Council Bluffs students monitor, repair data center

Council Bluffs students are getting hands-on experience working at a data center operated by the school district.

The Council Bluffs school district last week unveiled the $67,000 data center.

The district’s Emerging Technologies Academy will require that students monitor and make repairs when needed to servers at the data center, which is used to store medical research data.

“They have an actual hands-on environment,” said Debra Robinson, a Council Bluffs business and technology teacher. “They have to work together to troubleshoot and problem-solve.”

Google and Echo Group, a Council Bluffs electrical supplier, gave financial and technical support for the data center, which took about six months to build. The work of the students is supervised by teachers.

Courtney Christensen, 15, a sophomore, said it can get hectic when there is a problem.

“Everyone is running around trying to figure out what went wrong,” she said.

But junior Kyla Kern, 16, said students learn to isolate the issue.

“First you’ve got to know what the problem is,” Kern said. “If you don’t know what it is, you’re not going to solve it.”

Chris Russell, an operations manager at Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, said the new facility would expose students to real work experiences and get them interested in technology careers.

The center handles medical research data from the University of Washington, Stanford University School of Medicine Project and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. The institutions are working to analyze proteins to improve understanding and find cures for illnesses including Alzheimer’s disease and forms of cancer.

International languages festival this week in D.M.

The Des Moines school district will hold its first International World Languages Festival this week.

The festival is from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Central Campus, 1800 Grand Ave.

Activities include performances by Japan America Society of Iowa taiko drummers and Salsa Des Moines; French folk dancing; a Chinese student fashion show; crafts; and food from Latin America, France and China.

The event is free and open to the public.