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How Do I Talk To 4th Graders About IT?
Tsunayoshi writes "My son volunteered me to give a presentation on what I do for a living for career day at his elementary school. I need to come up with a roughly 20-minute presentation to be given to 4-5 different classrooms. I am a systems administrator, primarily Unix/Linux and enterprise NAS/SAN storage, working for an aerospace company. I was thinking something along the lines of explaining how some everyday things they experience (websites, telephone systems, etc.) all depend on servers, and those servers are maintained by systems administrators. I was also going to talk about what I do specifically, which is maintain the computer systems that allow the really smart rocket scientists to get things into space. Am I on the right track? Can anyone suggest some good (and cheap/easy to make) visual aids?"
I am a systems administrator,
tedius
primarily Unix/Linux
boring
and enterprise NAS/SAN storage,
snore
working for an aerospace company.
BINGO!
There's a lot of angles you could approach your job from but if I can give you any advice, keep it entertaining. I volunteer to teach grade school kids occasionally and what we do is an engineering challenge for each class. We do many different challenges but an example is handing out limited supplies to each team and having them build paper planes. Sometimes we throw in random stuff like paper clips or rubber bands to see what the kids try to do with them. While they work, we talk about engineering in general. At the beginning we'll give them specific requirements in a childish Statement of Work style which lay out how we are selecting the best airplane or bridge or tower or whatever.
At the end of the session we start to ramp up the specifics as we do the final tests on the stuff they made and hand out candy. I'll start to talk about structural integrity, how we use math to make things better, etc. As I get more technical, I'll start to lose kids but there are usually a few that get excited and that's why I'm there.
If you go there set on talking about just IT, you're going to lose them and--worse--possibly turn them off to technical jobs like that. Stick to the end product of what you actually provide. Try to think of fun facts to keep them entertained--don't say petabyte, figure out how many times around the world one string of text will go that a petabyte can store. Then tell them how many of those you are in charge of. I also suggest you start out generic--ask the kids what an engineer does and then get more specific with your job and place.
Also, my company always has junk left over from bring your child to work day, hand that stuff out like prizes or give one to each student if you have enough.
My work here is dung.
Flowcharts, and keep it simple. Visual aids really help.
"Talk to your kids about IT ... before someone else does."
Explain that software is like a city... pipes, houses, roads, bridges. Explain that there are people who design the stuff, make it, repair it, and use it. Explain that this is the world they will live in, and give examples they can relate to: the phone network, the Internet.
Give them the understanding that IT is about stacks, layers, stuff that is old and deep, stuff that is fresh and useless...
Don't use technical words, don't try to teach anything specific at all, and don't try to sell Linux or open source (kids tend to respond to sales pitches cynically and negatively).
My advice above all is to explain how it's about people, doing things, making things, working together.
My blog
"It's all about cookies. Who wants a cookie??"
Start with the basics and work your way up from there.
I'd suggest axiomatic set theory first coupled with computing history, linear algebra and analysis. Throw in some logic into the mix for good measure. Once they got the basics point them towards the linux kernel and start discussing the more interesting issues of SMP, scheduling, latency and memory management.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
One cheap visual aid would be an old computer and or server, so you can show them what it looks like inside a computer. My kids tend to like watching me swapping components, at least.
.: Max Romantschuk
"See the Internet is a series of tubes! And you have to understand that those tubes can get clogged up!"
System administrator, eh? You can start by showing your scars.
As one of the 21st centuries greatest thinkers said:
"And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material" - Ted Stevens
You see, kids... the internet is like a series of pipes, and I, as a system administrator, am the plumber of the digital age, making sure all the crap flows freely in and out of your homes and offices.
How Do I Talk To 4th Graders About IT?
Apparently most of them worked for Microsoft to design and code Vista and Office 2007, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Put it in nonsensical pop music format. And keep it shorter then 3 minutes.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
anyone has problems since yesterday with the layout? the tagging words appear too close to the read more links on firefox 3.
on IE the spacing is better but the css and/or javscript has issues and doesn't look right.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Get a dead hard disk drive, take the cover off so the platters and read/write head are visible. Pass it around the class while you talk. Computers and IT will become immediately more real to them once they can touch it and see that a computer isn't just a fancy TV with keyboard and mouse.
If you want to add an analogy they can relate to, also bring a long a stack of encylopedias or an OED and do the "the words in X many of these books will fit on that disk" comparison.
I always get jealous of IT folks when I see that they get to work with racks of equipment. It seems to me like it is building with Lego blocks for a living.
In addition to software installation and security, our IT folks plan out the hardware with the power and cooling requirements. I would have been fascinated by this stuff as a kid (and I still am).
You've got a chance to save lives here!!!!
Tell them that unless you get lucky and find a job at a company that respects its employees instead of treating them as indentured servants, IT is a thankless job that is best left to suckers in India.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
If your manager can understand it, a 4th grader should have no problem understanding what you do!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You're an aerospace sysadmin. So you're a roadie for rocket scientists.
Rocket Science = EXCITING!
So talk about how what you do holds up the exciting stuff.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Make it interactive. IT isn't all about obscure software and commands.
Bring some cables, tagle them up, see who can untangle the mess fastest. [These go great with pictures of a 'messy' server room installation]
Bring some old media, hard drives, etc, show them how they work.
Take along some cable testers, etc, show them how they work, maybe bring a crimper and have them give it a shot.
Show some pretty graphs, show them what happens when the 'slashdot effect' happens to a server.
Its the grittier side of IT, but if they are interested in it, it's what they will be doing, [Cable pulling, router rebooting, windows reinstalling, etc].
explain what could happen when things go wrong, and how this would effect them. keep it simple and fun, say stupid things that will make them laugh. have fun with it yourself
Explain how online video games work from a networking and storage point of view.
You don't do video games? Doesn't matter.
As much as I hate to say it, MS actually got one right. They ran a webcomic (Heroes Happen Here) for a while, most of it wasn't too great. The 1st page is a kid asking his dad what he does for a living so he can give a school presentation about it. The dad goes on about what he does as a developer and it goes way over the kids head. So the kid tells everyone his dad drives an ice cream truck.
http://blogs.technet.com/hhh_comic/archive/2008/01/29/hhh-comic-releases-day-1-comic.aspx
Tell them to stay the fuck away from the IT sector!
Instead, tell them to be doctors or garbage men...
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
You're in Aerospace and you're going to talk to 9 year olds about telephone systems, websites, servers and server administrators? Good luck with that. Talk about science, talk about space, talk about rockets. Bring in pictures of the above, make copies on a printer, pass them out for the children to keep. Pass out decals with your company's logo. Talk of your companies achievements. Inspire them with the results of your company not server maintenance.
The same way you talk to your users but you can assume they are intelligent and want to learn about computers and such. You can probably even hit them with a few advanced concepts that you normally have to "dummy down" when talking to management. :D
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
To talk about "IT", do it the old way: start with bees and flowers and once that concept is understood, move on from there.
My job involves explaining things to idiots. Then the idiots make decisions based on misinterpreting what I said. Then it is my job to try to fix the massive problems caused by the bad decisions. Eventually, rumors overwhelm facts, and I give up. In the final phase, I assign blame to an unpopular coworker. So whatever you do if life, don't be unpopular.
This is a perfect opportunity to warn these kids! If you can't be a good example, be a warning.
Here's how it goes:
Look kids, I didn't work very hard at school. Yeah, I was smart, but I really didn't apply myself. The other smarts kids who applied themselves and went to college are now Doctors, Lawyers, Management, Accountants, and other professionals. They really don't have to worry about their jobs being outsourced or off-shored. They make great livings. And they're respected.
Us in IT, on the other hand, are sweating that our jobs will be sent over seas. We work more hours than the above professions and we get no respect! We are really blue collar workers.
So study hard, go to college and choose a career other than IT.
Now, for you kids who are thinking about being an electrician or a plumber, great idea! They won't be outsourced and they will always be needed! And they make more than us in IT!
So say after me kids - "IT is not a good career choice. I will study hard and go to college and make something of myself.!
For you kids who are artsy or whatever...good luck! Walmart and McDonlad's are expected to grow in the future.
This might entertain them. http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
Since all the 4th grade boys think girls are icky, it should be an easy sell.
... let me know how, so I can explain it to my parents.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Don't underestimate kids. They may be immature and annoying but they aren't stupid (naive and ignorant maybe but not stupid). Give them the tools and they will learn. I had my first computers (commodore 64 and a vic 20) at around 6 years old. I learned dos by 10 and had fixed dozens of electronic, computer, and mechanical devices around the house with no help from anyone (not even books). I'd be willing to bet that this anecdotal evidence is a mere drop in the pond compared to others on slashdot. I consider myself intelligent but I've seen tons of kids that blow me out of the water. The trick is just to find the right spark to get their curiosity going. (and each kid differs a lot in that realm)
how about explaining to us what the fuck you guys do. Seriously. Other than, X broke because we didn't set it up to handle infinitely predictable situation Y (harddrive filled up, fuck eh? heard of log rolling?) and completely failing to have a backup solution that can actually result in being able to restore someone's files from a backup, what exactly is it? I know you guys make firewall rules.. and you change them now and then.. completely fucking up everything that was working just fine thank you every now and then, but surely that's just one sysadmin making work for another sysadmin isn't it? I can see why so many companies are greeting outsourcing of basic shit like email and revision control and backup with open arms. With that out of the way all you guys have to do is make sure the desktops are working........ which currently you never have time to do.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think you are on the right track, i.e. explaining things from the point of view of the things they use (phone, internet, etc). From there, I would compare your job to something similar that isn't so abstract, e.g. car mechainic, plumber, etc. This isn't to confuse them, but to tell them your role. Lastly, talk about what your company does and how you fit into it.
As for visual aids, a picture of a command prompt won't do. Perhaps a single presentation slide that shows people working on the things they understand (phone, computer, spaceship) all connected to computer you are working on/operating. Put a wrench in your hand or floating around you somewhere. Point out that this is you. After all, they are only 8.
-fragbait
I do that.
end of presentation.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Tin cans and string for props .. explain that you fix the string if it falls apart or gets cut.
First step is to let your child know, in no uncertain terms, that volunteering you for anything in the future will result in two months grounding.
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
You're a Unix sysadmin who reads Slashdot.
You don't expect us to believe that you have enough social skills to get to the point of having had children do you?
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Tell them you're a lion tamer.
the tom hanks/ bill paxton/ kevin bacon movie with the famous "houston, we have a problem" line
freeze frame when they cut back to ed harris and ground crew strategizing, point to some guy in the background fiddling with some equipment, and say "that's me"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Use the class itself as an example of a network:
(this is something they can relate to):
Say... the kids in the class are similar to individual computers. The communication medium is within the class which are channels between each student. The teacher is the SA, who maintains the class(the network - LAN)
Use recess time and class time for different topologies(so to say)
How on earth is a dead hard drive offtopic when the topic is IT? Unless this administrator in question runs his entire operation with SSD's, he likely has some dead hard drives sitting around somewhere.
