What type of tech is relevant
The tech world is constantly shifting, what do we decide to go with as online instructors and why?
William,
Good question! Do we go with what students need to get a job, or go above and teach something they might use in the future?
Shelly Crider
Good question. At my school, we teach video production and web design. I feel it is extremely useful to include course content that is relevant to finding a job in their field. We incorporate an online video for every week of online work, and have seen a positive response from students to these videos. Since our students are more hands on and visual learners, we have to make sure we include a lot of visual material.
From the desktop support point of view it really doesn't change that much. Yes, it does "evolve" but it still remains the same at the same time. XP is still being widely used. XP is still a viable operating system even though with Microsoft it has met its shelf life. Some environments are converting to 7 from XP even though 8 has been recently introduced.
Technology becomes introduced to the public and it may take a long time for it to be used in a business setting. It gets scrutinized, tested, and updated before a business will use it.
One reason that XP is still being used is simply because of the change in software. A business may be dependent on software that is no longer supported or even developed. It only works on XP and it will be too costly for the company to switch to a new program - or the program does something specific that was developed for the company. It won't work in 7. Though, there may be tricks and there are a couple - it may or may not work.
A lot of updates and new versions to software only add some sort of add-on or benefit that was seen to be needed. The current version will be just as important to know because it will lay the ground work on the newer version.
My brother went to a school and what he learned was on the newest, state of the art, gizmos. When he graduated it was hard for him to find a job because no one was using the particular gizmo and it was too different than the older stuff that was being used.
Sean,
This is a good and informative post. Thank you!
Shelly Crider
Thank you and you're welcome. I've been in desktop support for about 16 years and it really hasn't changed that much. Different operating systems from, lets say, Windows 98 but you still get the same issues.
