samsm — Wed, 19 Feb 2003 18:41:02 +0000

I was reading on another forum and caught something very clever. A high school student had used the school's external learning program to get a major certification... MCSE, CompTIA, Oracle or something like that.

An interesting possibility for a high school student... get a valuable certification on the school system's dollar while getting a glympse inside DeVry or some community college, a chance to see what you like or don't. From there, you will be in an ideal place to evaluate tech school to help you draw a comparison and make the correct* choice of a liberal arts college or university.

* (word "correct" added to reflect personal bias)

TonyMontana — Fri, 14 Feb 2003 05:03:58 +0000

Math becomes important in things like Flash MX actionscript where you are converting coordinate points to angles, and simulating physics.

And optimizing expressions.

TonyMontana

paintballdude13 — Fri, 14 Feb 2003 02:48:15 +0000

Ya that is a good point, never thought about that. I just didnt see the point of some of these high level math in code crunchin.

Suzanne — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 21:59:20 +0000

Quote: Most times they're requirements just to teach you problem solving skills.

Very good point. We can't always see the connection, but things tend to converge as we get older and learn more things.

Abhishek Reddy — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 18:40:00 +0000

Quote: I've never used it programming, nor trig or physics.

That depends too. In my hobbyist programming, I've had to use a lot of mathematical logic and somewhat basic algebra — but that's just the nature of the programs. I wouldn't rule it out entirely. (I also tend to make physics/math oriented stuff for fun. )

Isn't most math required for general programming taught in courses anyway?

Mark Hensler — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 17:57:04 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by paintballdude13
To be a Network Admin would I be required to take calc classes or actually have to use it on the job?

Depends on your degree. My cousin now has a AS in something networking and he didn't take anything over algebra. You don't even need to take any math for a CCNA. I don't know what the requirements are for a BS, it may just depend on the college or university's catelog.

No, I doubt you'd ever use calculus doing a network job. I've never used it programming, nor trig or physics. Those maths are not always requirements solely because you'll use them on the job. Most times they're requirements just to teach you problem solving skills.

Megan — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:31:51 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by c-double
In the old days of the Internet (5 years ago) web design firms hired graphic designers, programmers, network administrators, web administrators, etc. Now they want one person to do it all.

I would disagree actually. I would say it's the opposite - companies used to try to hire "do it all" types, but now they realize that it's quite impossible to find someone who's good at everything. The big companies who can afford it seem to segregate things quite a bit, and those who can't seem to use freelancers and contract workers to get things done right. Subcontracting is another method that seems to have become more common.

Here's my horror story - I'm just going to copy and paste from another forum where I posted it before:

Mine wasn't with one of those cheesy ITT Tech type places - it was with a well recognized community college. (Conestoga College). It was billed as a "digital media" program - 6 months, 5 hours a day.

The first day they had someone from the college in there to talk a bit about the program. They advised against holding a part-time job because the program was just so intense that you'd have trouble finding time for both. Now that I think about that I'm not sure if I want to roflmao or throw up.
The instructor had all kinds of fancy qualifications - a BA in fine art, some sort of multiimedia program from Ryerson, teachers college, and a masters of something. All seemed well.

Now, before I forget - the course was supposed to be a post-grad certificate for people who already had some prior design experience. It turned out that about half the class had no tangible design experience and most of them didn't have degrees or diplomas either. (so much from learning from your peers!)

So, the first two months weren't too bad. That's because Adobe provides training manuals with complete instructions on how to teach the excercises they've already defined. I didn't however, find myself doing a whole lot of homework and had no problems working part time as well.

Then we got into the "web design" portion. The instructor started out with 3 days on HTML, all the while emphasizing to my ignorant classmates that it wasn't necessary to know HTML at all. So he goes on, teaching the basics of Dreamweaver etc., spends one day on tabled layouts before introducing Layers! This was two years ago, folks - nobody was using CSS positioning at that point in time. I should have dropped the class when that happened. The next pathetic thing that happened was when he was going through all the menus in DW explaining what all the items did. When he got to Server Side Includes he said, and I quote, "That has to do with forms." LOL!! I had to correct him on that one. What a moron.

Things got worse after Christmas. The class was supposed to start at 9:00 - by this time he would maybe start a lesson at 10:30, maybe 11:00. He also didn't have Adobe manuals to rely on anymore and ended up winging the entire class. That's right, no lesson plan and this was someone who had gone to teacher's college.

After a couple of haphazard weeks on SoundForge, Acid, and Premiere we started Flash. That's when things got messy. He just did not seem to know how to use the program at all. He kept making all kinds of mistakes, having to go back and repeat himeself, further confusing the already confused students. Two of them were having such a hard time catching on to flash that the pace of instruction slowed to a crawl. I wanted to scream when he spent an hour trying to explain how flash can detect when you're importing a numbered series of images (button1, button2, button3 etc.). I stopped paying attention.

We were also supposed to learn Director and After Effects - Instructor guy didn't bother teaching those much - he just passed out photocopies from books and told us to follow along ourselves. Actually, that's how the last part of the Flash instruction went as well.

One more thing - grading. We were supposed to be putting all our little assignments into a "checklist" area at the end of every class. This was supposedly going to be marked and looked at by the instructor. I stopped putting anything in there about halfway through the program and nobody ever said anything to me about it. When I finally got my grades they seemed to be almost random numbers.

Roo — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 08:05:08 +0000

Meagn do tell please! My son is going to go for A+ Certification after graducation in June.

We were looking at one Community College where he's already been involved in a shadowing program, and one local business type college.

He poo-pooed the Community College after we got the lierature and he found out he'd need to take core subjects just as he's always done. So he's leaning towards the business college.

A frined of mine is changing carrers and is attending the same one, and it seems that they cover a wide area of it....not just the A+ part, but then she could barely send e-mail when she started.

>Begin Best Mom Voice<
paintballdude13, get as much education now as you can. Take it from someone who passed up a full scholarship to a leading university.......you'll be sorry later. Besides....once you get older the old brain isn't so quick to remember stuff.
>End Best Mom Voice<

Suzanne — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 05:22:16 +0000

Megan, what's your horror story?

c-double — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 03:38:20 +0000

In the old days of the Internet (5 years ago) web design firms hired graphic designers, programmers, network administrators, web administrators, etc. Now they want one person to do it all.

You'll need to know Ftp, Telnet, Linux, Apache, SQL, Php, Perl, Javascript, Flash, Photoshop, web server administration, security, SSL/SSH, DNS, etc.