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Ask Slashdot: Hands-On Activity For IT Career Fair
First time accepted submitter MConnolly writes "I participate in an annual career fair for High School Sophomores. I have groups of 10 — 20 students for 40 minutes a piece. In previous years, we've brought a bunch of retired PCs and challenged the groups to disassemble (down to the motherboard) and reassemble them in working order. Many processors and motherboards died, but everyone had fun. Most students today only have laptops and tablets. As a result, this knowledge doesn't translate into the real world anymore (perhaps you disagree). I'm looking for suggestions for an activity that will give the students some hands-on, real world experience that will benefit them immediately."
Come up with a few simple programming projects that students can run through. There's something magical about writing code and seeing the computer execute exactly what you told it to do. Write a Ruby Sinatra or Python Flask app and show how to access it from the command line. This will teach them what a web server is and how to write simple code at the same time.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Get an old wireless router, reset to factory defaults, have them connect to it via laptop and configure it for secure wireless, which they can then connect to with their laptop/tablet.
What in the lord's blazing hell does this have to do with careers?
Set up a dummy WEP-secured AP and teach them how to get on. Check out http://www.securitytube.net/groups?operation=view&groupId=9 for a good instructional video. You'll have to provide a few Alfa cards though. Have them work in teams of three or four and you won't need many.
Seriously. They will learn not to run WEP on their own APs nor to trust WEP APs in the wild. And since most people don't run WEP anymore, you aren't really setting them up for a life of criminal hacking. But it is just devious enough to entertain kids (and some adults).
You've got teams, right? Make it a pictionary type of game with each team broken into halves. One half of the team is given a task to complete (build a tower out of wooden blocks, move a pile of color balls into color-coded piles, sort numbered cards, etc) and must write simple code (perhaps limit their operations to a fixed list) that the other half of the team must execute in programming order to complete. Take turns writing and executing, with points for success.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Walk an offshore admin who speaks maybe 500 words of english and has had only hours of training, through creating a Windows Server 2008 VM and configuring an ASP application under IIS. For extra credit, repeat using SUSE and JSP/Tomcat. Simulate an accurate communications channel by having the person playing the offshore admin stand outside by the freeway using an analog cell phone, doing the work on a 1990's era laptop balanced on an ironing board connected to the net by an old Telebit modem that drops often.
Arrange so the student can see the actions being taken, but has no control over the process. The student fails the test if he touches the keyboard.
If the student decides to forego a career in IT and takes up bartending instead, he's passed the test.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is this IT as in "desktop support", or "IT" as in managing PB-scale Oracle RAC data warehouses?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Teach them how to say "Would you like fries with that, Sir/Madam?" in your choice of any language other than English. They'll learn more...
... but here's an exercise that will translate into the real world... Separate them into two groups, the "M" group, and the "E" group.
The Ms ties the Es group's hands up behind their backs. Then the Ms set themselves on fire, and have to coerce the Es to put the fire out with their hands tied up. If the Ms survive, they get more Es and go again. If the don't, they're replaced with a new M, preferably one from outside who has no idea what just happened.
If you can get your employer to help pay for it, you could have the students work with Raspberry Pis or Arduino boards, and then they can take it home afterwards. Students love free stuff and being able to continue to tinker around with it after the workshop would enable this to be an invaluable learning experience.
Have them a few 60 hour weeks; tell them they're the company's most valuable asset; reduce their raises/benefits, because the company is being "competitive" (while the company is posting good/record profits and paying shareholder dividends); lay them off because the company is "right-sizing" and/or "moving in a new direction" (while the company is hiring junior people); hand them some unemployment forms; escort them from the building.
Did I miss anything?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... as you said students today have laptops and tablets which are completely self enclosed and not-user-serviceable at all, fostering the idea that a computer is kind of a 'magic box'.
Having a complete teardown/reassembly with some explanation will show the kids that computers are not these black boxes, you can point out what/where the RAM is, the CPU, storage, NICs, port controllers, network cards (if the PCs are older especially) etc. etc. etc.
Everybody can do virtualization stuff at home already, try to let them do something that they would not be able to do on their own. Configuring an AP sounds 'cool' but really it's just a matter of again staring at a screen and changing some checkboxes, doing something hands on with hardware is a lot more fun IMHO.
-- the cake is a lie
Morlocks would never trust Eloi to save them from immolation.
I'd also consider adding a disassembled laptop, phone and tablet. You can then relate the components of the disassembled desktops to the components of the disassembled devices.
Have them open a browser and navigate to Slashdot with just a keyboard. That will vex the average user but is simple enough in reality and they'll leave having learned something useful.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Ctrl+Shift+T. It's kind of like the Ctrl+Z of the Internet. This will increase their knowledge base, and then train them in its use. After that, maybe have them lookup new keyboard shortcuts or even *gasp* create new ones!
The G
You could set up hands on troubleshooting exercises that focus on issues that the students are likely to encounter in real life. This could include troubleshooting a network connection when "the internet is broken." This could also include troubleshooting a printer that won't print. You could start with the basic questions such as: "Is the cable plugged in at both ends." You could form teams where the problem is the same but the root cause of the problem is different. This type of troubleshooting will teach the students how to fix the problems that they might encounter while using computers.
Maybe. But installing Debian on a VirtualBox machine and then setting up a quick-n-basic LAMP server can be done, especially if you give them really good documentation.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
... but here's an exercise that will translate into the real world... Separate them into two groups, the "M" group, and the "E" group.
The Ms ties the Es group's hands up behind their backs. Then the Ms set themselves on fire, and have to coerce the Es to put the fire out with their hands tied up. If the Ms survive, they get more Es and go again. If the don't, they're replaced with a new M, preferably one from outside who has no idea what just happened.
If I had mod points today, I'd change this from "funny" to "insightful".
It pretty much describes the miserable conditions of the company I just quit.
I won't give any names, but the filthy rich CEO has a thing for sailboats.
That experience left such a bad taste in my mouth wrt IT, that I am looking into going back to college for an entirely different career.
I just recently was responsible for a piece of a math and science night at my son's school and by far the biggest hit was the model of Hawai`i Island in Minecraft that I built from a digital elevation model from ISS data. The kids loved it, the parents didn't hate it, and I had a helluva good time with my son building it. With the age group you're working with, you can walk them through identifying data needs and data sources, moving data amongst different tools and formats, and then doing something fun and visual with it at the end of the day. Your hometown might not have active volcanoes in the backyard like mine, but you get the point.
Chance 'em.
Control-Z as in "suspend job" (UNIX) or as in "end-of-file" (CP/M)? You want to suspend the internet or end it? [[ confused ]]
Very very short cheat sheet:
There is merit in learning more, but that gets you 96% of the core stuff you need to do.