And going hands-on is exactly the right way to make your work relevant to children. No kid wants to sit through a power point talk.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Since there is likely a few kids in there that either use online forums or play online games try and use examples that relate to that. My 9 year old nephew has been playing rune scape for a year now and I have just started explaining to him how a computer actually works.
Also, never make another job sound cooler or smarter then yours;
" I was also going to talk about what I do specifically, which is maintain the computer systems that allow the really smart rocket scientists to get things into space"
this makes your job sound sub par.
Give them a reason to learn what they are learning, I'm not sure what 4th graders are learning any more I remember I was learning mostly the basics of algebra, how to type, basics in english, history, science. Give them directions on if they are interested in computers and possibly software or hardware / IT, where they could go to learn more, maybe an easy programing langue or how to take apart an old computer (every one has one sometime in there life) give them websites, books their local library holds, ect.
Good luck with the presentation and tell us how it went.
~~NoName
Shoot Yourself In the Foot
Hey kids, I'm sure you've heard of "weed" and perhaps even "cheese."
Well, there is something worse. Something that will keep you awake for weeks at a time, keep you from bathing or even eating. Even after all of that you will have no money.
That horrible, horrible scourge is "I.T."
SEX. Do not use IT as a means of referring to SEX. Now the question is, why are you starting these conversation so early?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Translation: "I am a garbageman. I spend most of my time with a lot of expensive and neat looking hardware cleaning up the messes of people who think they are better than me. You know the neighbor across the street who tosses a bunch of leaky, smelly trash bags on the ground every week and doesn't bother using a can? That's Bob, the engineer over in building 4 who manages to run processes that ABEND every single time because he's an idiot, but he blames the network anyway. The guy down the street who always piles up dead branches and lawn clippings until it stops anyone from walking on the sidewalk? Meet Sue in building 3, who seems to find a way to generate 900GB of crap data that then crashes the network file share. Or perhaps the family down the street with the can so smelly nobody will get near it? That's Ralph, who corrupts his files on the network store at least once a month and needs a total restore from tape.
The only really big difference is that a garbageman has more job security and is probably paid better. Stick with that or plumbing- you'll go far since people will pay anything not to have to deal with it."
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Give out candy, talk about extreme cases of what could happen within your profession and end by giving out more candy.
You should not worry. After all you may only have the chance to scare those kids away from IT... such a huge resposibility I would not accept. ;-)
.. the same way you would talk to the executives.
I relayed to the kids the concept of writing a book. One of you writes a story on his computer. Who's good at drawing, OK - you have pictures to add so you send them to his computer and he adds them. Then send it to the teacher to read or review. Next you want to print it... They really got it and the teacher seemed very happy with it. Of course you can use the idea of engines, wings, etc.
Leave out all the technical mumbo jumbo, they won't remember those terms by recess. Just give them the concepts of using computers collaboratively and their imagination will bridge the gaps.
scrambled egg hair
I think you need an analogy, and to make it work for elementary school children, they need to be the ones extending your analogy beyond the basic description. A good visual aid could be cans and string. If everyone in the room has a can (which you don't need to happen for your purposes, esp in 20 minutes) then it's easy to see how:
The more of these complications they come up with (as opposed to you listing them) the better for their understanding. Obviously this has limitations, or may not be sophisticated enough for the students. I don't really know. They may be pretty familiar with computers depending on their age and home life, but really people don't understand the network as an abstraction. But personally if I were teaching this (I teach high school) I would try to find some analogy and get them to extend it beyond the basics.
Also, there's a very wide range of cognitive development in the early grades. One presentation probably won't work for all grade levels. I couldn't tell what grade level you were addressing.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Bring a couple of laptops. Connect them through a router. If child A can connect to Child B, give them a candy. Dont talk. Set up the two laptops with messaging client. No connection. try sending a message. Then get two volunteers, have them plug them in through a switch. And send a message. Reward the class with some halloween candy. Then explain you do this kind of stuff on a much bigger level. (At the very least, they will remember you as the guy that brought candy)
Holding an interesting presentationis not an easy task.
For start observe how Steve Jobs does it. Try reading some articles about how powerpoint can be stupid and boring. There are even videos on that topic on YouTube that are nice and funny.
Then, remember that you can only resort to very limited number of letters (not words) at each slide. As computers do all that You mentioned, but also cartoons and some other things kids digg, start with snippet of some cartoon, and then use black screen for bringing Your punchline.
IT guys made it possible.
Remember, images, images, images. Flickr and toher image repositories will help You.
Keep it simple, it is much more easy to bring the message across if You reduce clutter in your presentation. Think Zen, avoid using "wizards", graphs, titles, and so on.
And remember... practice makes it perfect.
Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.
Just remember, treat the kids with the respect you'd give anyone else and they'll generally return it. Focus on the aspects of your work that *you* find interesting. Don't sugarcoat what you do. Kids are usually interested in what adults do - even accountants. They can also figure out if you're being disingenuous in a heartbeat - so keep it real.
They're remarkably smart, kids are. So for gods sake don't dumb it down. They should and probably do want to know what it's like in the working world. Best of luck!
is to make your kids friends think your son has a cool dad.
System admin work is BOOooring to 4th graders.
Keep it a little more general, keep 'data' reasonably abstract.
Talking about computers to 4th graders is now like talking to 4th graders about the phone system. We all have phones, we all know how to use them, we all have the nifty features. It just works. Hard to make the interesting.
Give some examples of things going wrong and how you saved the day. Explain how rockets wouldn't be able to go without you. Kids love rockets.
Explain how rockets would explode without you. Make yourself a hero and make is sound like you are 'da man'.
I have a 3rd and a 5th grader, and I expect my time to give a presentation to the class is coming. As a programmer I am going to need to keep it lively. I will probably do some quick Lego robotic programming so they can see the reward for my work immediatly. I'll give the class a couple of decisions on what I will do.
Good luck.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's only one thing you need to explain to the kids: Goatse!
What you do, is set up a projector and a CD player, but leave it off for the first five minutes of the presentation. Then start the presentation; warble on about SANs, LDAP/Kerberos or some other boring shit. When all the kids are looking like they're about to fall asleep:
WHAMMMOOO! You switch on the projector with the goatse images on it, start the CD player (which will have been loaded with Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up'), run for your life and never look back.
You'll probably need to change your name and never see your family again, but face facts: it'll be worth it. Plus you can take away the warm, fuzzy feeling that you've taught those children everything they need to know about the Internet.
is designing weapon systems. To allow for corporate welfare for university graduates.
Presenting to fourth graders is like presenting to upper mgt, except they have less authority.
Use lots of flashy colors, slides with sounds and visual effects, and you can make anything look important if you have spongebob squarepants say it in your slide.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
You could go for where do babies come from but they have an internet so they already know.
But please don't try to explain IT. It will just end with the kid calling you "n00b" and explaining that if you really knew what you were doing you would write your own compilers rather than just download them like a "tard".
Then they will explain which action figures and games they will buy once they take your job from you.
Explain to them how Teh Lunis is a living god, how open source is the only thing saving the world from the destruction of the evil closed source overlords, and how Bill Gates is the antichrist.
You know, keep it real. Just say everything Slashdot would say.
And don't forget to spew some anti-Vista FUD while you are there! Remember, the goal is long enough and loud enough- then they will believe.
1 digital camera, and connecting USB cables.
What you want to do, is involve the kids in the building of a quick web site, while talking about the technologies that make it all work. The network connectivity, the HTML that places THEIR pictures on the page, even talk about the various cables necessary to connect the computers, the camera to the computer, and explain what happens when they press ENTER. Literally trace the content down the wire.
Prepare a template ahead of time, take pictures of the kids, use some cool filters in Photoshop, and then add them to the web page. In the end, the kids get jazzed over seeing their picture on a web page, and will enjoy your explaining how it worked, from the camera to the page.
Dont be a dufus and go on about the wonders of DHCP, and all that. Its got to be applicable to what they care about.
Anyway, that worked for me, and I got a dozen calls from parents asking me for follow-on advice, as their kids demanded tools to build their own sites.
If you remember the principle of demonstrating how IT effects their lives, you will have a captive audience. I guarantee that if you get into IT from a nuts and bolts perspective, rather than applying IT to what kids care about, you will get snores.
You understand cool stuff, just explain it to 4th & 5th graders:
Why is what you do relevant to Nintendo, Gamebox, Facebook & text messaging? Tell them.
The strings are the network connections, the Fruit Loops are the packets.
Cut the string = network outage, downtime, whatever.
You, the network admin, tie the string back together.
Fishing line might be best.
Use Candy it always works.
Each generation is more integrated with computing than the previous.
Shut down the schools system and refuse to bring it up until they buy you lunch.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's a lot of angles you could approach your job from but if I can give you any advice, keep it entertaining.
I'd suggest a brief talk on satellites and then show them Google Earth. I give a presentation for my daughters 1st grade class on the solar system and ended on Google Earth. One flight to the Grand Canyon overlook and they were all clamouring to see various things (mainly local stuff like the school, where the teacher live, where they lived etc.) but I'm sure 4th graders would be far more imaginative.
I would just hold up a book or magazine (or a piece of fruit) and explain that just as there an enormous number of people and technologies required to get this book into the room (paper manufacture, shipping, printing presses) (or fertilizer, tractor manufacuturers, pickers, shippers, grocery stores) there's an enormous infrastructure required to make computers work that people never see.
Talk to your sales or marketing department and let them know what your doing. They may be able to give you some talking points; but, what you really want out of them is goodies. Squishi balls, pencils, toy planes (since you work for an aerospace company), etc with the company logo that you can give to the kids. They'll love you no matter what your speech is about and you're kid will be the hero of the day.
If you want to keep it exciting and still realistic, just present a slide show of dilbert comics.
Start by reading Stop death by Powerpoint. What it says is applicable to any presentation in the world. If you dont' have a cannon for projecting stuff, maybe you can type something on video, or even bring a laptop and attach it to a tv. Or print something. But bring in some visuals. And practice; if you don't have experience making presentations, practice. Children get bored more easily than adults.
So, that's *how* I would explain it. Regarding *what* to explain, it doesn't make sense that you go into detail. Your day to day probably is too abstract for them to pick any sense, mainly because they probably don't know anything about aerospace anyway.
I would put myself in context. I'd start saying that aerospace is very complex. And complex means lots of things to do, which means lots of people doing a lot of things. And those tasks depend on each other (I'd probably use the metaphore of a body, or show them a picture of a plane, with the aprox amount of people needed for making a wing, the tail, etc, from start to end). I'd explain very rougthly, like with one phrase, what are the main tasks for building a plane. And then explain how did i fit in there.
Then, i would explain how a regular day is. I'd try to relate it with things that they might know ("how many of you use messenger? xbox live? well, the server on the other side, i take care of it)
I'd explain what happens when things go wrong (show explosions! put a clip of Rambo shooting rockets and say "this is me turning off the server that day"!!). Try to think of some anecdote that happened to you and they might find interesting.
