How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education
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I don't personally believe that traditional schools can really do much to help the education gap.
A+, Network+ are some OK basics.. though A+ is probably mostly outdated today, but foundation information that can have value.
@fuznutz04 said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
I'd argue that depending on the school. I went to a 2 year tech school in a program called "computer and network system administration." It was very hands on, where we had about 70% lab work and 30% classroom. Our schedule was from 730 am until about 1 pm if I remember correctly. It taught the basics of how hard drives work, how to format etc, to windows and Linux administration ( Redhat focused) to network basics and the tcp/ip stack. Then on to more advanced networking concepts. That was year 1. Then more of the same in year 2 but with added topics. In my opinion, it was money well spent.
Nothing against you, I know that some people can't learn from a book, but I learned most of these things from the MSCE course books in the mid 90's. All in about 6 months.
Do you think the time frame of your course could have been squeezed into 6 months without putting more hours in the classroom?I didn't spend 8 hours a day reading the books or doing lab work. Frankly, I didn't have access to many machines to setup full labs to practice the skills taught. I can't recall if VM workstation was out in 1995 or not. But I did have two PCs to install NT 4.0 on for learning.
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@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
Nothing against you, I know that some people can't learn from a book, but I learned most of these things from the MSCE course books in the mid 90's. All in about 6 months.
Same here. I did the MCSE (not Net+ back then) and a few BrainBench certs and nearly all of m foundations of IT were from that period. The MCSE was certainly not the only thing I used or did, and I had some UNIX systems back then. But a small window of self study in the 90s and it was all there in a handful of books.
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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:
Nothing against you, I know that some people can't learn from a book, but I learned most of these things from the MSCE course books in the mid 90's. All in about 6 months.
Same here. I did the MCSE (not Net+ back then) and a few BrainBench certs and nearly all of m foundations of IT were from that period. The MCSE was certainly not the only thing I used or did, and I had some UNIX systems back then. But a small window of self study in the 90s and it was all there in a handful of books.
There seems to be a lack of new blood coming to the field from those digging into books.
I wonder if it's a social move away from books - the digitization of books might be hurting their use.. I'm only grasping at a straw for a possible explanation. -
I agree - I'm not sure how someone could be and expert in IT and not know what formatting is? or how they couldn't know what virtualization is. Did they honestly never replace an OS on a system before and experience what formatting is?
If you're new to IT, then you're definitely not an expert. so perhaps the person in question is just that new - yesterday they were a receptionist and the most they ever did was run Word on top of Windows. In that case I can definitely understand them not knowing what formatting or virtualization is. Seems odd that that would be allowed to be that new and have no guidance at their company on these things. -
@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:
Nothing against you, I know that some people can't learn from a book, but I learned most of these things from the MSCE course books in the mid 90's. All in about 6 months.
Same here. I did the MCSE (not Net+ back then) and a few BrainBench certs and nearly all of m foundations of IT were from that period. The MCSE was certainly not the only thing I used or did, and I had some UNIX systems back then. But a small window of self study in the 90s and it was all there in a handful of books.
There seems to be a lack of new blood coming to the field from those digging into books.
I wonder if it's a social move away from books - the digitization of books might be hurting their use.. I'm only grasping at a straw for a possible explanation.Well, for me there were NO mentors available. Books were the only option. Most people I knew, it was the same.
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@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
I agree - I'm not sure how someone could be and expert in IT and not know what formatting is? or how they couldn't know what virtualization is. Did they honestly never replace an OS on a system before and experience what formatting is?
Oh no, in the example, he calls himself a noob. THis is likely his first job. But how do you get into your first job running IT for a company without this exposure? I knew what formatting a disk did in like 1983. Before even having a computer.
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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:
@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:
Nothing against you, I know that some people can't learn from a book, but I learned most of these things from the MSCE course books in the mid 90's. All in about 6 months.
Same here. I did the MCSE (not Net+ back then) and a few BrainBench certs and nearly all of m foundations of IT were from that period. The MCSE was certainly not the only thing I used or did, and I had some UNIX systems back then. But a small window of self study in the 90s and it was all there in a handful of books.
There seems to be a lack of new blood coming to the field from those digging into books.
I wonder if it's a social move away from books - the digitization of books might be hurting their use.. I'm only grasping at a straw for a possible explanation.Well, for me there were NO mentors available. Books were the only option. Most people I knew, it was the same.
So you were hired by a company to do IT work and they knew you had no practical experience? and no mentor for you? Seems like that company was wanting to fail.
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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:
I agree - I'm not sure how someone could be and expert in IT and not know what formatting is? or how they couldn't know what virtualization is. Did they honestly never replace an OS on a system before and experience what formatting is?
