works as a web designer for the University of South Carolina. Charlie is the editor of the Palmetto Personal Computer Club. If you decide to use this article, please notify Charlie at cpaschal@mail.netside.com Kids and Computers If you're a parent with a child in school, you might want to consider seeing if the child has any talents in the PC area, because jobs in that field are booming. According to the annual Cyberstates report, California remains the nation's main technology powerhouse, even though other states are reporting gains in tech jobs. The U.S. high-tech industry employed five million workers in 1999, more than twice the number of people employed in auto manufacturing services. And, this report says that average tech wages are now 82 percent higher than the average U.S. private-sector wage. Other states booming include Washington, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia. Although this report doesn't break the jobs down, you can bet that many of those jobs include connections to the Internet. Since there's so many "free" deals out there for Web development, it's a field that's easy for any parent to get a child started. Example's include: * Netscape comes with a free What You See Is What You Get (WYSWYG) editor. * 1st Page 2000 is a free text-based editor. * Notepad comes free with Windows. Most likely you also have a connection to the Internet, meaning you have a wealth of information available about construction and designing Web pages at your finger tips. Of course, there are also many other tech careers available, such as working for ISP's (Internet Service Providers), configuring equipment for Web companies or writing software. Early on, try to get your children well acquainted with PCs and how they process information. It might also help if you could build a PC from scratch so they will understand the mechanics of how they work. This might spur interest in the hardware side of the business. Make books and manuals available to them, such as programming manuals, books on DOS or books on Web design and HTML. Just as we introduce sports, such as baseball and basketball to young children, introduce them to computers, too. Show them how they work and show them the ways they can be used to create things, such as spreadsheets and databases. Of course, not all children will want to dive into such stuff, but not all of them like baseball or football do they? I know several children who have their own Web pages, pages that they have built from scratch. They update and design these pages themselves. You can even make online sites available to them. For example, Xoom and Geocities allow free Web pages. Point this out to them and give them the tools needed to do their own pages! I know one lady whose had her own page since six -- she's now 10. Will she ever enter the tech field? I don't know, but it could be like youth baseball: She will play with it until she gets older and decides she wants to do something else. That's no different than being involved with a sport as a young person and discarding it later. All you can do is make the tools available to them and see what plays out. As a parent, you're opening the door of opportunity; it's up to them to walk through. I want you to consider these three resumes from Business Week: *Rishi Bhat, born 1984, currently a high school sophomore in Chicago. Child actor, starting in the Hollywood movie, The Indian in the Cupboard. Second career: Developed privacy software he sold for $40,000, 30 percent of the first-year profits, and the right to "performance shares." Preferred reading at age six: His mom's MS-DOS manual. * Paul Dini, born 1980. High school dropout, later got high-school- equivalency degree. Career so far: configures routers and switches for Interland, an Atlanta (Ga) Web-hosting company. Prized possessions: Four cars, include a Jaguar and an '81 DeLorean. * Michael Furdyk. Born 1982. Education: Completed 11th grade. Business: Sold his first Web site for more than $1 million, then started a Web comparison-shopping service. Also a Microsoft consultant. Whom he reports to: No one, except his dad, whom he brought in as CEO. Biggest problem with his age: Must take cabs on business trips because he's too young to rent a car. * In addition, I know one University of South Carolina graduate who started an ISP company as soon as he graduated just a few short years ago. He's now retired -- at less than the age of 30! This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an International organization to which this user group belongs. Charlie Paschal is a native of the Carolina's and has worked in Journalism for the last 33 years. He has had his articles published by Knight-Ridder newspapers and also works as a web designer for the University of South Carolina. Charlie is the editor of the Palmetto Personal Computer Club.