Just my 2 cents :)
If you are looking for something fun... take in some old junk.
How about an older CPU and some memory. You would even bring a mouse and ask the class if anyone knows what it is. Someone will of course. ADD needs things to keep them interested. I would even take some pictures of a datacenter and explain that their are entire buildings full of nothing but computers.
Don't underestimate 4th graders. They use computers, they play games, and actually quite intelligent.
It doesn't matter what you say, they won't remember that the next day. They will remember how you make them feel. So giving candy at the start isn't a half bad idea.
I like the idea of peeling back the covers on the information networks that actually tie our world of computers together. It is like opening the hood of a car and seeing what makes it get-up-and go. These kids are at the early stages of their "Love of Learning" phase in life. I remember at that age that I wanted to be a computer programmer. I had no idea what that was but I knew I liked it. All I needed was someone to give me some kindling to start that fire and I was off.
If you can spark an interest in those who show a proclivity toward all things tech related, you've done your job.
And those kids that are headed towards a career path in management, could you please explain to them that there is no such thing as an "EASY" button?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I think you have a good idea with explaining just how much our lives depend on networks and servers. I'm sure the kids know what iPods are, it could be helpful to use the server/client/device as a good analog to corporate e-mail/client e-mail software/mobile e-mail devices... (crackberry much). Other than that, i would treat them the same as you would the CEO, president, or any other non-technical decision maker :)
I was once tasked with giving presentations that had something to do with IT and also followed the D.A.R.E. theme/teaching. I ended up building little "computers" with the kids out of manila folders, aluminum foil, and some simple lights. The bad drugs would light up and the good stuff wouldn't. The kids were in the 3-5th grade range and they all seemed to really get into it and actually learn something.
Tell them that they're no longer needed, and give your lecture to some kids in a less-expensive country.
For added realism, have them train their replacements.
Use the old cans with strings setup to show them how a network functions on a basic but interactive level. Cans are all the computers and the strings are the network. I think bringing in an old system they can touch the inside of is a great idea too (as posted by someone else earlier). Anything interactive will make your presentation interesting for them and help them actually learn instead of just watch.
Damn The Man! Fight The Power!
4th graders are smart enough to think abstractly, and draw the lines between analogies and real life. They're not like 1st graders, where they haven't been alive long enough to have encountered all the normal things, like computers or chat. Most of the boys will be playing video games, and most of the girls will have brothers who also play video games, or know what goes on.
But you still have explain stuff like networking. They know computers "talk" to eachother, but not how. And they don't want to hear about TCP/IP, IPv4, routers, or other jargon unless its explained by the activity. So what do I suggest?
If you got the time and space, have the kids stand in a line, and then have 2 or 3 kids be the "servers" who ask yes or no questions to the "data" who are other kids. Say the goal is to "sort" all the kids by boy and girl, or hair color, or where they sit in the room, or who likes Pokemon and who doesn't, or anything like that. We're not explaining a metatags system, so keep it pretty binary by only needing two groups, or as few choices as possible.
This interaction will be like a game to them, and they will have fun, but the application means the ones who won't learn from lecture actually get something out of it. Add more labels or levels to the interaction if you want, with things like, "Some computers speak only a certain kind of language." and make the kids speak in code words to differentiate. Use cans on a string for "cable," and cones made out of paper or cardboard for "wireless."
Once they understand that you maintain the computers and the lines that let you do that, you can explain the aerospace stuff, and how it's used in our business. You allow multiple people to work on the same documents, so make copies and let one kid hand them out, or other kids have to ask him for the documents. You could explain SSL certs by saying only kids with a special badge on could pick up a copy of the documents, and they got to be handed out by a trusted third party like... well, that may be a couple layers of abstraction above even 4th graders.
The Execs don't care about details, they want the highlights, the parts that make people happy.
You manage computers that make what every person in that company does FASTER! They can talk to each other with email, they can schedule a meeting without having 4 meetings to schedule it.
You MAKE THE INTERNET WORK! When they see a webpage, it came from your servers and across your network!
All they know about a computer is what they see on a screen, and they have no real concept of the value of money, so free software doesn't ring a bell.
Just like I said, pretend they are execs :)
-Rob
Ever want to know what a computer looks like? Have them peer inside of a PC. Wow cool! Show them the different parts and explain what each does. Then say what can you put in a computer? Songs, Writings, Pictures, Video.. Etc... Ask them what they do with their computers, ask them to share their experiences.
RUN! RUN, YOU FOOLS!!!
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
If that doesn't have them rolling in the aisles, nothing will.
Oh wait--- Never mind.
Ericsson made a movie that explains how the internet (tcp/ip) work with an child-friendly animation some time ago.. you can find it at http://www.warriorsofthe.net
It might be a bit dated today but if you find hard time talk to question marks for 20 min you might as well give them some to look at :)
I'd make some kind of a game out of it. Have the kids represent servers, sysadmins, and threats. The threats would be trying to infect, crack or destroy the servers, the sysadmins would be trying to stop them. The servers would have some kinds of defenses against the threats, but without help from the sysadmins they'd eventually be overwhelmed.
Don't forget to bring twenty sided dice and graph paper.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I know your joking but wow!
I have been a system administrator (and project manager, IT director, company owner (which folded), bought a company and currently working to be bought by a company) and I may have been through hell with users, budgets, PHB's and the DOT COM bomb (laid off twice) but that all EASY compared to...
being shot at, being mugged, assaulted, knives exposed, poverty and dealing with drug dealers.
All of these I have dealt with IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD between sleep and being a system administrator.
I know - system admin stuff is difficult. If you are getting scars from tapping on a keyboard and communicating with people trying to pay debt you haven't seen the real world.
d~y
Elementary school? Include the nuts-and-bolts physical details people take for granted. For example, just imagining, please don't be offended...
I drive to work. The building I work in is about the size of this school. I get free coffee. I ride the elevator to the third floor. I spend some of my time sitting at a computer screen, and some of my time walking out to server rooms and wiring closets and plugging and unplugging cables.
My office is a cubicle. Here's a picture of it that I'm going to pass around. Some companies are very stodgy and want everyone's cubicles to look neat and tidy, but mine doesn't care and I get to decorate it any way I like.
On a good day, it feels as if I'm playing with the biggest model train set in the world. Other times it feels boring and like doing homework.
My job makes me feel important because my company depends on all of this complicated stuff working smoothly, and I'm good at making it smoothly. It's not easy, but I make it look easy. It can be scary because if I make one little mistake, suddenly hundreds of computers throughout the company stop working correctly and my phone starts ringing and people get angry at me.
I get paid pretty well.
I need to spend a lot of time learning about new systems. Earlier this year I went to a one-week training session in Toledo. It was almost like going to school. But because I'm an adult they have to treat me nicer, and they give us better lunches. We sat at desks and listened to a teacher tell us about Frammis Server 8.4.3 and at the end I took a quiz about it and I passed and they gave me this Certificate of Completion.
etc. etc.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Relate IT to something 4th graders are interested in. Perhaps talk about the IT behind movies like Spiderman or IT behind Webkinz.
Show up with a bunch of cool looking stuff (lots of lights, shiny etc), make a quick introduction, "My name is Foo and I'm a sys.....", then have your phone go off. "Oops! Database crashed, gotta go to work!"
I'd suggest you start here. The explaination of differences between a hard drive and a floppy is especially effective. Modify as needed for your own audience. Use of a lucca libre mask is optional, but recommended if you want to hold the respect of a class of 4th graders.
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
Please!!!
Don't forget to let us know what did you do and how did it go.
You are definitely not last on the stage.
How Do I Talk To 4th Graders About IT?
OK, how many of you thought that IT was sex when you read the headline, only to be disappointed when IT was Information Technology
Or, maybe it was just me...
Tell them that it drives away all the girls and the little boys will think it's such an awesome thing. At least you got half the class covered.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Oh man I wish I had mod points right now. Of course I'm not sure if this is funny, insightful or sadly true.........
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
Well, Break it down to the simplest terms and the simplest points. I work as a Network Systems Analyst so I get to explain this to all my friends and family. I first start with what Information Technology is. Basically its Technology that deals with the storing, transmission and changing of information (data). Since your a network Admin with SAN etc, I would focus in on that. Don't focus on Unix/Linux as no ones going to pick up on it but make it simple. I'd focus on the Storage Area Network side. Basically tell them your function is the storing of information for Nasa and tell them what that is! and how you connect that. and how important it is to have all this data accessible and how if it were to go down what would happen? how would it impact society? Questions you should think about 1. How many locations does your SAN connect 2. Where are these locations? Distance between them? 3. How much Data is stored in TB and explain how many photos or music or TV shows = that space 4. show them photos of the Data center! 5. Explain what the Data center is and how data is stored/ accessed REmember simple IE if you start discussing RAID you've epic failed. 6. Do the space stations access your data? (focus on this it'll be cool) 7. Can the systems fail? Will data be lost? (probably not with redudancy) but explain that 8. Explain what the data is (simplisticly) flight trajectory = flight path Scientific Annals = science papers 9. And most of all! This is also about you! Why did you get into NASA why is this a good career path? You may inspire some kids future! Also be aware that 1 or 2 kids might be totally fascinated and know alot more then you'd think. REmember you can always scale your presentation up vs trying to scale down on the fly. Thats it, I wish you luck and I know some day I'll have to do this for my kids!
Tell them you are really a special operative and that this extremely boring stuff is just your cover.
Because 4th graders don't get nap time. Some of the kids need the rest and my bet is that this will give them the opportunity for some much needed rest.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
With a MS powerpoint presentation? /me runs and hides
I once had to talk to my wife's 7th Grade Class, take in a PC and tear it apart and put it back together for them, or just put a PC together depending on how much time you have. You'll have them spell bound. I describe putting a PC together as the same process as putting a puzzle together. May sure you preload your favorite Linux distro before and so it will boot right up, one hopes when your done.
Be sure to keep it simply as they have as much understand of what you truly do as your average CIO but you'll get more respect and be a god among men to these kids.
Your child has condemned himself to the humiliation of having everyone know his father is a big nerd. Well, it's his own fault for volunteering you. Unfortunately, his respect for you will now plummet and you will have trouble keeping him off drugs three years from now. After several minor run-ins with the law, he will end up studying general accounting at community college, and take a job cooking the books for a corrupt tire warehouse in Des Moines. His wife will commit suicide at 32. Your grandchildren will be spoiled and ugly.
You can, however, prevent all this by claiming to be an astronaut.
I piss off bigots.
you picked up during the 7 hours of the day you play video games on the company computers.
Bring stuff you can pass around. As much stuff as possible. Short network cables. A small hub. Some system upgrade CDs (ones that are old enough that you don't mind fingerprints on them. A ring binder. Snapshots of server rooms, wiring closets, etc. A punchdown block and a punchdown tools. You know, stuff.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Pictures of blinky lights, or even better yet. Bring in blinky lights.
But don't worry too much. The alternative for these kids is learning stuff. You don't have to be too entertaining for them to appreciate it.
