Eleven-year-old John Penn is the go-to-guy at his school when there is a computer problem. This Garde 6 student is the computer guru at Victory Baptist school in Sherwood Arkansas. He has a technical background that belies his youth.
"There's a teacher named Mrs. Hayes who is having some internet problems, so I'm trying to check our server-type thing - it's a filter for spam - to see why it's managing to get through," said John.
His mother is not surprised. "He's always had a knack for computers. We first noticed it when he was two and three (years old). He would get on my husband's laptop at home. By the age of three, he could boot up the laptop, open up (MS) Paint and save his work," she said.
John would later have to save the system at his school when the network administrator suddenly quit. John volunteered to help.
"I came in and looked at the network. I noticed several things wrong with It. The main thing was getting a content filter in place so the kids could not get on our school computers and do anything on them, and also get rid of several viruses that were on our network," John said.
He knows how to fix computers and how to explain them. But he takes it all in stride and says his friends just treat him as one of the crowd.
