Hello: I'm an educator in an IT school in Indiana and am looking to connect and learn from in-the-field professionals so that I'm staying current and engaged in my field outside of the "Ivory Tower". I've watched Scott Alan Miller's presentations on our LANless future and the definition of IT and based on those two videos feel this is a community I'd like to be part of.

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Does college have value? yes and know.

There's the T-shirt people! Not what SAM intended I'm sure, but...

@quixoticjeremy said in If you are new drop in say hello and introduce yourself please!:

@worden2 said in If you are new drop in say hello and introduce yourself please!:

Hello: I'm an educator in an IT school in Indiana and am looking to connect and learn from in-the-field professionals so that I'm staying current and engaged in my field outside of the "Ivory Tower". I've watched Scott Alan Miller's presentations on our LANless future and the definition of IT and based on those two videos feel this is a community I'd like to be part of.

Kudos to you for doing this! The amount of teachers that I ran into when I went through college that were great teachers and people but were far behind in terms of what they were teaching was almost every teacher I had. It is difficult to stay current when you aren't working in the field regularly. Welcome to the community @worden2 I hope you enjoy it here!

I'll be the first to admit that academic institutions turn like oil tankers in a sea of icebergs, but given that we're in IT as it is our School is definitely aware of the need to stay current (no pun intended with the tanker comment btw). It's a catch-22 though since it is really hard to find "time away" from my job. Teaching is a full time job, without question, so with the IT component adding that much more it can be tough. Just trying to keep up with industry certs for instance... whew.

@thanksajdotcom - So, shouldn't it be "thanksadotjdotcom"? Perhaps "thanksadotjdotdotcom"?

As an IT educator, I'm constantly aware of how I have to be "up" on/in my field while giving my profession the respect it is due. This means not simply taking the latest trend as a need to disrupt the consistency of the academic process, while making certain we are not becoming outdated by the overall progress in the field.
Some examples:
I chair a program known as Server Administration (SVAD) that primarily teaches Microsoft to the MCSA level and Linux to the LPIC2 level. Some issues I've had to work with my curriculum committee on are; whether or not to allow synchronous online classes (face-to-face only right now), whether or not to change the name of the program to Systems Administration (not too many "Server Admin" positions listed), how to incorporate Azure, AWS, or even Docker into the program.
At some point I'm being disruptive to the status quo, which adds to my peers' workload and diminishes the necessary academic consistency. On the other hand there are technologies like Lambda and Docker that will significantly change my program, I think. We have to stay relevant.
So, with that background, how do all of you feel about the "state of IT education" and what can be done, if anything, to make it better?

I think Python is showing a lot of strength as a intro language as well, and it may come from a scripting background so to speak, but seems full featured enough to be easy to introduce (Scratch is based on it) and used in more sophisticated settings.

@dashrender :
We're a 2 year school, with an emphasis on getting students done in 4 semesters. Having said that we're working on getting things to be more flexible. We have an "ASAP" program that takes students from high school to a 2 year degree in 11 months, but right now that only has an informatics component from our School involved.
I like your point on taking the class from a subject matter expert and not a subject leader, but I would hope that if someone has been teaching a while that you can have some continuity. For instance, in one area I went from teaching "Data Communication" to "Intro. to Networking (Network+)" to "Cisco I (CCENT part 1)". Those classes are not the same, but they're not dissimilar either! You can see from that how "the meat of the class" is there.
I also like to use the talking point with software development that if you're a programmer a new language can be easier to learn than for someone just starting out that needs to understand the logical underpinnings of coding in general.

@kooler said in Stanford Removes Java in Favor of JavaScript in Intro to Computer Science Course:

@mlnews said in Stanford Removes Java in Favor of JavaScript in Intro to Computer Science Course:

In a bit of a surprise move in the educational space, computer science bulwark Stanford University has chosen to remove Java and replace it with JavaScript in their Intro to Computer Science class. Java has been the language of this somewhat famous class since 2002, a run of fifteen years. They say that Java is showing its age, although to be fair JavaScript is nearly as old. Java itself is 22 years old this year. Since being purchased by Oracle, interest in Java has slowly fallen from its lofty peak during stewardship under Sun.

Anybody who's starting with anything except assembly language is WRONG!!! If somebody doesn't know how CPU works he can't make a decent software engineer: he'll use bloatware, write things in interpreted languages and bring file systems to kernel from user-land.

As a matter of purity or getting down to basics when introducing concepts, I agree. But, when you're talking about trying to introduce CS concepts to people new to the field assembly is a nightmare. I had some simple assembly as part of intro CS when in college, but it almost soured me completely on programming. Of course, what really killed my nascent interest in programming (in college) was having to learn Cobol... Perhaps it's safe to say that the closer you get to the kernel the more you need assembly?

@dashrender said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

Teaching research is probably one of the most important skills for IT. Learning how to dig through logs, how to find solutions to your problems, not just ask sales people what to buy.

