How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education
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@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
I didn't read the white papers, if that's what you're talking about - I read the main books that were at Borders at the time.. though I don't recall the publisher.
And even if it did cover them, most of us don't recall every single detail ever discussed in any of these books.
I'm talking about MS' official exam study books. Literally from Borders.
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@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
And even if it did cover them, most of us don't recall every single detail ever discussed in any of these books.
Hardly "details", it was the fundamentals on which all other RAID info was based.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
And even if it did cover them, most of us don't recall every single detail ever discussed in any of these books.
Hardly "details", it was the fundamentals on which all other RAID info was based.
If I still had my NT 4.0 books I suppose I could look it - do you have them? I'd love to see a picture of the page.
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@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@scottalanmiller said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
And even if it did cover them, most of us don't recall every single detail ever discussed in any of these books.
Hardly "details", it was the fundamentals on which all other RAID info was based.
If I still had my NT 4.0 books I suppose I could look it - do you have them? I'd love to see a picture of the page.
No. I have away hundreds of books years ago. Basically nothing in print anymore.
We didn't have Google back then and those were the only books that I had.
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Another thing that I just thought of... Somebody gets fed to the wolves. For instance: At my last job, I was just kinda shown a diagram of the servers, network, and the associated IP ranges and my boss at the time said, "Go forth and conquer."
When things broke, I was told to fix it.
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I reckon this happens in College and Universites, they simply skip the basics and jumn straight to teaching RDBMS and how to develop web app with it via MySQL or Oracle or MsSQL and thats it, it skimps alot of detail on how they are supposed to stay up and operational, they simply wants you to teach you something that makes you get money fast, and the rest is somebody else problem.
Also in my Egyptian university, Oracle like pays them money or sponsor them, thus we get taught alot about Oracle 10g Database Express edition, however like I said no one sponsors the basics of how to setup everything properly cause perhaps its hard to make money from that as soon as you leave College, cause they assume everything will be ready for you. btw I majored in M.I.S but i rarely do any SQL work, currently More like an I.T Generalist.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@scotth said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
I, by no means am an expert in IT, but I've found that after many years and many issues, that I wonder if it's possible to develop a 'feeling' for systems rather than needing to constantly needing to Google log messages. I catch myself constantly deciding that something doesn't 'feel right' even though the issue isn't glaringly obvious.
I agree there. In software circles it's called "smell". After 28 years in IT, one of the reasons that people bring me in for troubleshooting is that I can often "feel" a system and sense what is wrong long before people can dig through logs or whatever and I know when to say "I know this sounds crazy, but this almost impossible thing... I'm sure that that is what happened."
But that doesn't help for someone who, for example, has never even heard of virtualization. That's a pure gap. He can't be faulted for not "sensing the lack of it" when he was unaware someone had made it. Now how he never heard of it, that's what worries me. What sources and articles and groups and people is he dealing with that never talk about or mention it?
That's not just software circles. It's a universal business term. Growing up, my father taught me about "the smell test" in business. It's basically that if something doesn't sound or feel right, it probably isn't. And the same principle applies in troubleshooting and life in general. I know what Scott is referring to, although I've never done it at the level he has. The big problem is that people in IT don't know where their gaps are, the field is large and so they miss fundamentals because other people deem them "unnecessary" but it creates these gaps. The other problem is that a lot of the people doing the teaching don't really know IT from a reality standpoint, and at best know it from an outdated academic perspective, like using a medical textbook that's a hundred years old.
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I had a large public school system client where the IT Director left a couple years into my relationship with them. It was a sudden move and the district quickly moved the tech-illiterate highschool librarian into her role...
It was a good and profitable account for the next 3 years until they finally replaced her.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@G-I-Jones said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
I feel that knowledge gaps like this aren't as relevant as having the resources to bridge those gaps. I mean, we're supposed to be the best at Googling right? It's in our nature to find solutions. That's the only relevant skill I'm seeing.
I think that that is specifically where those gaps might come from. IT can't be done by Googling. Sure, trivial things like "what is a domain controller" can be, but what triggers you to know that you need to Google that? IT requires, IMHO, a load of "baseline" knowledge, far more than most fields, so that things like Googling answers can be applied on top of that.
Like I Google the syntax for a command, but not the concept behind the command or which command to run. If I had to pick Google or "good books", good books I'd say are twice as important or more for IT. Google helps me know which button to push, but books and more traditional, structured learning, taught me what buttons to acquire.
Baseline understanding of directory services, security infrastructure, SPoF planning, load balancing, network topology design, lan/wan routing, rights management - things that would make the cloud-baby generation's head spin.
Just throw it in my G Suite right? Its all secure breh...
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Thanks for clearing that up guys. I'm with you now.
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Hm... Let's see how I learn format.
I broke the 512MB hardddrive by dropping it accidentally. I bought a replacement 1GB harddrive and plug it, expect it to work when I turned on the computer, except that it didn't. I had a MS DOS 6.2 3.5 inch floppy disk so I booted of that and start typing in HELP and read thru all the commands. Found FDISK and FORMAT. Ran both and then I can use the harddrive. I was 13 and this was the time without internet, smartphone, nor instruction from anything or anyone. I just figure Operation System must have the things I need to make the harddrive work.
First time I had virtualization experience was watching someone using Windows inside a Mac at school, I think I was 15.
