N+

nateg said:

I am New to the training field, my first N+ class is in a couple weeks. What is the best way to present\ train the N+ course. Id appreciate the help as i want too succeed.

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You should prepare the class with Lab activities cover more the lectures, but the Labs must be aligned with the book contents first, when your students are ready to extend the knowledge you should prepare some extended labs to help them to understand more the knowledge.

Well, you might start with the Network+ 007 Resources here in the CIN. You can review the Train-the-Trainer series, pick up handouts, and use that to form the basis for your class.

Have you decided on the text you're going to use? That's important because as Natuna said, you'll want to build up laboratory exercises. But regardless, getting several texts from different publishers can help build a pool of material that your students will find useful in learning, no matter what their learning style is.

Network+ is very term and concept heavy. You will want to know and explain definitions and acronyms, what they mean and more importantly, why they are there.

For example, DHCP - we know what it is, but why does it exist? What business problem does it solve? DHCP makes it much easier to configure IP addresses to nodes as well as populating fields like DNS, NTP, WINS, domain information, to keep one from having to touch every single client for IP configuration. By sharing this practical approach with students, concepts become less abstract, students begin to understand them better.

Looking at the course from the perspective of the student is really the best way to teach just about anything. Active learning, versus passive learning will help engage your students into the material. The more hands on you can do in the course, even with subnet calculations, the better off your course will be.

Good luck in there!

/r

nateg said:

I will be using the Network + student guide and incorporate the Labs. (Going Chapter by Chapter)

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That's always good, play-test your labs first. That way, if students run into a snag, you're not having to do a lot of troubleshooting to untangle it.

/r

A very useful resource is the presentation guide (in Excel spreadsheet format).

nateg said:

Please give me an example.

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He means that you could see the Presentation Planner (Excel File, Example: Presentation Planner for Network+.xlsx) in Instructor materials to reference the ways to deliver the course.

The attached provides utilization of the Presentation Guide for a Security+ Course I'm teaching this fall semester. Note that I expanded it to include the weeks of instruction along with the start date for each week. In its original form, the presentation guide is designed for a 5-day format class (something I will not attempt to teach given the massive amount of content to be covered and the lack of time to be adequately digested).

Steve Linthicum said:

The attached provides utilization of the Presentation Guide for a Security+ Course I'm teaching this fall semester. Note that I expanded it to include the weeks of instruction along with the start date for each week. In its original form, the presentation guide is designed for a 5-day format class (something I will not attempt to teach given the massive amount of content to be covered and the lack of time to be adequately digested).

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I've been teaching Network+ in a 5-day format since 2005. I can't imagine spreading it over an entire semester.

Gregory Childers said:

I've been teaching Network+ in a 5-day format since 2005. I can't imagine spreading it over an entire semester.

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This is belong to customer needs, some customer can not arrange for short-time class (5 days), so we must arrange the schedule to adapter with their schedule.

Gregory Childers said:

I've been teaching Network+ in a 5-day format since 2005. I can't imagine spreading it over an entire semester.

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Having experienced substantial trainer/teaching opportunities in both the 5-day boot camp-style format and the academic format that dates back before CompTIA's certifications existed, while I've found it possible to lightly cover their exam objectives, I think we have to be honest in assessing just how quickly students can handle the content presented. The true challenge of boot camp style instruction is dealing with sales pressures where the focus is generating income from students and not accurately accessing whether a particular student (often a career changer) can digest the technical information in a timeline that is generally viewed as humanly impossible given the short timeframe boot camps run (typically a 32 to 36-hour classroom duration).

For the Network+ certification, I simply cannot imagine teaching wonderful topics like subnetting and super-netting in the time constraints that a boot camp limits. I'm fortunate to have both the trainer background and academic credentials that provide the ability to pick and choose the environment that I teach in. Nothing better for example in seeing students, over time, grasp the critical thinking skills this subject produces.

That's my $0.02.

I've never been a huge fan of the boot kampf (intended pun). They are amazing for those who need a refresher. For example, most of us in the TTT have already learned what we're reviewing. We've gone through these subjects 22 ways - with the hope we'll learn a new way to teach a subject that we've taught before. For us, boot camps are beneficial in a lot of cases.

HOWEVER...

@Steve Linthicum is dead on here. Boot camps are horrible for that initial learning (but they are great little money makers). Don't believe the hyperbole that the training centers wanna tell you.

There is this little thing called the Curve of Forgetting. Research shows that within one hour, people will have forgotten an average of 50% of the information you presented. Within 24 hours, they have forgotten an average of 70% of new information, and within a week, forgetting claims an average of 90%.

So...

On Monday, we are hit with 8 hours of info, which we are already forgetting by lunchtime.
On Tuesday, we remember a little more than 2 hours of what we learned on Monday, which we are forgetting by lunch and then supper Tuesday.
On Wednesday, we remember about 45-50 mins of Monday's material, about 2 1/2 hours of Tuesday...

...and so on, so forth.

BUT THERE'S HOPE (at least a little) - it's called OUTSIDE WORK/HOMEWORK!

Students may think it's a pain in the posterior, but each time that information is refreshed, it cements the data deeper in the cerebral cortex. It takes the average human about seven exposures to the same information, using different media, to commit it to long term memory. Those media means visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning.

But still - unless we are refreshing over and over and over - our little gray matter sponge can only learn so much so fast.

Until this becomes a reality...



/r

To each their own. I can't imagine dragging it out that long. I can usually explain supernetting and subnetting within an hour or less. And I review topics constantly. All day and all week.

Received a email today from ACM.ORG with an interesting article (link at bottom). I have taught in a 4 year university and 5 day boot camps. There are pros and cons to each approach depending on the student. ( How's that for sitting on the fence ! ) But the attached article has an interesting spin.