This is the biggest thing I've learned from being part of SW and ML.

This is a HUGE issue, and you've hit on something one of my students said to me, almost verbatim. I also try to let my students know, "at some point I'm just trying to make sure you're an educated consumer"
Forgive my ignorance on SW and ML, and you elaborate?

@dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

IT education has to be dated, by some amount. If education was bleeding edge, the person teaching the course would be learning the material with the class.

You have to do that to be an IT pro. If the professor isn't learning with the class, you've got a big problem.

Um.. . . read that again. The profession at least needs to know what is going on. Learning is good, but they should be learning the material before the rest of the class.

It's why they are the professor.

Not really, if you need the class to hold back for you to catch up, you are the opposite of a professor.

This is a scott-ism. The point of being in the class is because you want to learn from an expert on the course material. Not because you want to learn with the professor.

It's weird. I agree with you both! For instance, we require our faculty to be certified in classes that lead to a cert, so if you teach the class that corresponds to the first MCSA cert (70-410 right now) you have to have that, but you don't have to have had the 411 and 412 passed to teach it. Should that change? I'm not sure. Also, we used to build the cert into the course, but we now have the "didactic" 3 credit hour classes that lead to a 1 credit hour "workforce preparation" class, so should we only have the cert requirement on the 1 credit hour classes so we're not short of qualified faculty to teach it? This is one of the reasons I'm on these boards now. I see SAM talk about LANless futures and what the "true" definition of IT is and I realize that at the very least I'll see a side I might be insulated from with your perspectives. Thank you for that!

@jmoore I'll give you an example from current events at my College. We just started an optometric technology degree. We "inherited" it from the University down the road. They had and still have an optometry/ophthalmology degree, but saw no need to maintain the tech side of things. We do AASs anyway so we took it over. An ophthalmologist or optometrist does not grind or shape lenses or do fittings, etc. A technologist does not have the ability or authority to do prescriptions. Each depends on the other, and you might want to say the person with the medical degree might be "above" the person with the technology side, but in fact when you balance the time and money they put into their respective careers, the trade-off is negligible. The Doctor cannot make money with out the technologist, and the technologist has no job without the Doctor. It's a symbiotic relationship even if there is an element of hierarchy involved.

@scottalanmiller I know for my first MS degree what interested me was the program was the best combo of IT and business I'd ever seen. Since then I've gotten into education as my "business", but I'll never lose sight of the purpose in it all.

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

Ok yeah that was weird. If it works for them then fine. So tech without any business purpose I suppose is what you mean.

Exactly. Tech for the purpose of tech, stuff that isn't legal or viable or reasonable in a business. In this case, weird VDI problems that are never mentioned, no talk of cost or applicability (even at the home gaming level), use of totally ridiculous amateur tools when enterprise tools would do a better job for free, etc. That show is a bench show, for good reason as bench is a far bigger market than IT. Every home user likes cool bench stuff, only good businesses enjoy IT stuff.

In their defense the tagline for the guys doing the video is "because we can". They're certainly living up to that...

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Does college have value? yes and know.

There's the T-shirt people! Not what SAM intended I'm sure, but...

@quixoticjeremy Saw that... beautiful!

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

@scottalanmiller I have no real experience in R but python works and is popular these days.

It's a lot like how people recommend using a Raspberry Pi to learn Linux. All it really does is make them spend their time learning the Raspberry Pi and they forget what they were actually there to learn in the first place.

I would say it makes more sense to use the RPi to learn what nooks and crannies we can stick computers into. Not simply embedded systems, but one that dynamically responds to I/O variances, etc. It's also a pretty good intro Python platform.

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

The biggest focus should be business and liberal arts. I want to see students with accounting, psychology, economics, general business, writing, public speaking and similar training. I can teach the tech that I need, I have to no matter what.

This is why I won't teach at a training "school", and it is not simply a technical or vocational school.

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

I'm going to post another thread for you @worden2 that I think will be helpful in your endeavor to find ways to improve university quality.

I look forward to reading it

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@worden2 said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

So for reference, student loans, for those able to get them (many of us cannot so these are not realistic numbers, many students must use credit cards for this) run from 4.3% to 6.8%. That's the first step.

Actually, 8% is far more common on US Gov't loans, even when the mortgage and other markets were FAR below that. The mandated cap is 8%, and on repayment it stayed at the cap even when it didn't have to.

I was trying to be insanely conservative with the numbers to make sure that there was absolutely no way anyone could say that I was skewing it towards not going to university having an advantage. In the real world, I know it makes my case far more.

Eight percent though, wow.

It was really fun in the last 8 years watching interest rates near zero and yet NOTHING happened to the student loan rate. It was pegged at its maximum the entire time.

@dashrender For me personally, it's almost stressful, because as an IT educator I straddle both realities. As for your last point, my wife and I just had our 20th anniversary, btw. I know of what you speak, but do not speak of it!