Keep your expectations low and keep as much detail out of your presentation as possible. Systems administration is boring to most adults--imagine what it's like when you're 9 and don't even understand the need for it.
And try not to give your presentation after a fireman. (I gave mine after a BANK TELLER and I still had a class of sixth-graders staring up at the clock every 30 seconds.)
Also, you might try not talking about your job. Either talk about the rockets or talk about how the kids use computers and how your knowledge applies to that. (On second thought, stick to the rockets...)
That you spend 90% of your time playing online games and you totally p0wn on them. Then, when they are really getting into the game you are showing them on your laptop, ask one of them to close the screen of the laptop. Then tell all the kids they are now the "users" and that they should all yell out in mindless repeatedly and run around the classroom like little mad superballs and bounce into each other. Then open the laptop back up and again, and say, "oh, look everyone, a user did something very stupid and broke things but I fixed it." Then go back to playing and they can all calm down. You have just given them an accurate description and you never have to worry about being invited back to that teacher's classroom again. Don't thank me, just send money.
I would add a game of telephone.
Start a message at one end of the room and have the students relay the message until it gets to the last student where it will be a total mess.
Your job includes making sure computer messages gets from Los Angeles, CA to New York, NY exactly the way it started.
You also might want to figure out a game to explain how literal and dumb software is. Part of your job includes baby sitting the stupid software. That's how I explained my job when I'd get alarms on my phone to my kid. You may want to ask the class to volunteer the "class clown" for the hamming-up the role of stupid software.
If you do it right, you have talked a little about hardware, software and troubleshooting with a few minutes to spare.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Kid 1: Why is our computer so slow?
Kid 2: At first it was fast, but now it's slow. And there are about 40 popups blocking the screen. What's up with that?
Kid 3: Our popups have boobies.
Teacher: Yeah, I've noticed that, too.
Start with a basic discussion of SysV vs. BSD, then move on to shells and explain why the Bourne shell his historically prefered to csh for scripts.
You might demonstrate a little sed and awk, but keep in mind that these are just kids, so you might just jump ahead to perl. Maybe wrap it up by talking about NFS and how network filesystems have changed since Samba came along.
Oh, and if you feel like you're losing them along the way, you can probably win them back with an Itanic joke :-)
It's more about the wonderful and mysterious world of IT.
I'd turn it into a day-in-the-life-of story that I might deliver kinda like a play; and use paper cutouts for different characters.
Say you involve your son, and he's plays the "server farm", you could dress him up in a cardboard box, something that says big-and-strong, and then you go about acting out different scenarios.
You can tickle your son to represent how the system has bugs or viruses that you have to hunt down, at some point your son could act tired, and you could talk about how we're running out of power for all those servers and that we need to make better servers that use less of it, you can dress up with a white lab coat because you're an Internet (or information) scientist, the list is endless, ..., the idea is to ligth them up with a fun 20 minutes, slipping in some conceptual notions of what's possible at (your) work, rather than help them prepare for a job interview.
"enterprise NAS/SAN storage, working for an aerospace company"
At a certain degree of approximation (talking to 4th graders is hardly mission critical) this becomes:
"I work for an aerospace company (NASA) on the Starship Enterprise."
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I've done this exact scenario and can tell you that you should bring things to pass around. Anything computer related. I also scored some hits by connecting computers to things kids are interested in - video games and movies. Explain to them all the technical roles that go into putting together a video game and watch their eyes open wide.
I had to do the exact same presentation. I also have a similar job. Mostly LAN. Novell, and SAN administration. For my presentations I basically collected bad parts from around the office. A motherboard, RAM, hard disk, etc. As I spoke I would pass each part around and describe itâ(TM)s purpose. I also asked some questions to entertain: Where did the term computer bug come from? Who has ever played World of Warcraft? Who has a Wii, Xbox, or Playstation? How many websites exist? Basically these questions lead me into topics that the class cared about. If a discussion startedâ¦great! Job done. If not I would ask the next leading question and see what happens.
Show clips from the MATRIX and explain how you are like one of those Smith guys. Your job is to kill everyone that causes problems in the programs.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Make it very interactive: "How many of you kids have a computer at home?" "Does your computer ever crash or break down?" "Do your parents ever yell at your computer?" "Guess how many computers I take care of where I work?" "Who can tell me where the internet is?" This kind of stuff and your 20 minutes will fly by with happy children all around.
Putting some messages in envelopes and passing them around the room is a good one.
I'd work on a failure story of some kind. Losing an envelope with part of the message is a good one. You're the guy that fixes things when messages are lost.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Dear Slashdot:
I am trying to talk with my PHB^H^H^H^H fourth grader about IT.
Can you help?
Signed,
Frustrated at Work
You'll need to do a few things to give the kids a proper flavor for the job.
First, for no good reason whatsoever, insist that the meeting be held at 3AM, give no warning of this - just page them all at night.
Second, ensure the classroom is a cold as possible.
Third, in the background play some extremely loud fan noise.
Begin the session with recriminations, belittle the children for their lack of psychic abilities.
Repeat the same information to the children over and over a few times to see if the same phrase magically has a different effect. Berate the children for not doing what you think they should be doing.
End with demands that this never happen again.
Nullius in verba
I see a classroom somewhere. They are getting a visitor. It is full of very dissapointed children.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Talk about plumbing.
You make sure all the pipes of the internet don't leak.
Number one rule if you want the talk to go well is not to treat the kids like idiots. Don't talk down to them, even though they don't have the background to understand what you do, neither do most adults not in IT. Don't talk about technical details, but rather the ramifications.
You're company is already going to be cool, working in aerospace. Explain what it is that having computers does for your company (Something like, "We use computers to design airplanes. By connecting our computers together, one person can work on the wings, while another on the tail, and we can be sure that they'll work together. I'm the one responsible for making sure all of those computers are working. By keeping these systems up, I allow our people to better design their airplanes, and allow them to talk to the airlines to make sure there's enough space to have kids meals on your flights", etc.)
These kids are in 4th grade... why don't you stop and imagine for a moment about where technology might be by the time they are adults. I can imagine home automation might be something really cool by then. Tell them about the houses they might live in in the future. Consider brain computer interfaces... suggest to them that one day computers might be so small and invisible that they can talk to their friends across the world just by thinking it... I'm sure u can come up with some of your own grand ideas about where technology can take us. Make sure you throw some of that in. The kids are the future, the future is about hope.. give them some grand ideas.
Hello? Can we stop with the dear slashdot articles in the RSS feed, at least?
The real trick is to keep them engaged for the whole time. Kids at that age like to try and solve problems, so asking them to solve a problem is a good tactic.
Take a real-world issue you have faced. Pick one that was a challenge for you, but that simplify (the nuances of the problem will likely have to be scaled back, but you will need to keep a few).
Present the class with the problem and then ask for ideas on how they would address that problem. WRITE ALL ANSWERS ON THE BOARD. Add your own solutions that the class may have missed. Walk them through failed attempts, and then the solution. As you do this, walk them through ideas that didn't work first. Spectacular failures can be best for this (think exploding rockets and stuff), but other "we were wrong" stuff helps too.
Again, the real trick is to get these kids to think about your problem as you present it.
Tell them you make computers do your job.
This morning was my daughter's career day, so I just did something similar. I'm a programmer so it is a little bit different, but some thoughts:
- ask if they build things with legos or wood, describe how you build machines and manage them like legos
- ask if they have done First Lego League.
- I really like the idea of showing a dead hard drive, that would be cool
- talk about reading and writing and how important it is. I use an example of a software requirement for the 'misspelled words' in MS Word. They get that someone has to write down exactly what they want when you show how 'underline the word in red' can be interpreted differently
Finally, ask lots of questions about what they are reading, who likes math, favorite subjects etc. while you are waiting for everyone to get into the class room. Then they won't be scared of you.
Good luck and have fun. At this age you'll be surprised by how much they get and what they ask you.
As far as content, definitely use the aerospace angle. Talk to you kid and ask him what he likes about space. Then fold it in!
I think the best way is to let kids go through the pieces that make things tick. IT is no different. And once they are done with the hardware, their curiosity will immediately lead them to how it is made to tick: software.
between myspace, twitter, and cellphones, the modern 4th grader is probably more knowledgeable about technology than you.
...that it's a normal, healthy part of growing up, but they mustn't experiment with it too early.
rj
Chances are you'll have some who 'know about it'.
Then take them through what's involved in getting that to happen. From the datacentre (ask them about computers crashing, power cuts, and ask them for what they'd do about it) and work along the chain, across the internet, and then down through your wireless router to your laptop.
Include representations of what's involved in a video - a stack of photographs might do the trick, to represent each 'frame', how you'd encode that, and move it fast enough to watch in real time.
I think that'd give you a good starting point actually, and take the opportunity to expand when there's interest/questions.
"Can anyone suggest some good (and cheap/easy to make) visual aids?"
Fourth graders and a stack of index cards.
Assign kids to be a router, lines, client machines, etc. Give them cards to represent information for processing. Have them hand off the cards to each other under your instruction. After they get into it, stop and tell them "In my job, a computer tells all the other computers and things what to do. But I'm the one that makes sure that computer makes everything go."
When giving the instructions, make sure to be enjoying yourself and they will enjoy themselves, and you'll get a good response.
Then when it comes time for questions, expect entirely irrelevant ones: "You're old. How old are you?" "How'd you get so fat?" "What happened to your hair?" and so on. Be ready with good questions and answers of your own.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The difficulty you're having trying to prepare for a career day at an elementary school does not instill confidence in the aerospace industry. lol
Get some kids lined up. Tell them you are going to give Sally a message and she is going to repeat the message to the kid next to her. The message will go down the line. The kid at the end will say whatever he's told. It's always wrong from what you told Sall. Now, had Sally a message and have her pass it down. The kid at the end will read the message and it will be right.
Now, explain TCP/IP by tearing the message up into little peices. Hand them to Sally and have her pass the pieces down. At every exchange yell "Packet Collision". Knock some of the pieces of paper out of her hand and then give Sally some more scraps. When all the scraps get down to the end, have the kid reassemble the message.
This is great practice for explaining IT to senior management, but you'll need to be aware that mgmt has a shorter attention span.
You should talk to them like you would anyone else; keep it interesting..
Only difference is you can't use acronyms/references they haven't learned yet.
1. Don't speak, listen. They'll probably know a lot more than you think; if they are not busy tuning you out listening to their iPods or playing with their Touch Phones.
Or
2. Use lots of pictures.
Or
3.Get one of those devices that makes noise when you pull the string. The IT Admin says "Wahhhh!".
Is this the same Sooney (sorry for abortioning your name) that went to PV JR High?
PE teacher had a shitty nickname for you, but you could run fast as hell... My only competition?
I ask because we grew up in a VERY aerospace rich area, and haven't seen a whole lot of people with the same name.
