SD83 Students Learning the Bits and Bytes of G2T
It was field trip day for 11 Gateway to Technology (G2T) students this week.
The Grade 10-12 students from four of the five high schools in the district spent their evening class at the SD83 Board Office to learn how wireless networks and servers work for a large organization. G2T 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 and college-based 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 this course, students dig deeper into how machines work with each other and how to protect yourself and others from the internet’s bad actors. Students also receive and 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.
Ollinger, along with OC Teacher Joshua Meikle, started the tour in the building’s basement explaining how the Telus fibre line works with the other communication functions of the building. From there, students ascended to the roof to learn how the wireless interconnection works in between different SD83 sites. The students ended their tour in 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 ands students information on its system.
Students are engaged with the course well into its 2nd month of operation. Grade 12 PVSS Student Jaroslav Chernyshev is a recent immigrant from the Ukraine. “Yarik”, as he is called, runs a translation program on his phone to convert english into russian to help him keep up with the understanding of what is being said during lectures and tours. “I love all the stuff I am learning,” as he speaks in his broken english. “This course (is) for me. I did not know how IP address work. Now, I do. How you say, ‘good atmosphere’, in class. Good leader (teacher). This (course) has helped me with english as well. I learn more words!”
Grade 11 SAS student Kody Micheal Wood is engaged in the course as well, albeit acknowledges there’s a lot to learn. ” This course is really fun. Great teacher but very information heavy”, Wood said. Maliq Barnard is a Grade 12 SAS student that recently came to the region from Victoria. Barnard has done much with technology already including creating his own apps that are getting picked up by users on the world wide web. Despite his sizable knowledge, he’s still feeling challenge in the course and credits the teacher for that. “Josh is an incredible leader, but I still wish he could bring some coffee to class for the students,” he declared with a smile.
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.