08-16-2024, 02:48 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-16-2024, 02:50 AM by TerryRitchie.)
You know Steve, it's never to late to get into the teaching profession. On more than one occasion on the forums your way of looking at problems from a different perspective has helped me out. You remind me of a 55 year old welding instructor our school hired when I was still in my early 30s. Besides being an awesome welding instructor he could take problems, analyze them, and then come up with unique and brilliant solutions.
Case in point: One day we had cafeteria duty together and I was having a bad day. I was having one hell of time getting students to understand the OSI networking model. He asked me what the general premise of the model was and after a 10 minute quick lesson on the OSI model he said, "yep, that's a tough one"
About 2 days later I get an email from him that said to have each student act as one of the layers of the OSI model. Start the data out as a piece of paper and then pass it from the Application layer down to the Physical layer with each student adding their encapsulated data (software adding port numbers, routers adding IP addresses, switches adding MAC addresses, etc..). Then, get a second group of students doing the same thing in reverse acting as the receiving network. They would decapsulate the data as it moved up the OSI model to the final application.
Perfect! I tried this and light bulbs started going off with the students. Before this I was using programs such as Wireshark to show them data on a screen as it moved around on the network. Glassy eyed stares to say the least. Getting them involved was the key.
Over the years I morphed this into using large colored Lego pieces (Duplo blocks) where the colors represented the encapsulated data and address encoding schemes. Each student would add or subtract their colored Lego blocks to or from each end of the data as it moved through the applications, protocols, routers, switches, hubs, and wiring. I never had a problem again getting students to understand the inner workings of the OSI model all thanks to a very bright welding instructor.
Case in point: One day we had cafeteria duty together and I was having a bad day. I was having one hell of time getting students to understand the OSI networking model. He asked me what the general premise of the model was and after a 10 minute quick lesson on the OSI model he said, "yep, that's a tough one"
About 2 days later I get an email from him that said to have each student act as one of the layers of the OSI model. Start the data out as a piece of paper and then pass it from the Application layer down to the Physical layer with each student adding their encapsulated data (software adding port numbers, routers adding IP addresses, switches adding MAC addresses, etc..). Then, get a second group of students doing the same thing in reverse acting as the receiving network. They would decapsulate the data as it moved up the OSI model to the final application.
Perfect! I tried this and light bulbs started going off with the students. Before this I was using programs such as Wireshark to show them data on a screen as it moved around on the network. Glassy eyed stares to say the least. Getting them involved was the key.
Over the years I morphed this into using large colored Lego pieces (Duplo blocks) where the colors represented the encapsulated data and address encoding schemes. Each student would add or subtract their colored Lego blocks to or from each end of the data as it moved through the applications, protocols, routers, switches, hubs, and wiring. I never had a problem again getting students to understand the inner workings of the OSI model all thanks to a very bright welding instructor.