Oh no, in the example, he calls himself a noob. THis is likely his first job. But how do you get into your first job running IT for a company without this exposure? I knew what formatting a disk did in like 1983. Before even having a computer.
I suppose I could understand if you had no personal interest in computers before jumping into IT, that you wouldn't know these concepts, but it just seems weird that one would make this jump, but I do know of at least one who did it only because he saw it as a way to make a decent wage. He supports AIX systems, but doesn't understand IP routing/networking hardly at all. He admins his systems, but he's limited only to that. He doesn't care about learning any more than that. IT to him is a paycheck. In fact, he was a job for 10+ years that he ultimately ended up hating (mostly due to management) that he quit with only the barest of notice and even gave up vacation that was 6 weeks of pay if he had just waited about another month. He just had to get away - he didn't have another place to go.. wound up as a meter reader for the local utilities district for a year. But the pay was so low compared to his previous career that he returned to IT after leaving it for a year.
I don't think situations like this happen frequently, but I do know they do happen.
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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:
@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:
Nothing against you, I know that some people can't learn from a book, but I learned most of these things from the MSCE course books in the mid 90's. All in about 6 months.
Same here. I did the MCSE (not Net+ back then) and a few BrainBench certs and nearly all of m foundations of IT were from that period. The MCSE was certainly not the only thing I used or did, and I had some UNIX systems back then. But a small window of self study in the 90s and it was all there in a handful of books.
There seems to be a lack of new blood coming to the field from those digging into books.
I wonder if it's a social move away from books - the digitization of books might be hurting their use.. I'm only grasping at a straw for a possible explanation.Well, for me there were NO mentors available. Books were the only option. Most people I knew, it was the same.
So you were hired by a company to do IT work and they knew you had no practical experience? and no mentor for you? Seems like that company was wanting to fail.
Of course, why would I fail? I was the best educated guy around, apparently. We are finding more and more that mentors in IT are often negatives.
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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:
I agree - I'm not sure how someone could be and expert in IT and not know what formatting is? or how they couldn't know what virtualization is. Did they honestly never replace an OS on a system before and experience what formatting is?
Oh no, in the example, he calls himself a noob. THis is likely his first job. But how do you get into your first job running IT for a company without this exposure? I knew what formatting a disk did in like 1983. Before even having a computer.
I suppose I could understand if you had no personal interest in computers before jumping into IT, that you wouldn't know these concepts, but it just seems weird that one would make this jump, but I do know of at least one who did it only because he saw it as a way to make a decent wage. He supports AIX systems, but doesn't understand IP routing/networking hardly at all. He admins his systems, but he's limited only to that. He doesn't care about learning any more than that. IT to him is a paycheck. In fact, he was a job for 10+ years that he ultimately ended up hating (mostly due to management) that he quit with only the barest of notice and even gave up vacation that was 6 weeks of pay if he had just waited about another month. He just had to get away - he didn't have another place to go.. wound up as a meter reader for the local utilities district for a year. But the pay was so low compared to his previous career that he returned to IT after leaving it for a year.
I don't think situations like this happen frequently, but I do know they do happen.
I agree. Computers? Boring. Oh, IT,that's the field for me. lol
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@scottalanmiller said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
I agree. Computers? Boring. Oh, IT,that's the field for me. lol
I think he fell into it mostly by accident - If I recall correctly, he was working as a sales guy who learned how to do some commands, which turned into knowledge that was more valuable than than his sales job was.
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Example:
Every company I have ever worked for already had a functional (more or less) domain with multiple domain controllers. I have never needed to setup my own domain, forest, subdomains, etc. I just recently had to delve into it and learned a lot, but I by no means know everything. Frankly, until I experience something from a lot of different angles I don't think I really know it. Most of my personal knowledge is conceptual but there is so much misinformation out there that before I joined ML I didn't know if what I was reading was correct. It sounded right, but I had no way of really knowing. Misinformation is what makes learning hard IMO. It forces me to need to forget information as well as retain information instead of fully concentrating on retaining it.
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@wirestyle22 said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
Example:
Every company I have ever worked for already had a functional (more or less) domain with multiple domain controllers. I have never needed to setup my own domain, forest, subdomains, etc. I just recently had to delve into it and learned a lot, but I by no means know everything. Frankly, until I experience something from a lot of different angles I don't think I really know it. Most of my personal knowledge is conceptual but there is so much misinformation out there that before I joined ML I didn't know if what I was reading was correct. It sounded right, but I had no way of really knowing. Misinformation is what makes learning hard IMO. It forces me to need to forget information as well as retain information instead of fully concentrating on retaining it.
how does hearing it on ML help you know it's right?
