Networking Mastery of Work Project Inquiry

Krose · Oct 8, 2021

I want to start off by stating I am the Networking Teacher at my school and the past year it has moved from being an elective to Major Course of study. They can come to my school and study different CTE industry's from Health Science, Engineering, Entertainment Technology, Web and Digital Arts, Computer Science (Programming), along with other topics. It gives students an opportunity to get started on their preferred industry for the next level of either profession or college education.
As part of the process in their senior year they produce a Mastery of Excellence presentation. It should be an display of excellence in something they learned about in their time spent in the major. It comprises of an essay they write and then a presentation based on that topic. Inside their presentation most have a product that is unique or tied to their major. For instance ET students would write and direct short films. Engineering would create something to solve a problem. Web and Digital will display their porfolio of work based on a particular interest.
I am trying to have my students be able to create their Product now, and I am looking for it to be more than just a Presentation. I would like for them to be able to create something.

So I am reaching out to all of my networking industry co-horts for some ideas on how to do this. I would like for it to be something more than just a Packet Tracer workup. I am hoping that perhaps you all incorporate projects of this type within your courses and can share upon some ideas.

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance in this endevour. Sorry for the extended post, but I felt it would be easier to understand the question if I exlained some of the back story.

Rick Butler · Oct 9, 2021

This particular problem, with all of its variants, has eluded educators for years. In IT, we really don't "create" anything - we build the infrastructures needed so that creators can do their magic. IT is very much not a profit center, but rather, a cost center. I don't envy your having to come up with something - we run into it when we're trying to build labs that don't suck.

When I look at it, I would ask your students, "how can you make my life as an IT Director easier or with lower cost?" Those are the kinds of solutions I need, every day. How can I force multiply what I do so I don't spend stupid amounts of time on trivial matters.

If you are getting into Cloud stuff, you can come up with automation or orchestration scripts (imperative or declarative), to make things easier for time-pinched cloud administrators, that could be shared. Maybe whitepapers and idiot-proof walkthroughs that might help someone spin up an SD network.

Perhaps we might look at security - checklists like NIST 800-171 are great for helping organizations get a handle on their security posture. But often, administrators don't have clear directions on how to sort these things - instructions can get very ambiguous. Producing simple to read walk-throughs can be very useful.

Anyway, that's my first take on this one. Hope it provides some additional thought.

Jarrel · Oct 10, 2021

Krose said:
I want to start off by stating I am the Networking Teacher at my school and the past year it has moved from being an elective to Major Course of study. They can come to my school and study different CTE industry's from Health Science, Engineering, Entertainment Technology, Web and Digital Arts, Computer Science (Programming), along with other topics. It gives students an opportunity to get started on their preferred industry for the next level of either profession or college education.
As part of the process in their senior year they produce a Mastery of Excellence presentation. It should be an display of excellence in something they learned about in their time spent in the major. It comprises of an essay they write and then a presentation based on that topic. Inside their presentation most have a product that is unique or tied to their major. For instance ET students would write and direct short films. Engineering would create something to solve a problem. Web and Digital will display their porfolio of work based on a particular interest.
I am trying to have my students be able to create their Product now, and I am looking for it to be more than just a Presentation. I would like for them to be able to create something.

So I am reaching out to all of my networking industry co-horts for some ideas on how to do this. I would like for it to be something more than just a Packet Tracer workup. I am hoping that perhaps you all incorporate projects of this type within your courses and can share upon some ideas.

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance in this endevour. Sorry for the extended post, but I felt it would be easier to understand the question if I exlained some of the back story.

We also do the same. At the last semester (est 6 months) of the students' course, we ask them to team-up and create feasible projects.
For networking, many of them opt to create IOT projects, ie. environmental sensors that store data to server whereby the info is then presented to a monitor in the lobby. For some, we connect them to small businesses or to work on the computer labs across the campus whereby, they look on hardening/securing the devices and/or fixing the cables. For a few, they team up with students from other fields ie. web developers, and the web developers create a website, and the network guys work on port forwarding, etc.

All students submit their project documents and present their final work to a panel whereby, the best projects are awarded during the culminating ceremony.

Very early on, when we deem that a project is either too costly (i.e. electric vehicle, fiber cable installation) or it may take too long to be implemented (i.e. campus network), then the teachers help the students to think of other projects instead.

I hope this give you some ideas to think of.

Rick Butler · Oct 11, 2021

Jarrel said:
We also do the same. At the last semester (est 6 months) of the students' course, we ask them to team-up and create feasible projects.
For networking, many of them opt to create IOT projects, ie. environmental sensors that store data to server whereby the info is then presented to a monitor in the lobby. For some, we connect them to small businesses or to work on the computer labs across the campus whereby, they look on hardening/securing the devices and/or fixing the cables. For a few, they team up with students from other fields ie. web developers, and the web developers create a website, and the network guys work on port forwarding, etc.

All students submit their project documents and present their final work to a panel whereby, the best projects are awarded during the culminating ceremony.

Very early on, when we deem that a project is either too costly (i.e. electric vehicle, fiber cable installation) or it may take too long to be implemented (i.e. campus network), then the teachers help the students to think of other projects instead.

I hope this give you some ideas to think of.

We used to do a business proposal style project with our networking crews, similar to this thought. They would be presented with some real-world network problems (how to network across a busy road/interstate) or provide wireless in a RFI dense area, running cabling in a space where EMI was super high from specialized equipment, or networking in and through areas where confidentiality was the utmost concern. These also make good projects for students to get them thinking out-of-the-box, as it were, in situations that are less than ideal.

/r

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Networking Mastery of Work Project Inquiry

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