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SURFING THE DIGITAL WAVE: NEXT GEN APPROACH TO CUTTING-EDGE IT TRAINING

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Robert McMillen

  • A little about me-
  • Biggest passion?- Teaching. I teach Computer Information Systems at the collegiate level, and I love to create video courses and visit conferences such as this one.
  • Most interesting job?- Restoring email for the US Justice Dept. that brought down Enron.
  • How can we connect?
  • LinkedIN- https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertkmcmillen/
  • Email- rmcmillen@ascendeducation.com

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Traditional IT Training

  • You may be using one or more of these methods:
  • Physical book
  • Install Virtual Box or VMWare Workstation on student or lab PCs.
  • On-campus lectures

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Traditional IT Training

  • You may be using one or more of these methods:
  • Labs, quizzes, and other work presented on paper and manually graded
  • Underpaid professors/teachers designing courses
  • Outdated equipment in a local server room

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Modern IT Training Methods

  • eBook- integrated into your LMS- Moodle, Canvas, Bright Space etc.
  • Use labs available in the cloud both live and simulated
  • Online lectures for most classes (via Zoom etc.)
  • Quizzes, midterm, and finals graded automatically

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Modern IT Training Methods

  • Labs graded automatically
  • Courses designed for professors/teachers that cost about the same as an ebook and software licenses
  • Labs on AWS and Azure- no more expensive on-prem equipment needed (sorry NetLab)

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What About AI?

  • Nothing can replace the instructor
  • AI is wrong a lot
  • AI can be a tool to assist the instructor
  • Copyright laws may cripple AI
  • AI has no context

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Example

  • Me: Tell me about the time you removed a zero-day virus
  • ChatGPT: “As an AI developed by OpenAI, I don't have personal experiences or the ability to perform actions like removing viruses, including zero-day viruses.”

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Examples of AI as a Teaching Tool

  • Students with accessibility issues- AI tools can provide additional support for students with disabilities, offering voice-to-text or text-to-voice capabilities, and personalized learning pathways.

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Examples of AI as a Teaching Tool

  • Struggling students- AI algorithms assess each student's progress and adapt the difficulty of tasks and topics accordingly.

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Examples of AI as a Teaching Tool

  • Tutoring- Interactive AI tutors with natural language processing capabilities can engage students in conversations, answer their questions, and encourage exploration.

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Teaching Idea

  • Bonus lab
    • After the student completes their step-by-step lab, introduce a complex lab with no directions other than to use what they have learned along with (any free) AI to help them complete it.

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Future Teaching

  • Online group projects that are equitable
  • Online games to solve problems
  • More strategic on-campus classes
  • Interactive videos
  • Digitize handwriting
  • Kahoot, Socrative, Nearpod, EdPuzzle, Desmos, ClassDojo, Trello, Flip, Seesaw, Canva, Kami, and many more!

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Certification Courses

  • Pros
    • Credit for college course as well as industry certification credit
    • More attractive to students deciding on which college to pick
    • High school students may earn college credit along with certification
    • Additional useful skills are learned
    • Certs may be transferrable to other colleges
    • Easier to get hired

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Certification Courses

  • Cons
    • Teaching to certifications may be too narrowly focused
    • Doesn’t prepare for real world situations- who makes these tests?
    • May not provide needed context
    • May be too difficult for many students to pass- low pass rate is discouraging
    • Expensive tests

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Ascend Education’s Solution

  • eBooks written by professors and real-world sysadmins
  • Lots of great context and examples
  • Labs written to provide experience students will face
  • Quizzes based only on the text in the eBooks
  • Peer reviewed
  • Broken out into teachable modules

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Modern Network Design

Core L3 Sw

L2

L2

Firewall

Internet

AD DC

DHCP

DNS

File&Print

DB&App

Email

VPN

ISCSI SAN

Network Printers

WIFI

SD WAN

SD WAN

To Remote Office

VPN to Remote Office

Cloud Servers

Backups

PCs, and Mobile Devices

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Questions?

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