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Teaching networking

Beatnik on 2004-02-20T11:50:22

I asked this on /. but they dropped my request... Anyway in short: I'm teaching Networking basics in evening school. I want to add quite a bit of practical sections to my course. The classroom has no computers in it but I can bring all the required material from work. How can I make a mostly theoretical course less boring? I already brought along cables and got em making cross cables.

I'm open for suggestions :)

Hmmm...

chaoticset on 2004-02-21T01:08:15

...this was the problem in my networking class -- nothing but theory and examples, because they didn't really have any way we could test most of what we were talking about.

What aspects of "networking"?

ybiC on 2004-02-21T14:14:00

What aspects of networking will you be instructing? LAN switching, WAN routing, Server services, Client applications, security, IP addressing and netmasking, alloftheabove?

If it's server and client interaction stuff, then VMware might be nice. Or if infrastructure then you about need one router or switch for every two students.

I know it can be trite and cliched, but getting peeps to think in an OSI model layered approach can make for muchmuchmuch more effective troubleshooters - ie; don't try to debug the networked app if you get no ping response from the DB server.

Re:What aspects of "networking"?

Beatnik on 2004-02-21T18:57:33

I'm discussing cabling types, OSI layers, Ethernet, Token Ring, ATM, FDDI, TCP, UDP,.. The works. There are things I have to repeat a lot but that's probably because a) I'm not as experienced in teaching b) It's quite boring. The course has a 20 page section on Token Ring. 20 pages is probably not a lot but it's boring :) Most of my students have no background in IT so it's like learning Swahili to a bicycle :)