SD83 Dual Credit Students Get Bits and Bytes of Learning

For Danica Oudman, it was like a lightbulb went off. “That’s so cool. That makes sense,” she expressed while looking at the hundreds of wires coming out of SD83’s main server room. Oudman was commenting on the SAN’s (Storage Area Network) storage area to which its SAN port wires go to the SAN switches on the server rack.

Grade 10-12 students from the district’s “Tech Sampler” course spent Monday’s evening class at the SD83 Board Office to learn how wireless networks and servers work for a large organization. Tech Sampler is a Workplace Training Certification course done in partnership between the District and Okanagan College. In this one semester evening course, students can get four high school credits. The introductory post-secondary course demystifies how computers work, what is involved with wireless networks, building effective cyber security and implementing different coding languages, among other details. From there, students can choose to take the Information Technology User Support course (ITUS) in the second semester, which is a dual credit course. In the second course, students dig deeper into how machines work with each other and how to protect themselves and others from the internet’s bad actors. Students also receive an additional eight high school credits to which those credits can be used to ladder into and complete a portion of Okanagan College’s Infrastructure and Computing Technology Diploma.

SD83 IT Manager Stephen Ollinger, along with OC Instructor Joshua Meikle, started the tour outside the building at a telephone pool where fibre data comes into the building. From there, they went to the building’s basement where it was explained how the Telus fibre line works with the other communication functions of the building. From there, students went to the server room where they learned how different routers shuffled signals to different parts of the district to the multi tetra-byte storage the district’s hard drive can store. Before getting back to their class to start building their own small networks, the students had an engaging discussion and question and answer session with Ollinger and Meikle talking about cyber security and its importance for protecting current and past teachers and students information on its system. Ice from recent cold temperatures prevented students from going on the roof to see how the district’s wireless network connects with each other.

For Oudman, she’s really liking the course and although she doesn’t know exactly what she would like to pursue after high school, she does know it will involve technology. “I really like the topics and how it is taught. I like the teacher. Josh is very funny and can go with the flow. I’m having fun and I am learning.”

Sajjad Sabzaali attends JL Jackson in Grade 10. He also says the course is very fun and that he is learning lots. He is surprised how many steps there are in data eventually moving towards a device. “For how fast the internet is, you would think it would be one wire that would go to your home. You know, boom, send it, boom, receive it. No. You have to package it in seven layers, then ship it off, unpackage it, repackage it (three times). It takes a lot of steps and it is shocking how quickly those steps happen,” said Sabzaali. He is considering a future in either cyber security or video game development.

If you or your student is interested in the program or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact George Richard via phone or text at 778-824-1188 or you can email grichard@sd83.bc.ca.