Ask Slashdot: Hands-On Activity For IT Career Fair 121
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."
Linux vs Windows installation (Score:0, Insightful)
Have a side by side install Linux vs Windows. See who finishes faster.
Teach them *about* Unix, Cobol, Oracle and SAP (Score:2, Insightful)
There are a million web people.
If you can dig in and work your way into a position that supports and codes for these kinds of environments, you're likely to have a job for 40 years.
Yes, mobile devices are shiny.
But you need big telecom, big transaction processing and big power to make that happen. And that happens on big systems.
I know my department has a number of DBAs/developers that will be retiring over the next 5-10 years. There are no competitors for our business systems due to the regulatory framework, so it will be maintenance and upgrades. Maybe a migration from Oracle to SAP and back, depending on the management regime.
Something to throw out there.
Career Fair (Score:2, Insightful)
What in the lord's blazing hell does this have to do with careers?
The word(?) "IT" is too broad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this IT as in "desktop support", or "IT" as in managing PB-scale Oracle RAC data warehouses?
Real world (Score:3, Insightful)
Hobby kits (Score:5, Insightful)
Real world experience? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Not sure why you think you need something new... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
Re:Not sure why you think you need something new.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:CS knowledge does not translate into the real w (Score:4, Insightful)
... 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.