Teaching IT in a modern world.

Graham1

I recently had the misfortune of studying for an exam. The subject was none-other than Information Technology.

Simply put, I wasn't too impressed with the quality of teaching.

A few quotes from the numerous powerpoint slides:

"By 2003, it is predicted that 30% of all electronic [money] transfers will be internet transfers"

Wow, so at least it's up to date...

"Remember that different states have different tax systems"

Thats all fine and good, but we arn't in america...

"Malicious ‘cookies’ can destroy important files stored on a clients computers."

They can!?

[paraphrase] "JavaScript is seperate from Java, and therefore doesn't support Java security, such as the sandbox"

Technically true-ish but irrelivant...

"JavaScript can invoke privacy and integrity attacks by executing code that destroys your hard disk."

Um...

"Because ActiveX controls have full access to your computer, they can cause secrecy, integrity, or necessity violations."

What on earth is a necessity violation?

"Wardrivers are
attackers that drive around in cars using their wireless-equipped
laptop computers to search for accessible networks to destroy."

OMG!

and my personal favorite...

"Servers have vulnerabilities that can be exploited to cause destruction."

100% pure destruction! (my favorite quote)

Awesome. I was dissapointed none of this material was in the exam though.

B

felix

Amazing... I'm at a loss of words. Where the f*** do they teach that?

ItsAllGeekToMe

document.cookie = "destroyImportantFilesAndCauseDestruction";

</script>

Who hasn't done that?

Graham1

Well I'm from new zealand, but these quotes came from a 'guest'
lecturer from the states. Hence my being irritated that he couldn't be
bothered to change his slides. Obviously just reuses them each year no
matter where he is.

All those quotes came from a series of about 5 slides. For the entire
course, however, there were about 1000 slides in all for the course's
50 lectures. There were certainly many other misakes, blunders or
out-and-out lies, but none quite so rediculous as that bunch.

Ohh. As for code, the course taught VB script. (not vb.net!)

Yeah unfortunatly, the course isn't part of the computer science
department here, which is why it's so terrible. But it makes for very easy points. Pity though, the CS guys here have their problems too. Running the uni on fedora core 2 being a good example...

Mike_R

@Graham said:

All those quotes came from a series of about 5 slides. For the entire
course, however, there were about 1000 slides in all for the course's
50 lectures. There were certainly many other misakes, blunders or
out-and-out lies, but none quite so rediculous as that bunch.

Thats really someone who needs to be shot on sight. This is someone
who's going to produce a wtf generator and send it out into the wild.
This is why there's so much crap code around here (People like this,
who claim to be an authority on a specific subject, but are in reality
are only barely qualified to tie their own shoes.)

It very much annoys me when someone starts trying to give the
impression that they know what they are talking about, when all they
are doing is speading their ignorance and stupidity. If this individual
did any research at all instead
of parroting jargon, misinterpreted facts, and urban legends, then his
whole presentation would need to be reworked to remove all of the
factual errors.

I guess the saying is true: Those who can do, those who can't teach,
and those who can't and haven't the faintest clue give lectures with
powerpoint slides.

strongarm

@Graham said:

"Because ActiveX controls have full access to your computer, they can cause secrecy, integrity, or necessity violations."
What on earth is a necessity violation?

I'm not 100% sure, but I think my dog did one of those on the carpet once.

Someone needs to slap this teacher. This guy sounds like the prof I had back in a business systems design...he showed up to class drunk everyday and would make the students teach the class...until enough of us filed complaints and got him booted.

Drak

I had a teacher once (I never finished either Uni or college because of this sort of person) who just read from the lecture-syllabus each lesson.

Drak

@Graham said:

Pity though, the CS guys here have their problems
too. Running the uni on fedora core 2 being a good example...

I love universities too cheap to spring for unixes with advanced
management and support, relying instead of marginally competent
high-turnover students and one burnt-out, bitter, full-time IT guy. I
knew someone who kept a dialup account for all those times the network
went out.

paranoidgeek

Well I'm from new zealand, but these quotes came from a 'guest' lecturer from the states. Hence my being irritated that he couldn't be bothered to change his slides. Obviously just reuses them each year no matter where he is.

I from NZ too. Would it be too rude to ask which place this teaching came from ? I am planning on taking some computer courses soon-ish and knowing which ones to avoid would be of help.

@Graham said:

"Malicious ‘cookies’ can destroy important files stored on a clients computers."

They can!?