--Toll_Free
As we get older, we get nostalgic for what we think was the fun stuff, no longer around, but some of this is rational. If you can lay your hands on some punch cards and especially a reel or two of tape, show them the old versus new density and tell them how many kids' names will fit on cards versus the modern disk drive you took apart for them. Then pass around the cards and a bucket of chads, let them unwind 2400 ft of tape in the classroom (surely the teacher won't mind), show them big pictures of old raised floor rooms with all the hidden wiring and stuff. All of us kids like knowing about hidden stuff. Show them how the inside of a blade server differs from their own PC. Mention networking and show them an old fat copper cable and a modern optical fibre. Pass it around. Cut pieces off for them. Colored wire is still fun. Then talk briefly about what you really do. Explain in easy terms what cron jobs might do, and give a mundane example and something more interesting (say, backing something up and scanning a log nightly for intruders). Come to think of it, talk about fighting intruders. Cops and robbers appeal to all ages. Maybe explain why growing up to be a Mitnick isn't such a hot idea. Did you find (even lame) attempts by Bulgarian crackers at some point? What else? How much electricity do your machines use? I think you can mention the virtues of Linux, or at least from where it came - talk about Torvalds and his sauna, or (very briefly) RMS and the idea of free software versus proprietary. Just remember that most people of any age find personalities more interesting than concepts (I said most, not necessarily us, but I do hate what's happened to early history education, where everything's a trend rather than the result of someone's action). The whole point is for them to learn something, and it's never too soon to explain how those things differ. Other hardware... show them how a laser pointer reflects differently from varying surfaces, and mention how an optical disc works. One more thing: kids do get carried away with Q&A. Friend of mine talked to his daughter's class about being in the Civil Air Patrol. The questions were increasingly about very elaborately conceived crashes. What if a plane takes off as another is landing at the same spot and another is taxiing across nearby, while the controller is sneezing...
The children will be bored of anything that even hints at being 'educational'. You are there to entertain the kids for ten or fifteen minutes and then pass out prizes. With that in mind follow these rules and you will do fine:
1) Dress casual. If you show up in a dress shirt and slack you are Mr. No-Fun.
2) Don't use ANY technical terms. Not even the word 'server'. All computers are just computers and networks don't exist. Networks are just computers talking to each other.
3) Don't talk down to the kids. They are smart and if you make them feel smart they will listen.
4) Don't make jokes. At that age most kids won't get the punch-line.
5) Let the kids interrupt. It'll eat up the time and let you be one of them. Kids always interrupt each other.
6) Pass out good stuff. No candy, but no folders and pens either. My son still talks about the day in second grade that everyone got kazoos from a mother who was a musician.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Just be careful. One guy from MIT demoed at his son's kindergarten class, and shortly afterward, his laptop died. The tech finally determined that cause was massive strawberry jam input through the floppy drive. (Laptop did come back after a good wash'n'dry of the internals. True story.)
By the way - analogies are good, letting them play with Legos is better.
Your kid is going to hate you for having such a boring job. There's little or no way you can spin it. My wife, who's long haul cabin crew, did a presentation and was loved, there's no WAY I'm ever gonna be stupid enough to try to follow that.
I guess you could put together a montage of footage from The Matrix and other movies and pretend that that's how you use computers.
just imagine you're explaining what you do to your boss.
Nullius in verba
Look on the bright side... If the population slowly turns into a geeky/nerdy sexless society, less teenagers will get pregnant and thus invariably preventing the making of any new teen pregnancy specials!
...when I was in 4th grade and someone came in to talk about "IT." Said something about when a daddy loves a mommy very much, they give each other a special hug. And then Jesus rides in on a stork or some shiat like that.
(1) When you talk about *what* a systems administrator does, it doesn't sound that hard: installing and configuring software, patching, installing and configuring hardware, researching and comparing potential upgrade options, troubleshooting problems, etc.
What 4th graders probably don't think about is that none of these things by themselves may seem particularly hard at the scale of an individual computer, but when you multiply each of these activities by a gazillion servers, routers, clients, etc., then it has the potential to become a real nightmare. So you have to use tricks & technologies in a company's computing environment that you'd never bother with at home.
E.g., "Ever seen your mom or dad install a Windows update? Remember how nuts that made them? Now imagine doing that across 20,000 desktops in 10 cities, and being given only 3 days to get them all done!"
(2) Probably a lot of your time is spent being a detective, trying to puzzle out why something that oughta be working ain't. Telling stories about some of your successful detective adventures might be entertaining.
All people (including kids) like to be told stories, so the more you can populate your presentation with interesting anecdotes, the better.
And, as one person already wrote, bringing some old or broken hard drive, circuit boards, etc. to pass around the classroom probably couldn't hurt either.
Also, many 4th graders I know think that the *monitor* is the computer. They point at it and say, "That's the computer, isn't it? Why are you fiddling with that other box?" I know that sounds crazy, but that's the way many 9 year olds think. So don't assume any understanding of computers just because they know how to play Spore.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
For my senior project, I had to present my senior project. Well, it was IT related, along with different lines of code. I also included a video game that I had written, and had a live demonstration. Kids LOVE video games, since most of them can't play them in school. But if they get to learn about them in school....its a win win situation, they learn something and you give a good presentation. Like it says a few posts up..."Don't teach, entertain instead" is the truth. Linux would probably bore them...but if you had a picture of a dancing penguin, your chances would be a bit better to get a laugh, and see smiles. Give them something hands on, because they can play with it. But all in all, if you don't enjoy giving the presentation, they won't enjoy it and be even worse off. Have fun, its won't be too bad. =)
i'm kind of surprised at the funny mod too, i wasn't trying to be funny
that's really the best way for a bunch of grade school kids to appreciate an IT job at an aerospace company
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Tell them you sweep the floors and clean up the mess that everyone else makes. Sometimes you get to do something cool, too, like painting a wall.
Tell them you also fix computers when your friends ask, and that you get to help out at 3AM when someone really needs the knick-knacks dusted.
You probably also do a lot of handholding, too. "Here, I will show you the way around this horrible mud puddle."
Try not to make it too condescending. It's a dirty job, and I'm just glad someone else than me is doing it now.
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Maybe have a second thought about what you are getting yourself into.
You're a geek and geekiness transends age. By the time the words NASA and computer leave your lips, the big kid in the class will probably have your underwear somewhere around your ears. The girls will be laughing at you, before you know it you are curled up in the fetal position, whimpering "i don't want to go to school mommy"
Excuse me, I got to call my therapist...
You should start with an analogy of something simple they commonly use. You'd be surprised of things they know how to use, but don't really understand how they work. For example, a simple "network" example: one more Nintendo DS's "talking" to each other. Then show them a PC that looks like a rack mounted system: no outer case, multiple HD's, etc.
If you can use the school's computer lab, you might use a webserver. Connect that PC to the intranet, or, use an external webserver. Create simple webpages with lots of aerospace stuff. It would be even cooler creating a web app, where it ask the student's name, ask them to pick a photo as their favorite, and, show the classroom a page with results.
Also, your company might already have educational material for kids, they might even cooperate with you to create it!
I'd go for stretching their minds a bit. Use a simple diagram (boxes connected by wires - either they've got a projector for a PC an overhead/transparency projector) to try to explain how a client/server request works, such as for loading a web page. Explain the concept of program (list of instructions for a machine). Say one runs on the client (on demand) to send a request, which is handled by a server one (continuous listener) to fulfill the request, which response is displayed by the client (waiting since send). You might briefly touch on packet (TCP/IP) transmission. You will probably lose some, but, who knows, you might plant some seeds! 4th grade isn't hopelessly clueless.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
The Internet is a series of Tubes, you see...
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
When I have to tell people who don't really know computers what I do, I just say `I program computers'. And they go `oh'. It's far easier than trying to explain what I really do.
(And even so, the next thing they tend to say `oh yeah? Well, my computer has this problem ...')
Interactive demos are great. I explained parallel processing to a bunch of 6th graders like this: I displayed four lines of ten numbers on the overhead. I had one kid write down all ten numbers...and at the same time I had four kids write down one line each.
Then the next row of kids had to come to the board and write the numbers on the board.
Then the next row of kids had to add up all the numbers in their line.
And so on, until I ran out of kids. It took about ten minutes. Then I explained why lots of computers working on small pieces of the problems were faster than one computer trying to do everything itself. It also illustrated why it is important to have a single computer (me) coordinating the actions of all the other computers (them).
The media has conditioned the modern child to have the attention span of a fruit fly. What gets the attention of a fruit fly? Movement, commotion -- in a word -- animation. Tie clips of popular media, cartoons, games, advertisements, into your talk by giving some rough, and fast, idea of how IT delivers these wonders. Whether it is an online game or the latest Disney cartoon, Linux server farms run the show. And animate yourself. Move around the room, vary the rate of your delivery, the level of your voice, and get kinetic. You are putting on a show to an audience that is used to Saturday morning cartoons. Haven't watched those cartoons? Get to it.
A lot of people have already displayed this sentiment by proposing demonstrations. But it is important to have something that the children can interact with in a meaningful way.
A Hopper Nanosecond is one example, where you can show them something, hand it around, and have them hold something meaningful. It may also be relevant to what your work, since the network is just a bunch of wires. An old EPROM with the crystal window, or an old 486 or 68040 with the silicon exposed, is neat too because they can see the insides of a computer chip. Simply popping open a computer or a hard drive is pretty cool too. Particularly the hard drive, if you can have it running, but the open computer is cool too since very few of them would have seen the insides. If you do any programming on the job, maybe show them (and the teacher) Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) since that is something a 10 year old can play with. It is also very visual.
This is probably outside of your line of work, but something that really snags their interest is showing them sound and letting them make the sounds that they will see. Squeak will allow you to show them voice prints or a fast fourier transform (they do start talking about frequency at that grade level, as pitch, so it's neat to see the pitch of a boy's, a girl's, a man's, and a woman's voice).
If you're in a classroom with a reading area (a.k.a. the carpet), asking the teacher to have them sit there (rather than in desks) is handy. It cuts back on the number of distractions, and they seem less likely to drift off. Some will chat though, but I wouldn't worry about that too much if they are chatting about things you pass around.
But most of all, just try to have fun yourself. Kids that age seem to respond positively if other people think something is fun or interesting. (Alas, the opposite is true too.)
Also let me know so I can explain it to my fellow employees. They arent "getting it" when I talk to them like adults, so I gotta try a different tack.
(No Bob, rebooting your PC is NOT pushing the button on your monitor or logging off and back on again.)
I HERD THEY LEIK MUDKIPS!!
I talked about the importance of studying Math and Science, defined what an engineer was and talked about the semiconductor revolution engulfing the planet...
I brought **loads** of props they could pass around the room:
1.) vacuum tube (I kept this), transistor, 1980's ASIC, 1990's ASIC, 2000's ASIC
2.) I talked about Moore's law and drew the shrinking linewidths compared to a human hair
3.) I bought a diskette, CD, DVD asking how much data they thought was on each and showed the amount on the board
4.) Showed them how they can count to 32 (0..31) on one hand
5.) Then I tied all of this stuff back to the things they know and love, iPods, cell phones, Gameboy's, etc.
