Teaching Opportunity

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Muligan

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,251
915
Have a question for you guys, especially in the industry, and would greatly appreciate your opinion.

Over the last 6 years I have been teaching 3 advanced technology classes in the School District I serve as IT Director. My background prior to taking this position was Software Development and Administration but those particular skills are probably outdated. I say this as I have been asked to add a class to my curriculum and the push has been programming and/or game development.

I have taught the following classes.
Introduction to Computer Science (primarily logic and problem solving using Java as the language)
Web Design and Development (HTML, CSS, Adobe stuff)
Computer Support (CompTIA A+ certification)
e-Business
Computer Literacy (Basic Computing and Computer Applications)

I want to offer something that would make our students marketable and provide knowledge that would be relevant to their future career choices. I have thought about Python, Objective-C, and even Unity in response to the Game Development.

I've been out too long to know what's really out there. Please keep in mind these are High School Juniors and Seniors but they are taking part in my career major so they want to be there and they have a decent level of computer savvy.

Appreciate the insight! Our nearest universities are the University of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Centre College, and Transylvania University. The majority of which are working with Objective C, Python, and Ruby on Rails. I just want to make sure I consider my audience in addition to offering some fun and challenging.
 
Vitality

Vitality

ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
5,808
30
This might be kinda low-ball but one of the most important classes I took in highschool that got me where I am today is Advanced MS Office workshop. Where we learned how to setup userforms in vba for use in excel.

Being good at Excel and being a "Spreadsheet nerd" firmly placed me in my current position as a financial analyst.

Things like setting up meetings in Outlook and all that jazz are marketable skills in a wide variety of positions.

Finance: Excel, MS Outlook
Marketing: Photoshop, publisher, ms office, excel (aggregate mailing list manipulating)(Teach differences between 5color process and 4c digital print colors, show pixelation of 4c digital prints vs 5c ink etc. - color calibrated lights, editing marketing copy and making revisions and stuff in PDF's)
Design: 3D Cad, catia, rendering software etc.
Project Management: MS Project, excel, ms outlook

Also look into teaching basic setup in MS Lync - every office I've been in uses this program for communication and screen sharing and internal webinars etc.

For marketing/business content design, have kids build a portfolio of nice logos and graphics and datasheets/brochures that they can take to an interview. Digital prints (4c) are okay for portfolio pieces. Have them learn different weights of paper and cardstocks etc. *Gloss vs Matte* etc.
 
Muligan

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,251
915
Appreciate that Vit.. I will pass this info along to our Career Business teacher. She's doing AP Accounting this year and Business Law. I'll look into this a bit deeper myself. However, I think they are really looking for me to get deeper into programming and game design simply because of this "App" generation and the increase of interest in mobile devices.

I know our administration would love to see me teach how to create iOS/Android apps but doing so in a classroom environment could be challenging. Especially if you consider that you will always have some students that are there strictly to get an elective out of the way.
 
C

Corndog

Lord Nagafen Raider
520
130
Vitality_sl said:
This might be kinda low-ball but one of the most important classes I took in highschool that got me where I am today is Advanced MS Office workshop. Where we learned how to setup userforms in vba for use in excel.

Being good at Excel and being a "Spreadsheet nerd" firmly placed me in my current position as a financial analyst.

Things like setting up meetings in Outlook and all that jazz are marketable skills in a wide variety of positions.

Finance: Excel, MS Outlook
Marketing: Photoshop, publisher, ms office, excel (aggregate mailing list manipulating)(Teach differences between 5color process and 4c digital print colors, show pixelation of 4c digital prints vs 5c ink etc. - color calibrated lights, editing marketing copy and making revisions and stuff in PDF's)
Design: 3D Cad, catia, rendering software etc.
Project Management: MS Project, excel, ms outlook

Also look into teaching basic setup in MS Lync - every office I've been in uses this program for communication and screen sharing and internal webinars etc.

For marketing/business content design, have kids build a portfolio of nice logos and graphics and datasheets/brochures that they can take to an interview. Digital prints (4c) are okay for portfolio pieces. Have them learn different weights of paper and cardstocks etc. *Gloss vs Matte* etc.
Click to expand...
I feel like this would have served me way better than the comp classes I took. Being Pascal, C++ and A+ certification class. All of those I use absolutely 0 of today. I do use excel, word, photoshop etc on a DAILY basis.

Hell I'd argue that keyboard class was better. I took it as an elective in community college. Went from 60wpm to 85wpm. Way more useful than the stuff I took in high school.