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@wirestyle22 said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
Example:
Every company I have ever worked for already had a functional (more or less) domain with multiple domain controllers. I have never needed to setup my own domain, forest, subdomains, etc. I just recently had to delve into it and learned a lot, but I by no means know everything. Frankly, until I experience something from a lot of different angles I don't think I really know it. Most of my personal knowledge is conceptual but there is so much misinformation out there that before I joined ML I didn't know if what I was reading was correct. It sounded right, but I had no way of really knowing. Misinformation is what makes learning hard IMO. It forces me to need to forget information as well as retain information instead of fully concentrating on retaining it.
What path got you to where you were, though? For Dash and I we went through some "formal" basic training on our own and that stuff was covered (well not AD, that didn't exist yet). What took you from "computers sound like a good career" to "running IT in a shop" is where the gap must be. In our experience there, the basics were covered.
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@Dashrender said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@wirestyle22 said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
Example:
Every company I have ever worked for already had a functional (more or less) domain with multiple domain controllers. I have never needed to setup my own domain, forest, subdomains, etc. I just recently had to delve into it and learned a lot, but I by no means know everything. Frankly, until I experience something from a lot of different angles I don't think I really know it. Most of my personal knowledge is conceptual but there is so much misinformation out there that before I joined ML I didn't know if what I was reading was correct. It sounded right, but I had no way of really knowing. Misinformation is what makes learning hard IMO. It forces me to need to forget information as well as retain information instead of fully concentrating on retaining it.
how does hearing it on ML help you know it's right?
because everyone corrects everyone here in an effort to make the information accurate. we heavily scrutinize each other in an effort to improve one another. Look at RAID on ML vs Spiceworks. That's a great example.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
@wirestyle22 said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
Example:
Every company I have ever worked for already had a functional (more or less) domain with multiple domain controllers. I have never needed to setup my own domain, forest, subdomains, etc. I just recently had to delve into it and learned a lot, but I by no means know everything. Frankly, until I experience something from a lot of different angles I don't think I really know it. Most of my personal knowledge is conceptual but there is so much misinformation out there that before I joined ML I didn't know if what I was reading was correct. It sounded right, but I had no way of really knowing. Misinformation is what makes learning hard IMO. It forces me to need to forget information as well as retain information instead of fully concentrating on retaining it.
What path got you to where you were, though? For Dash and I we went through some "formal" basic training on our own and that stuff was covered (well not AD, that didn't exist yet). What took you from "computers sound like a good career" to "running IT in a shop" is where the gap must be. In our experience there, the basics were covered.
Built my first PC at 12, always had an interest in it. At 18 I enrolled at BCSI and went through all of their courses but the owners of the school just stopped doing it one day and screwed a lot of people out of their education. Just took their money and ran essentially.
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@wirestyle22 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:
@wirestyle22 said in How Do Such Big Gaps Get Missed in IT Education:
Example:
Every company I have ever worked for already had a functional (more or less) domain with multiple domain controllers. I have never needed to setup my own domain, forest, subdomains, etc. I just recently had to delve into it and learned a lot, but I by no means know everything. Frankly, until I experience something from a lot of different angles I don't think I really know it. Most of my personal knowledge is conceptual but there is so much misinformation out there that before I joined ML I didn't know if what I was reading was correct. It sounded right, but I had no way of really knowing. Misinformation is what makes learning hard IMO. It forces me to need to forget information as well as retain information instead of fully concentrating on retaining it.
What path got you to where you were, though? For Dash and I we went through some "formal" basic training on our own and that stuff was covered (well not AD, that didn't exist yet). What took you from "computers sound like a good career" to "running IT in a shop" is where the gap must be. In our experience there, the basics were covered.
Built my first PC at 12, always had an interest in it. At 18 I enrolled at BCSI and went through all of their courses but the owners of the school just stopped doing it one day and screwed a lot of people out of their education. Just took their money and ran essentially.
That'll do it.
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That can't be the NORMAL case, though.
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@scottalanmiller It was in my area. This was the only school that taught this that was close enough for most people here. Luckily the local community college started hiring IT teachers and have courses now. For years they didn't though.
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I think a lot of it also has to do with how broad the subject of IT actually is. There are so many areas and a lot of times folks tend to focus on areas -- not even intentionally some times.
Take me, for instance, I'm a software guy. I can load systems and make them sing pretty much any part you want. I can assemble them as well, but that is not my strong point.
My old man, however, can put one together blind folded with one hand behind his back while singing 70's music backwards. He can install and use an OS as an end-user, but he's lost on the actual inner workings of software.