But then again, I'm an ASIC guy. /Ed
Explaining it to 4th graders? Don't you already use the same approach when talking to senior management?
I've used cups and string to teach networks, routing and the world wide web to 2nd grade kids. Just like the the old two cans and a string version of telephone. I use the teacher as a "hub" or routing point, giving her one end of the cups from 5 kids. Each kid can talk into the cup, telling the teacher who the "message" is for, and then the "message". The teacher will call up the destination kid and relay the message. Connect two teachers with a rope, each teacher connected to several kids, and well you get the idea. It works great!~
Dave Valentine
Any proper discussion about IT to 4th graders must include a visual comparison of the Windows Flag and Linux's Tux so they can visually recognize which one is better and more fun.
you're a Fireman
4th graders are better at that (as well as IT issues) than most 'grownups'. greed, fear & ego are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of yOUR dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children, not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one. see you on the other side of it. the lights are coming up all over now. conspiracy theorists are being vindicated. some might choose a tin umbrella to go with their hats. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1216734813&hl=en&topic=n
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_re_us/tent_cities;_ylt=A0wNcyS6yNJIZBoBSxKs0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/02/nasa.global.warming.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/05/severe.weather.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/02/honore.preparedness/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html?em&ex=1212638400&en=744b7cebc86723e5&ei=5087%0A
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/05/senate.iraq/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080708/cheney_climate.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080805/pl_politico/12308;_ylt=A0wNcxTPdJhILAYAVQms0NUE
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/18/voting.problems/index.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080903/ts_nm/environment_arctic_dc;_ylt=A0wNcwhhcb5It3EBoy2s0NUE
(talk about cowardlly race fixing/bad theater/fiction?) http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/19/news/economy/sec_short_selling/index.htm?cnn=yes
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=weather+manipulation&btnG=Search
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
'The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by
Let them hang from your long white beard.
if you work in a datacenter, and have permission, get some photos of your racks. then pull a floor tile and get some photos from underneath.
if you are mission support, concentrate on the space missions you've been involved in - as has been stated - kids love rockets.
play some starwars music as an intro ...
buy several lengths of plumbing and pipe fittings, put them together, there's your visual aid.
For 4th graders, there may be a couple in the class that enjoy computers and would be riveted by a discussion of what system admins do. The rest will be long into nap time before you've spoken for 5 minutes. Talk about your company, what they do, and how your work helps them. For students at this level, you really cannot go into great detail about your specific work. Unix, Linux, NAS, SAN, etc...are things that are technical for most adults to understand, let alone kids. You're in the AEROSPACE industry. For kids this means rockets and planes and space ships and defense and troops overseas and all sorts of other exciting things that kids can really relate to! Tell them how everything runs on computers and that your work makes sure that every rocket and ship can be operated without fail because of the hardware that you maintain and keep reliable for them. If you work on a team, you can tell them briefly how many people report to you. Toss big numbers at them if they're relevant, such as how much data flows through your department/division per day, is it a trillion MP3's worth? Good luck finding an Ipod that big!!! Keep it simple, light, fun, and not overly technical and you will keep everyone interested, regardless of whether they're computer geeks, history buffs, or budding football stars.
LOGIC: You shouldn't one or the other, sysad and child.
I got a wonderful 10 base HUB a phone vendor placed in my network. I keep it to scare other techies.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If you want to keep a group of 4th graders interested, do something they cannot do at home. Take apart a computer.
I have done this several times for my children s classes. Be sure to include the hard drives, take the cover off and if you can power it up with the cover off. (A great 4th grade crowd pleaser).
Then stop the disk and hand all the parts around. Motherboard, memory, disk drives. Be sure to have several if the class is big.
I know you have some old disk drives don't you? 800 meg drives are much use any more even working. I keep them now just for these class demonstrations.
This is what I have done.
With risk of sounding reflexive, you have to treat 4th graders like your grand parents when it comes to computers. Sure, the 4th graders have probably spent more time online (laptop, PC/Mac, cell phone) than your grand parents, but they understand the workings just as well... or just as not.
Now, if you're going to talk to them about IT (not just "Hey, look what a computer can do") you have to first sell to them that they are actually interested about the workings of *anything*. Liken what you do to a doctor working on a patient where instead of dealing with blood, you're dealing with thoughts and communication. In fact, you are the emergency room doctor that's called on when people NEED to communicate but have lost the ability to do so.
After you relate yourself to something they WILL know, then talk about easy to swallow details. If you're helping rocket scientists get things into space, bring a large stack of dot matrix printer paper full of data and explain to them that it's your job to make sure all that information is squeezed through a tiny cable (this is where you hold up some wire or cat5). That's your blood vessel, that data is the blood, the computer is the heart... and you fight the disease of viruses, bugs, errors, and injury!
And then you win @ 4th grade. ;)
Bring an old server and let them take it apart. Abstract concepts are something that a 4th grader will struggle with. But something to touch they'll never forget and they are not allowed to do at home.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
When I was a 4th grader in the 1980s my dad worked for HP. He was a middle manager. On our school's career day, he would bring a bunch of computers from work and set them up with games (moon lander, artillery, etc..). I don't remember any talk about careers or anything else, but I still remember playing the games and thinking that computers were cool. And voila, now I'm a programmer.
Obviously now-a-days most of those kids have computers at home and have games better than anything you have at your company, but I think the core thing to do is to give the kids something to have fun with that is vaguely related to where you work. Forget about the details of your individual job.
Bring in two laptops with embeded videocam and network them together with a wired router -- use one for presentation. Bring also a cut ethernet cable, and pass that around the room while you fire up the two laptops. Do a compile of a video conference program (configure && make && make install) & have them watch the lines go up the page while you talk to them about a connected world. Open up the video conference application and have the kids line up on either side & wave at each other.
don't pass around anything that's full of lead, or beryllium or mercury. It will freak someone out and it's not worth the minimal risk.
Nullius in verba
Just pretend you're going to speak in front of management.
If you've got some old hard drives you can open up, or just anything like that that they can see up close and hands on and get to "play" with.
Also, be careful not to talk too over their heads, but don't baby them either. Treat them like "little adults" and you'll be alright.
I use to to tech work at a school district and got to interact with the kids some. It can be a bit scary at first, but it'll be ok!
Then of course there are those slashdotters who cannot resit making criticisms of minor technical issues, for instance:
Your final answer contains too many significant digits. It is misleading to claim state "59,467.1314 times around the Earth" when the numbers you started with at best support a result with 5 significant digits, thus based on that alone your answer should be 59,467.1. If the 12 characters per inch is taken as a measurement instead of a defined constant, then your calculation would only support 2 significant digits, thus the answer should be 59,000.
Finally, though you show your work, you didn't state your assumptions. It appears that you were assuming that the petabyte would follow the sea level circumference of the earth and not the actual contour. This is a reasonable assumption but should be stated since you can imagine that the error introduced by hugging the contour of the earth could be substantial.
"Now, kids, can you say 'doubly-linked list'? I knew you could!"
Who talks to kids anymore? If you want to teach them anything you should send SMS and/or text messages. That'll get their attention :), and help them get use to IT at the same time
and ramble on about the decline of the star wars saga and how much alimony you have to pay lay face down and start to cry.
That would pretty much be spot on.
There's a reason children don't give a shit about this chattel. The life of most IT and software developers is overwhelmingly consists of actions made meaningful only by the careful construction of a rat race.
It has more to do with the layers of bullshit, your inane idiosyncrasies and dysfunctional work relationships which most children are luckily free from, that is, until an asshole like you comes along and tries to teach them what a network attached storage device is.
At least things have gotten a little better in recent years. I recall working as a tech. for a couple of different "mom and pop" type computer stores in the early to mid 1990's, when everybody was building "house brand" generic clones for their customers.
The typical mini-tower case with power supply was purchased for about $40 total, and always came straight from China, with the cheapest sheet metal possible. (Amazingly, many of these shipped with respectably decent power supplies, too, depending on who you bought from. But then, it's also worth remembering that you needed less wattage for most systems built at that time.) It was almost impossible to assemble one of those without slicing up at least one finger or thumb, since none of the metal edges inside the case were sanded down or rounded off. (That would make it cost more!)
I remember when 4th graders gave YOU the IT talk. When I was in elementary school in the early 80s, computers in the classroom were just novelties. Our teachers and administrators didn't have a clue about how to use them, take care of them or what they were good for. A bunch of my friends and I who had computers at home took care them, taught the teachers and would often get sent around if another classroom or, more often, the office had a problem. When the office got macs, it was we third or fourth graders who set up the appletalk network between the principal's and the secretaries' computers. We eventually had a few Apple IIGS in one wing on an appletalk network as well. It was also we third or fourth graders who figured out and taught the secretary how to dial-in with zterm to the district's main SunOS computer. (I suppose we could have been really nasty, but the things we could have done never crossed our mind.)
how 'bout a model rocket, that you use a laptop to launch . .
Remember to include some fun stuff for both sexes. Rockets are cool from a boys perspective, but not nearly enough girls like rockets.
Maybe you could also relate it to telecommunications - girls like talking, right?
Good idea. Then un-plug the ethernet cable and tell them that the cable represents the internet. Or put a switch in-line and power down the switch and watch as the network connection is not available anymore.
Bring a few 48-port switches or something else in that's big hardware that they can ooh and ahh over. Better if they have lots of flashing lights and loud fans. If you're a Sysadmin, you should have access to a bunch of random hardware that you can use.
Let's start a FAQ you can print and hand out to the kids.
Aerospace IT Guy FAQ
Q. What is a FAQ?
A. A FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions and their answers.
Q. What is an IT guy in aerospace?
A. I maintain the computers and network systems the scientists who build space ships use.
Q. Cool! What's it like to program a rocket? Did you program that rover thing on Mars?
A. Um...no. I'm not a real programmer.
It hurts because it's true.
I now await my downmod.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I dunno. How do you talk to centernarians about safe sex?
rest of the world calling.
Talk about it like that. Tell them you're like the someone who helps the conductors and trains get to where they need to go safely. I'm lacking on source material here, but I do recall my US history teacher mentioning that at least one very early book was written that described some pioneering networking ideas in terms of the railroads. If you think about it, switches, routers, hubs, etc. it sure sounds similar, and it makes for an interesting story. Good luck with that.
"How Do I Talk To 4th Graders About IT?"
Pretty simple. Just tell them to avoid clowns outside of circus, parade, and birthday-party contexts, and to never follow one into a sewer.
When was the last time you ran anywhere? I mean with your own legs, not by pressing 'X'?
The only really big difference is that a garbageman has more job security and is probably paid better. Stick with that or plumbing- you'll go far since people will pay anything not to have to deal with it."
Going back to the series of tubes point...
Ask for a show of hands:
Who likes to solve puzzles?
Who likes mystery stories?
Now that you've got some attention, explain how your job is finding problems(mystery), and figuring out how to fix them(puzzle). Explain how people come to you to get help. Give some examples of the projects that you support, and what we are learning from them. Keep to the human side of your job.