B

I've always loved the phrase malicious cookies. Delicious little
chocolate chip treats with fangs. No idea how they're going to
destroy files though. Perhaps they'll eat them?

Mike_R

@tiro said:

@Graham said:


"Malicious ‘cookies’ can destroy important files stored on a clients computers."

They can!?

B

I've always loved the phrase malicious cookies. Delicious little
chocolate chip treats with fangs. No idea how they're going to
destroy files though. Perhaps they'll eat them?

They use their fangs to shred your files

Charles_Nadolski

@strongarm said:

Someone needs to slap this teacher.
This guy sounds like the prof I had back in a business systems
design...he showed up to class drunk everyday and would make the
students teach the class...until enough of us filed complaints and
got him booted.

I had a French Literature professor who would not only do that, but
would also not show up and not tell anybody, would dismiss class 30
minutes early sometimes, not grade anything (if any sensical
assignments were ever given), only had a syllabus that went 8 weeks
into the semester, and made sexual advances toward one of the students
outside of class.

When we delivered a petition to the head of the French department, he
said (in English) "well I'm finally glad we got the ball rolling here".

Graham1

@paranoidgeek said:

I from NZ too. Would it be too rude to ask which place this teaching
came from ? I am planning on taking some computer courses soon-ish and
knowing which ones to avoid would be of help.

First thing I'd like to say, is pretty much any private 'institute'
generally won't give you a good education. Thier goal is providing a
minimum level of remembered-knowlege that is enough to qualify you for
a basic qualification like a deploma. And they usually charge through
the nose. If you are in an existing job this is a different story
though, as you will have more options avaliable for more specialised
courses (eg, MSCSE etc), these are generally good.

Before I went to university, I was looking at a company called
'spherion' who offered 'leading edge IT education'. Their programming
course spent the first few months as an introduction to windows, before
getting on to things like VB script. And it was ~$15,000 per year.
Enough said really.

so... uni..

Well unfortunatly it's a fact that you won't be able to get an up to
date, modern education anywhere. Everything you get taught will likly
be at least 2 years old, and often more-so. It's just a fact that the
university system as a whole isn't designed to cope with a field where
the technology changes signifcantly every six months. That said, there
are other areas where a university is absolutly invaluable compared to
pretty much any other form of education.

So. I'll clarify...

I'm from canterbury university.

The Computer Science department here is quite good. Not perfect for
sure, some of the courses aren't very good, but thats always the way.
In general they are compenetent and good people. Lincon uni is also
quite good for CS, but doesn't have the range of courses.

The quotes I posted initally are from the Information Technology / Finance and Accounting department (AFIS).

The intereseting thing is that the university here is gradually
breaking CS up, into software engineering (as a part of the engineering
department) and CS (as part of the science department). The jury is out
on if this will help or not, but it should at least give a bit more
variety. Engineering is big at canty...

However, and this is something I've told a number of people,

University should not be treated as something there just to get your
degree. In fact, in some ways, getting your degree should be a low
priority (it certainly is for me). The really important thing is
getting a foothold in the industry, getting contacts, and generally
gaining experience. These three are completely up to you, but a
university certainly provides the ideal environment for doing these.

The advantage canterbury has had here (for me anyway) is that the new
zealand hitlab (www.hitlabnz.org) is based here. Sure it's not perfect, but it's certainly
getting there. It's basically meant that I've had the opportunity to:

publish papers,

travel overseas twice (to conferences, etc)

work on projects that effectivly are cutting-edge, or at least allow me
to push technology. (I was the programmer for the 'volcano' augmented
reality project, which is now being commercialized world wide)

and meet all sorts of people from the industry.

At the same time I've been enrolled, but pretty much ignoring uni. I
didn't go to any lectures this term for example. Just going through the
motions of getting that peice of paper.

Finally, I'd also point out that CS as a whole, is an industry where
you cannot rely on others to teach you the ins and outs. You absolutly
have to be interested in it, and activly interested. For every hour of
univerity programming you do, you should be doing at least 5 of your
own. At least.

So really, university is what you make of it, and there is more than often a lot more to it than may be obvious.

Best of luck.

rsynnott

@tiro said:

I've always loved the phrase malicious cookies. Delicious little
chocolate chip treats with fangs. No idea how they're going to
destroy files though. Perhaps they'll eat them?

They're laced with arsenic.

And VBScript in a university computer science course? By a guest
lecturer. How odd. The lecturers here tend towards the view that
anything other than Eiffel-like things, Prolog-like things, and at a
pinch C, is beneath them.