BERKELEY, California -- Net-happy pre-teens have popularized the language of emoticons and acronyms. But at one middle school in California, kids are learning more advanced languages, like Perl, Java, JavaScript, and HTML.
Instead of keyboarding and word processing, seventh- and eighth-graders in Nancy Elnor's advanced computer science classes at Longfellow Arts & Technology Magnet Middle School are mastering skills that talent-starved technology companies crave.
"They're far ahead of other middle schools," said Bonnie Marks, a director of the California Technology Assistance Project for the California Department of Education. "(The program) is one I've been very impressed with."
"I think they're a very adventuresome school willing to take risks," agreed Elliot Soloway, a professor in the college of engineering and school of education at the University of Michigan. "We need more schools like them."
Longfellow -- a public school that draws kids from all over Berkeley –- has been blessed with dedicated teachers, a windfall of corporate and community support, and numerous grants that have helped create two simple yet sophisticated computer labs.
The school boasts over 200 computers, with at least six in each room. Sun Microsystems donated a SunRay lab to the school, which includes 30 thin client computers. With 430 students, the student-to-computer ratio is less than two-to-one.
Classes are still predominantly male -- though there are a handful of girls in the bunch -- and attract kids from all ethnic backgrounds. This diverse group is lucky to have the exposure to a variety of advanced programs, and they know it.
"We've been kind of building the fundamentals of programming," said eighth-grader Andrew Barr. "I have the basis and foundation to do something I really want to do."
Longfellow is an exception where the national student-to-computer ratio is five-to-one, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
And in terms of coursework, "they're in the top 1 percent of schools offering advanced computer science for their students," Michigan's Soloway said. "You don't even see that (curriculum) in high school."
"I have a friend who's jealous of me, I think," Barr said of a buddy who goes to a different school. "He doesn't have this kind of learning environment that's really structured and helps you learn a lot."
Of course, the opportunity to land a lucrative job is not lost on the kids, either. Incidentally, one class assignment is to put together a resume.
"I'm going to follow where the money is," said seventh-grader Chien Nguyen, who said Java is his favorite programming language. "It has to be easy, though."
Nguyen isn't a programmer for money alone, however. He likes to tinker.
"At first when I had a computer I was playing around with it," said Nguyen, whose uncle is an engineer. "I was wondering how cool it would be, like, to open a computer and see, like, how it works and like, see what controls what, so that's when I decided to take this class."
Students in Elnor's classes, do, in fact, open up the computers and investigate the guts of the machines. They've drawn pictures of both computers and binary trees -- a model for sorting data.
At the ACM1 conference in San Jose in March, the students demonstrated the principles of object-oriented programming using Fibonacci numbers.
They were the first and only middle school to be invited to an ACM conference, and displayed their work alongside technology heavyweights like MIT, Microsoft, Boeing, and Disney.
"The enthusiasm and creativity that was shown by both the faculty and the kids at Longfellow was superb," said David Kasik, an Information Systems architect at Boeing, and the exposition director for ACM1 in San Jose. "Getting kids involved in the actual technology is critical to advancing the technology to the next stages."
To help other schools build similar computer science programs, staffers have created the National Model Technology Middle School Project, a plan to offer guidance for other schools around the country.
"We're in the process of working with a number of companies to build a scalable technology model program," said Jim Rousey, the president of the technology advisory board at Longfellow.
Meanwhile, the school has been bombarded with student applications. This fall, the school will welcome 170 new sixth-graders, but an equal amount of kids sit on the waiting list.
With their programming experience, kids who opt to continue in computer science in high school will likely start in an Advanced Placement C++ class at Berkeley High School. Courses through an exchange program at the University of California-Berkeley are also an option if they go beyond AP.
"I'm not really sure about my career for the future, but I believe this class would really help me on getting a career," said seventh-grader Donna Lei.
With the pace at which they pick up these skills, no doubt their future employers will be pleased.
"I didn't even know what Java was before this year," said eighth-grader Chloe Fane.