You could bring in some visual aids, but please don't mention anything specific about technology.
Show them how to hack into the school network, bypass any parental controls and download pr0n. Half the audience will be glued to their seats while the other half runs screaming.
Choosing the subject with care is all very well, but to really connect you've got to get the language right. For 4th graders I suggest extensive use of four-letter words.
Probably use the FORTH programming language would work for 4th graders.
I too give career day presentations every year. I found if you give them free stuff, they'll love you no matter what you say. How about opening up a hard drive to show them the platters and explain how fast they spin and how close the arm is. then translate it to a 747 flying 600mph 6" above the ground. They seem to love anything you give them. Maybe print out some cool technical picture and give each one a copy of it..?? make sure you take a few things to pass around just so they can touch. Since they are about 9 years old, compare today's tech to 1999's. sizes/speeds.
...that your job consists of keeping the likes of them out of your employer's systems.
Have gnu, will travel.
There's been lots of good, interesting suggestions here (at least I think so, as a sysadmin). Let us know what you wind up doing & how it goes -- it may be good fodder for some of us doing similar stuff...
Might be difficult working in Areospace to take them... But they would certainly capture the kids attentions, even just the masses of cabling, show them your messiest cabling spot and say all of these wires run out to all directions over the building, where they split into another hundred cables and so on. If you have a picture of your network topology with all the branching trees it might be interesting to flash up. If you have a video camera make a 3 minute video about the life of a cable, follow it through the building, narrate it and say the website you want is moving through these cables, then after you go through the whole process say that all took about "Clap" less time then that took.
If you are explaining any of the hardware, explain it in the first person, if you talk about a router or a firewall personify it, talk as if you are a stressed router trying to sort packets as fast as you can or a gruff firewall acting as a bouncer.
All the fourth graders will have used the internet, at home or at school, try and relate what you do to the internet or a website they use. Talk about how the data zips through from one point to another though the schools network, then to the Internet's network.
But absolutely don't mention the word SAN.
It might not be a hit with 100% of the class, but I'm sure some autistic spectrum boys will find their career path that day. ;)
This picture might not be a bad idea as well.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg
You could probably lie a bit and pick a point to put a "You are here" --> on the map. so you can trace your way fictionally through the internet to whatever the kids are hip with.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
Ooh, you can show them how to recompile a Linux kernel.
Tsunayoshi, you have an opportunity here to inspire!
My advise would be to communicate to those listening that there is no such thing as Magic. *Everything* technical can be explained by and derived from fundamentals. By definition.
One thing I have always found startles an audience -- talk about the amazing empowerment that the HTTP protocol and the SMTP et al provide to we humans...
And then bring up a simple shell, telnet into the service port of a server (that you control), and then hand-type commands... Interact with the server directly.
The fundamental message is, simply: now a days things have been made to appear Magical; but fundamentally, it's all about agreed upon and open standards.
And, further... If one is willing, one can become a true "Wizard" -- knowing things and being able to do things which few others can.
HELO!
Show them what you do with your day...
Bring up Slashdot and read away.
That is all.
Make sure they understand that Flash pr0n is not as good as mpeg pr0n and that it's OK to wait 10 minutes to get a whole DVD verses just 3:30 of a movie. Also remind them that EVERYONE on the internet is a 45 year old pervert who wants to touch their private bits. Oh and tell them you work on airplanes.
This
You are a PC doctor, when it feels ill, you have to trace the symtoms and find a cure. You must be procative to avoid it get sick again.
And it's not just 1 computer, you are responsible for the health of many computers that allows rockets into space.
Talk to them the same way you would talk to the average manager.
Same intelligence level.
I arrive at work, drink some coffee and start to go to my office to play some games (sudoku IS better than WoW).
Right at this time my boss comes to me with an alarming news: someone has KILLed the web server! In a hurry, I put my detective hat and go to solve this mistery.
I start in the server's HOME. By reading his LOG I try to figure if he had any enemies, but all I see are empty FILEs.
Next, I look WHO were his friends. I try to LOCATE some images, which I FIND near his PING-pong trophies. In there, I only see the picture of one strange guy. WHOIS him? I try to LOOKUP any INFOrmation about him and I manage to GET his ADDRESS and ZIP code, WRITtEn by the victim in a hurry in a NOTEPAD that was in his DESK's TOP
I start to CONNECT the /DOTS, but when I was EXITting the building, something HITs me in the neck and I pass out.
When I WAKE UP, I find I'm tied to a chair in a dark room, full of PIPEs scattered around. Then I hear a voice. I recognize it as the MANAGER's one. When he comes to the light, I see he looks as if DAEMONized, with his EYES glazed. I try to escape, fiddling with my FINGERs through the rope's knot. I do manage to untie it, and FREE myself. The manager tries to punch me, but I KICK him first and he passes out.
I call the police and tell the OPERATOR what happened. Soon they appear in the house, FLASHlights in hand, to RESCUE me.
After all that, I can only think of my next vacations in AVAHI.
Hey! This is an easy one!!
You should take this opportunity to spread the word about FREEDOM and GNU/Linux!!
You could point out the fact that most of the web runs on GNU/Linux servers and then you can demonstrate and provide a free copy of the linuX-Gamers cd (bootable live cd loaded with FREE Linux games) available from:
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2483
You could also use this opportunity to explain the difference between pirating software and sharing FREE(e.g., GNU/Linux) software. Perfect time to discourage criminal behavior and boost community effort!
Plant the seed my friend. Hooray!!
Go GNU/Linux and Open Source!!
Cheers!
Shannon VanWagner
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com
I swear, every sysadmin I know has a penchant for making his life about 100 x more complicated than it needs to be.
Be INTERACTIVE. Ask them questions, and pick one of them to answer. For example:
How many of you have computers?
(show of hands)
My job is running machines that the people at my company use to make their computers useful! I am the guy that people come to when they can't make their machines do what they want.
Who do you go to when you can't make your computer do what you want?
Did you know that system admins can see EVERYTHING you do on your computer?
It's a grave responsibility, to be an admin, and you should always remember that when dealing with anyone that knows a lot about computers and networks.
how about bringing some things with you .. some insides you only get to see when you are an administrator...
maybe pics of you next to several racks
how about using Warriors of The .Net
There was a series of lectures on explosions given by Doctor John Salthouse, of the University of Manchester Department of Chemistry. Some amateur videos of his talks are on Youtube and I definitely recommend them. (Sadly, he is not well these days and no longer tours from what I understand.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
systems architecture, from a conceptual perspective, resembles nothing so much as building large intricate things out of Legos. But instead of using actual Legos, we use pieces of technology, both logical (GB of disk, services like HTTP and DNS, Mbps of network bandwidth, load-balancing topologies, applications) and physical (servers, switches, routers, storage appliances).
We take smaller discrete units (say, a single server) and combine them to make larger units (a cluster), and those larger units can themselves be combined into bigger and bigger pieces (several clusters might power an application, several apps might be served from a datacenter, and several datacenters might be load-balanced to provide better global availability).
I'm told building very large projects from Legos involves a similar hierarchical approach to the architecture, and the metaphor is something most 4th graders could get a handle on (I use it to explain what I do to my folks and non-geek friends all the time).
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
I've done this sort of thing for my daughter's class before and I've also been the "computer man" at our local children's hospital. The most important thing to do is to frame the complexities of your job in terms that a 4th grader can relate to. For example, no 4th grader will understand the concept of a server, but if you bring in an old motherboard and explain that there are chips and other components that are used to execute programs, and then pass it around, they will relate to your story. Explain a program as a series of instructions, assign each student a function, and then "write" and "run" a program where each student performs their assigned task (for example, "store this number over there" and "retrieve the number from over there". Use lots of examples and keep them engaged by participating
Another good technique would be to state that a computer can do an addition in say, one billionth of a second. Then ask them to shout out the sum of 2+2. They will shout it out but you challenge them that they aren't fast enough. They need to do it a billion times faster. Then ask them to do it again, but faster. You get the picture.
What you'll find is that most students will be mildly interested but you will quickly identify those that get it and want to know more. Those are the ones you can talk to after your presentation and hopefully provide the spark we all remember in our own budding technical lives.
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the buss is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!
You can't say this?
What a shame sir!
We'll find you
another game sir.
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel down another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effect of gauss
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then your have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
personally, I think the best way to build up an interest in the IT field is to inspire them with the "fun" stuff.
show them, popular websites such as youtube and Facebook, graphics programs, a few web radio/tv stations, some of the more interesting blogs out there and the like. Make it geared towards a plan you can build up on emphasizing, if you see their eyes light up over one thing or another.
Then introduce yourself as one of the people behind the scenes that make all this happen. You'll get instant envy and wonder on their faces.
That you don't end up getting shown up by some kid in the class. It's amazing savy kids are about computers, just remember that if some smart kids starts making you look stupid it's acceptable to ask if you did'nt see him/her on your lawn yesterday.
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
If the classroom has a network connection(heck bring your own), set up a laptop to bring up a online classroom/meeting (or even anything with video & voice). Get a coworker or somebody to join you online from your office. Then you can explain the concepts of networks in terms they understand. It would be a great lead in to some of the other ideas talking about the aerospace angle. If you can wow them with tangible imagery (connecting people around the world, insides of computers without giving details) geekery doesn't need to be boring. The problem is that most of us "geeks" try to explain what would be interesting to US.
Forget about explaining all the details of your job.
The most impactful thing you can do is to relate as much of their experiences to what *you* do on a daily basis.
Elementary Schoolers understand a specific set of units. Books (or Libraries of Congress), DVDs, mp3s, game disks/carts, etc. can be used as examples of what you manage on those disks. Forget the disks, describe in terms of Dump Truck loads of Harry Potter volumes.
5th Graders understand what a "WHOLE LOT OF WORK" is. They've sweated over a book report or paper. They can identify with some element of pressure.
Elementary Schoolers understand technology on a level previously unknown.
Prepare as though your audience were Nursing-home residents, and add the spice and detail that churning young minds can understand and be sparked by.
Neat, clean units of work with awesome rewards.
Consider whether you want to make it accessible to as many students as possible, or geared more towards the brightest and technically inclined. You may have more overall positive effect with the latter
Second, decide which of the dozens of different types of things you do you'd like to focus on. If you happen to spend a lot of time scripting utilities, consider demonstrating some basic programming using Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/).
As a kid (Atari in those days), I was always fascinated with the idea of making my own games; Watching TRON and the advances of CG of the day, motivated me to get into IT.
Talk about numbers - how long it would take your co-workers to do things WITHOUT computers. Tell them why backups are important and making programs to avoid repetitive tasks.
Blinkenlights.
Yeah, kids fall for that big time.
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
Kids love to see the inside of computers. Believe me, it's like you're unveiling the mysteries of the universe to them.
Bring hardware that you can turn on while disconnected (fans, hard drives, power supplies). Assemble a working system (ie. hook it up to a monitor) without the pieces in any case.
