enviro-scan
I guess I'm a little nervous about looking around to see how folks are trying to teach subnetting, especially online. I realized that yeah, I'm right. This really is a huge problem for networking students and geek-it-yourselfers. But there are so many folks trying to address it, surely somone has nailed it. And if not, then who the heck do I think I am to solve what so many have not?
There's a new revision of cisco's Networking Academy curriculum since I last taught this. And it does have a nice little binary-to-decimal (and vice versa) converter so you can solve random 8-bit numbers all day. But I still get that eye-glazy thing so quick. I realize that it is so much easier to grasp the material when I'm already pretty comfortable with it than when it has been a new topic. But what is the point of that? See, I'm thinking about learning an awful lot. I'm starting to think that a real key is to try to see it as if it were new. Teachers can get overly familiar with difficult subject matter. Huge downfall. But how to circumvent that?
Cisco sure has put an awful lot of energy into trying to make its content media rich. The layout is pretty good -- though I first started navigating around it about 6 yrs ago, so how do I know what it's like for the newbie? It's so interactive that it feels overactive sometimes. Or maybe that's just layout? Maybe there aren't too many graphics, they're just too much work. I do have to scroll text from the far right but select new graphics from the far left. Hmmmh. I do think that it is laid out to emphasize some things and chunk the information; it's very much what I think that online content, book replacement, should be. So why, when I start reading it, do I still glaze over and get so anxious to do something, anything else?
I did talk to Rick Graziani again, albeit briefly, about my project. He is teaching Semester 1 this term and in spring. I just realized that I was talking about Cabrillo, but he might have been talking about CSUMB. I'm pretty sure he's teaching it there. Better clear that up, I guess. The bigger the pool of students the better. Oooh, maybe he can put me in touch with Dennis Frezzo who has developed so much of the Cisco Curriculum. He was working on some ID project of his own w/ one of Rick's classes last year. But he's probably not coming over the hill regularly. Still, I think that Rick's Networking Academy contacts could have real potential. He said that he had some great links for subnetting and feels the same as I do about how short a hop it is to CIDR & VLSM. Before I left work I sent him a reminder to send me the links.
All this thinking about learning is actually pretty exciting. (In a school-geeky kindof way.)
There's a new revision of cisco's Networking Academy curriculum since I last taught this. And it does have a nice little binary-to-decimal (and vice versa) converter so you can solve random 8-bit numbers all day. But I still get that eye-glazy thing so quick. I realize that it is so much easier to grasp the material when I'm already pretty comfortable with it than when it has been a new topic. But what is the point of that? See, I'm thinking about learning an awful lot. I'm starting to think that a real key is to try to see it as if it were new. Teachers can get overly familiar with difficult subject matter. Huge downfall. But how to circumvent that?
Cisco sure has put an awful lot of energy into trying to make its content media rich. The layout is pretty good -- though I first started navigating around it about 6 yrs ago, so how do I know what it's like for the newbie? It's so interactive that it feels overactive sometimes. Or maybe that's just layout? Maybe there aren't too many graphics, they're just too much work. I do have to scroll text from the far right but select new graphics from the far left. Hmmmh. I do think that it is laid out to emphasize some things and chunk the information; it's very much what I think that online content, book replacement, should be. So why, when I start reading it, do I still glaze over and get so anxious to do something, anything else?
I did talk to Rick Graziani again, albeit briefly, about my project. He is teaching Semester 1 this term and in spring. I just realized that I was talking about Cabrillo, but he might have been talking about CSUMB. I'm pretty sure he's teaching it there. Better clear that up, I guess. The bigger the pool of students the better. Oooh, maybe he can put me in touch with Dennis Frezzo who has developed so much of the Cisco Curriculum. He was working on some ID project of his own w/ one of Rick's classes last year. But he's probably not coming over the hill regularly. Still, I think that Rick's Networking Academy contacts could have real potential. He said that he had some great links for subnetting and feels the same as I do about how short a hop it is to CIDR & VLSM. Before I left work I sent him a reminder to send me the links.
All this thinking about learning is actually pretty exciting. (In a school-geeky kindof way.)
posted by Mikki Adams at 12:16 AM
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