Students participating in Dell's Student TechCrew program complete about 40 hours of training and earn Dell's TechDirect certification.

North Augusta High School

Hundreds of thousands of digital devices flooded into American students' hands in recent years. 

Some went directly to students in the Aiken County Public School District in South Carolina. The district's 41 schools, which serve about 22,500 students, include North Augusta High School. North Augusta expects to welcome about 1,800 students this academic year.

At the height of the pandemic, Aiken County school leaders decided to embrace 1:1 technology. 1:1 technology, or 1:1 computing,  means every student has a personal computing device to support their learning. Supporting over 22,000 devices is a big task for any organization.

It was an ideal opportunity for North Augusta High students in Dell's Student TechCrew program to step in, Michelle O'Rourke told ZDNet. She's the school's business education and computer repair teacher. She also facilitates the TechCrew program. 

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Dell's Student TechCrew program offers pro-level hardware repair training and certifications for high schoolers. Students earn a Dell TechDirect certification. They also get hands-on learning experience repairing their peers' devices. 

The program's flexibility allows schools and teachers to offer TechCrew as a standalone program or integrate it into the academic curriculum as a for-credit class. That's the approach that North Augusta uses. It's part of the school's computer repair and service program. 

"So in the two years in the course, the first thing that they do is they get their Dell certification. And then the next year and a half, they're repairing laptops and they're also working through getting their CompTIA A+ and their TestOut PC Pro certifications," said O'Rourke.

That means students can graduate with three industry-standard tech certifications and two years of experience in hands-on device repair, which is "a really cool thing to do."

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'They know what they're doing'

O'Rourke said she expects 140 students in the TechCrew program at North Augusta this fall. About 15 are returning second year students. The rest will be new to the program. North Augusta students must take a prerequisite course in the fundamentals of computing before enrolling in TechCrew.

Once they finish that, they're certified. They know what they're doing. I shouldn't be able to tell the difference [between] a 9th grader and a 20-year veteran tech at that point Kim Boutwell, Dell

Students get lots of practice repairing cracked LCD screens, faulty power ports, and keyboards. Screen bezels and device cases also take a lot of abuse when they're in students' hands, explained Kim Boutwell. She created Dell's TechCrew program and continues to run it today.

Students start with about 40 hours of training to earn Dell's TechDirect certification.

"Once they finish that, they're certified. They know what they're doing. I shouldn't be able to tell the difference [between] a 9th grader and a 20-year veteran tech at that point," Boutwell said. "They know what they're doing, and they are also certified in our portal, our self-maintenance portal at Dell."

TechCrew's in-school adult facilitators complete an eight- to 10-hour course to lead the program. Boutwell said the facilitators usually hold other roles at school. They may be teachers, librarians, parent volunteers, or even a principal.

Boutwell stressed that TechCrew students don't have to piece together a working device by cannibalizing the remains of old devices stacked up in a closet. Instead, they use the online self-maintenance portal to order new parts, just like a regular enterprise customer.

"They're in the same tool. We didn't make a fake tool. They're in the industry tool," Boutwell said. "They are industry certified. Within that tool, they put in the serial number of their friend, they have been trained to run diagnostics, then they're given a parts list. They know which parts to ask for. And they're sent to them overnight."

Student devices sometimes have hard knock life

In terms of repairs, Boutwell said LCD screen replacements are pretty common in schools.

 That's something that I think is more important than knowing how to repair a laptop, is knowing how to start up a conversation with someone. Or how to keep a level of professionalism when someone is not listening to what you're telling them.  Michelle O'Rourke, North Augusta High School

"Kids will put their pencil on the keyboard and close it when the bell rings.