The best teacher I ever had in a computer class was for the network administration degree at a community college. It was required to take Intro to computers etc. He said " Everything I teach you about computers will be obsolete by the time you graduate. I am going to teach you how to find the answer to and solve your problem, this will serve you much better in the field." Boy was he right, knowing how to just google, and trouble shoot crap, makes you the IT guy for everyone you know.

Now I own my own business not related to computers at all, 10 years out of highschool. The reality is, most of your students will never use skills you teach them if it's specific coding etc. Teach them things that EVERYONE will use. Excel, Office etc. Let them be the guy that can merge lists into excel and export to something else etc. This will get them a raise at their company. Knowing any language you teach them won't do them anything. Any job that would want that skill wants 2-4 years experience which you won't be giving them.
 
S

Soriak_sl

shitlord
783
0
It probably matters less what programming language you teach as long as it's a "real" programming language. Having to think about how to set up a problem and translate it into a logical set of instructions is super-valuable -- syntax can always be learned. So while it's ostensibly a course in a particular programming language, that's really just a way to sneak in teaching how to take a big problem and split it up into small, manageable chunks. That's also useful outside of programming, as any large project can be divided into smaller tasks -- and thinking about the dependence between those tasks is important. "How do I do X in LanguageY" also becomes something your students will learn to Google pretty quickly.

My university uses a simplified C++ library for it's introductory CS course, but I think Python is probably a better choice, especially in a HS class. The syntax is a lot more forgiving, since all you have to worry about is proper indentation. That allows you to teach more about the logic of a program (e.g. how you can solve something with a for loop) without getting hang up about defining new variables as integers, string or whatever.

If it's not clear, I'm far from being a programmer. But I still find knowing some Python really valuable and it's been easy to figure out how to do simple things afterward in other languages. I also find that a lot of people are scared of any "programming" -- even syntax in a statistics tool or formulas in Excel.
 
O

Obtenor_sl

shitlord
483
0
My vote is on Ruby. One of Ruby's philosophies is 'the joy of programming' meaning the language is designed to be a joy to program to. (The Philosophy of Ruby)

From Ruby's designer: "For me the purpose of life is partly to have joy. Programmers often feel joy when they can concentrate on the creative side of programming, So Ruby is designed to make programmers happy."

It's very very natural to program in Ruby, something as easy as an iterator that iterates 3 times and takes an outputs a number is:

3.times do |k| { puts "Number #{k+1}" }

Done, one line, very very natural. As it says, it'll run 3 times, and do a puts to the console.
 
S

Soriak_sl

shitlord
783
0
I'd use Python over Ruby because the former is used in a lot of tools (e.g. just about everything that Google does). I also find Python much easier to read than that:

Or:

All you have to make students aware of is that the last number is non-inclusive (and that indexing starts at 0).
 
Palum

Palum

what Suineg set it to
28,662
47,414
Vitality_sl said:
This might be kinda low-ball but one of the most important classes I took in highschool that got me where I am today is Advanced MS Office workshop. Where we learned how to setup userforms in vba for use in excel.

Being good at Excel and being a "Spreadsheet nerd" firmly placed me in my current position as a financial analyst.

Things like setting up meetings in Outlook and all that jazz are marketable skills in a wide variety of positions.

Finance: Excel, MS Outlook
Marketing: Photoshop, publisher, ms office, excel (aggregate mailing list manipulating)(Teach differences between 5color process and 4c digital print colors, show pixelation of 4c digital prints vs 5c ink etc. - color calibrated lights, editing marketing copy and making revisions and stuff in PDF's)
Design: 3D Cad, catia, rendering software etc.
Project Management: MS Project, excel, ms outlook

Also look into teaching basic setup in MS Lync - every office I've been in uses this program for communication and screen sharing and internal webinars etc.

For marketing/business content design, have kids build a portfolio of nice logos and graphics and datasheets/brochures that they can take to an interview. Digital prints (4c) are okay for portfolio pieces. Have them learn different weights of paper and cardstocks etc. *Gloss vs Matte* etc.
Click to expand...
Yea, if you can teach kids VBA and regex and they will be hired immediately out of HS. VBA is easily the most marketable programming skill for anyone excluding people going into computer science - but it is also a very important safety net for CS majors to always have practical, in demand skills.

As much as my IT side hates home-grown Access solutions that rely on VBA, my business side loves them. Go to any small-medium company and show them how you can reduce their reliance on administrative staff and manual business processes with 5 licenses of MS Office Pro and you will be an instant hit.
 
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