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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
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.
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!!!!
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
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
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)
Not far off. Here is a script you can use:
You: Do you kids know how Mommy and Daddy put Elmo on YouTube when it's time to "clean the master bedroom?"
Them: Yes.
You: I make sure Elmo keeps playing until the room is clean.
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
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
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!"
It was many moons ago, 1st grade, the teacher's boyfriend was a telecom tech. He brought about 6ft of 100 pair cable, chopped up to the right size for all the kids in class to make bendy wire things out of (rings, soldiers etc.) Not long after that I was introduced to a volt meter. By 9 I was 'fixing' (destroying) televisions. Visual aid material is important.
SysAdmins make it possible for people to share ideas and information as well as use computer based tools. When you think of it like that, you should be able to find a way to get the kids to share etc. and compare this to what you do. Two kids drawing rocket parts, putting drawing in an envelope (packetize it) and pass it along the 8 kids acting like a network to another 'engineer' who is designing a different part of the rocket. An estes model rocket (in pieces) for them to use as a guide to draw from would be good. Make the network kids on the ends hold a nic card in their hand. cat 5 cables between the other network kids etc. Make the kids 'part' of the networked system. Just a few thoughts.
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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
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
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.
Yep, I have the same problem. Just since yesterday. Somebody fucked with the CSS, it appears.
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.
If you want to keep it exciting and still realistic, just present a slide show of dilbert comics.
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.
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.
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.
Relate IT to something 4th graders are interested in. Perhaps talk about the IT behind movies like Spiderman or IT behind Webkinz.
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
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.
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!
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
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 :-)
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
Yes, the tagging looks like crap to me too.
More on-topic, it would be great if you explained a little bit about the difference between a system administrator and a software developer, let the kids know there are many different sorts of jobs in the computer field .
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
just imagine you're explaining what you do to your boss.
Nullius in verba
(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."
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
The Internet is a series of Tubes, you see...
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
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.)
Explaining it to 4th graders? Don't you already use the same approach when talking to senior management?
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. ;)
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.
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.
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