Then, pull out a rackmount system (obviously something small, probably just a frame), and explain that placing the computer parts in them is like working with legos. I guarantee that this will work.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Your job is a lot less cool than you think it is. You're not a scientist or a Medical Doctor or even an engineer. You don't design robots or write code that does cool things. Basically you are the janitor of the IT world, you do the bitch work so everyone else can do real work.
If I were you I would say "Have any of you kids every seen Pulp Fiction, you know that scene where the big black guy gets raped? wWell my job is like being that big black guy except only during that scene not any other part of the movie."
I'm surprised nobody else has said this yet: Video game consoles.
Work your lecture backwards to the data center by starting with a connected Wii that allows you to play Mario Kart against players from around the world.
I did the same thing for 4th grade, 2nd grade and kindergarten. I did the usual explanation of how servers run all the web sites includgin cartoon network, nick.com, pbskids.com, etc... What I also did was bring in an old 4U HP DL380 server that we had decommissioned, a newer HP BL25p blade that we had decommissioned, and an old dell c400 laptop. I explained to the kids what each component of the 4U server did in kid language, and passed them around. Example, the CPU was the brains of the operation and did the homework, the hard drive was how it could remember all the stuff it had learned in school(yes I took the HD case off so they could see the platters), and the memory helped it find the right information quickly so that it could finish it's work on time. Then, we took apart the blade and explained that 6 of those giant servers could now fit inside this little blade, and we analyzed how much different it was than the big server. It's not important how new the servers are - the kids will have no clue. You could be in there with a 12 year old Compaq white box and it wouldn't matter.
The best part, as far as the kids were concerned, was when I took the laptop out of the bag. It looked normal to them at first, but I had already taken all the screws and fasteners out of it. I passed around the laptop and the kids were able to lift up the keyboard, pull out the hard drive, see behind the screen bezel, etc... We discussed how the components were no different in the laptop than they were in the server. All the kids were proud to have seen the inside of laptop, especially since most of them are constantly told to be so careful around the ones they have at home. Once again, a 7 year old broken laptop is fine - the kids won't know the difference.
Finally, I gave the teacher some candy to hand out (always give it to the teacher). Every time I did this, even in classes without my kids, my demo was voted best. I think it succeeds simply because the kids got to touch things, and interact with them. Approach it from this angle and you'll hold their attention - guaranteed.
It's nothing, just you're carbodyluminocap acting up... just a couple of hours to fix.
It will be fun for the kids and it will be dumbed down enough for them if they can relate to it. As an example of a web server. Have about 10 copies of some childish website printed out and hand them to a volunteer (this kid is the server) then have 10 other kids requesting a copy of the website (the clients). That explains in general the concept of server vs client. Then you can say when the said kid (server) gets sick or breaks a leg or whatever, he can't hand out the website anymore and you have to go make him/her better. I don't think I'd give any tedious details of windows vs unix unless you want to 'enlighten' them but I doubt they'd care.
Sign of the times. Truly funny and therefore also truly sad....
As a couple of people have mentioned, there is a lot of coolness in the aerospace industry. Flight is awesome, aircraft are beautiful and spacecraft are exotic. There could be aliens out there. Kids are fully plugged into this perspective already, so it makes an excellent hook for engaging almost everyone in the classroom.
Flash some cool pictures, no problem finding those. Talk through them with a few relaxed words about how cool it is that humans made this stuff. Show that there's even more technology inside the aircraft, and on the ground. Talk a bit about how many computers are inside these craft and on the ground. All these complex displays and controls and whatnot, they don't talk to the aircraft, they talk to computers. Computers talk to the aircraft. More pictures, of what things look like with the covers off.
Then you can tell them, this is where I work. Some poetic license is allowed here, I think, for educational purposes. Show pictures of mission control rooms, rows of servers, whatever looks coolest, whatever also conveys the sense that here we have come to the middle of the fortress. Eventually show a picture of yourself in front of a server rack, or working on the servers or something that establishes that this is really where you work.
To my mind, the point is not as some have suggested, to explain how their household computer has some relationship with what you do. Nothing drains coolness away faster than making something appear ordinary. No, you want to let the class know that they're getting a privileged look behind the scenes. It doesn't hurt to talk about security, how hard it is to get into the server room, what responsibility is implied by having root on systems that are used for operations support.
I think these things are totally cool, yet until they're shown, most people wouldn't know to make the connection. Give these kids a chance.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Teachers. Blowing. Kids.
Somehow this sounds all wrong.
We're going to need another Timmy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwVA698Hx2g
"Ok! Who wants to learn how to download free music and movies?!"
of course, they may already know how...
Bring a shaker of salt and pepper, state that the salt represents 0's and the pepper represents 1's. Spill them out on a table, and with a razor blade start chopping and filing them into thin lines. And say, "This is what I do for the scientest so they can work." I'm sure the teacher will be appreciative and ask you to come back next year.
an instance of Unix - perhaps PC-BSD, or possibly that Finnish fake called Linux. Yes, it's quite possible. I know a 9 year old who installed Kubuntu successfully. He needed to be told the 'phone and IP numbers of the ISP, but that's all. Then connect a green text terminal to it and get them to understand that typing commands does not result in a fate worse than death, you know, something like creating serious laundry problems. Once they get the idea that it's ok to touch a keyboard, they might like to risk having their little minds corrupted by being entertained by one of the GUI oriented packages such as: Alice; Scratch; or perhaps the Squeak Smalltalk E-Toys?
4th grade? You can't go wrong with fart jokes.
Use the tried and true metaphors of BEES and FLOWERS. Demonstrate safe practices with a BANANA. But for god's sake, don't try and visualize AIDS.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Then they'll UNDERSTAND what "changed configuration" means, and how huge a diff it makes.
Get that 1 win into 'em, and you've changed, just a bit, the direction of their lives, to understand LEVERAGE.
Don't take apart a computer, you'll cost 50 families THEIR computers AND data.
Possible roleplays: make them act out the "internet" ( message packetization, with numbered sticky notes, 1 word / each, of a neat sentence of their choosing, single-file relocation, reassembly ).
Show 'em how cut'n'paste works between programs, through a buffer ( group of 'em being Display, group of 'em being Storage... ).
Show 'em how 2 kinds of sort work ( bubble & binary division, e.g. ).
If the 2% of 'em who are born geeks "get" it, right now, and understand that algorithms are the Heart of Gold, then how much better will our world be, when they're in IS and the non-geeks went elsewhere?
don't beevil?
and how does one "beevil"?
on second thought, don't answer that.
Start with a digital picture, then ask them how to send it to a friend, protect it in case your house burns down, etc.
I remember when a business associate of my sister brought her two kids, age 6 and 7 I think, and their basic vocabulary consisted almost exclusively of "Why?"
They loved me because I was the only person of all the adults who was willing to answer all their questions. (Adults I know would sometimes complain that I talk too much; kids love to be told things, they're basically knowledge sponges.) And they wore me out because every time they asked a question, I'd have to think about it, and then they'd have another question. And I'd have to think about the answer.
At one point I apologized to my sister for all the times I had been asking her questions or talking too much, now having discovered what it means when someone just wants more and more attention.
Well I beat them once, although I wasn't trying to. I was driving somewhere and we were approaching a large baseball field which was lit by huge lights. So they asked me why they lit the field. Well, I got an idea; as it turned out, there was a church parking lot near there that wasn't in use, so it was fairly dark. So I pulled into the parking lot, stopped, killed the headlights, and asked them if they could see out of the car. They agreed that they couldn't. I said "This is why they have all those lights." Then I turned the headlights back on, put it back in gear and drove home. They remained basically quiet for the rest of the trip. I wasn't trying to scare them or anything, but it was at that point that I came to the realization is that telling kids answers is not necessarily the best way to answer their questions, but a real demonstration as to why something is done is probably far better.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I am a systems administrator, primarily Unix/Linux and enterprise NAS/SAN storage, working for an aerospace company.
Penguins.
example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxmpihCjqw
There is a application developed by Cornell called ALICE - 4th graders should find this 3D graphics application found at alice.org entertaining, and educational.
4th Graders love Webkinz. Talk about servers behind the game a bit, but mostly talk about how many Webkinz you have at the office and what kind of unique objects you've acquired.
Make the kids act out what it's like being network packages, and let one kid be the switch.
Also, an ear can represent a port. The kids can whisper to each other and ports can be closed by holding a hand over an ear.
Telephone enhances our talking and listening capacity.
TV enhances our seeing capacity.
Computer enhances our THINKING capacity.
1. Tell them you are a robot doctor! Printers have moving parts, they're robots.
2. Say you're a computer cowboy. Show them your lasso you made out of Cat5e cable.
3. Just whip out your McLovin' ID. You know you printed one off last week. DON'T PRETEND YOU DIDN'T!
4. Tell your son you fear face to face human contact and call in sick.
5. Build a body suit out of old network cards, make a helmet by gluing keyboard keys to your hair and talk like Yoda the whole time. 2pts for using a rack mount slide rail as a staff.
6. Just show up in a exact replica of the new KIT from the new knightrider (attack mode). Noone will remember you for your crappy talk then.
7. Explain to the kids that stealing mice is the most evil thing possible in the universe and if they carry on doing it they will be eaten by zombies. (that last one is to help me out really).
Keep your focus on the ones that have a chance to succeed in IT. Your speech should start like this:
"Hey kids, you see Tommy and Butch over there? Yes, I agree, they are mean doo-doo heads. Does it make you mad because they keep kicking your butts out there on the playground? Yeah, I bet it does. I used to have the same thing happen to me too, when I was your age. But I got 'em back GOOD. Wanna know how I did it?"
At this point, they should be putty in your hands.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
And now kids, let me tell you about this little file called "sendmail.cf". Pay attention, there will be a quiz later.
My dad came into our 4th grade career day thing and he worked at a heating and air conditioning company. Everyone looked in pain the entire session.
criminal records check performed. Just to prove that you're not a kiddie-molesting prevert.
You can't take a short cut across the school's playing fields (assuming they've not been sold yet, for a sports shop) these days without a criminal records check. That's for the UK ; what it's like in strict police states like America, I dread to think. Probably a 20 year investigation (with you detained "for safety's sake, will no-one think of the children?" as a suspected prevert) would be good enough, to put any of the children you were planning to molest out of the age group that preverts like you are interested in.
(Your irony meter should be flashing "overload" by now ; if not, please take it for recalibration.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
This presentation is your son's idea. Ask *him* why he thinks you should give a presentation, and what ought to be in the presntation. Let him help you put the presentation together. It will be a wonderful father-son opportunity, your son will learn a lot, and you'll be more likely to hit the sweet spot in his classmates' interest.
I was recently at a physics conference and one of the people doing research on physics education dropped this little tidbit. Their surveys of elementary school children found that significant numbers of students said they didn't want to become scientists because "scientists dress poorly" - even grade three boys notice people's fashion sense.
Don't forget to talk about the vi vs emacs wars and expound at length about how your favorite editor is clearly superior.