Visitation with a difference

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Yesterday, I had steam boat with some of my NSS students at a coffee shop opposite Shaw Tower. The food was good but the company was better. I thank QiFeng for organizing it. Among the students, I got to meet were four students who are currently on Industrial Internship and under my charge; something I failed to pull off myself as they are frequently required at the customer’s sites.
I lost my hand phone the day before at the NP Convention Centre and I was pleasantly surprised by the support and advices from them. The phone was a very old model and I was quite confident that it would be returned to me soon. But apparently, it was not to be as it was switched off ever since I noticed that it was lost.
My responses to their feedback on my module:
1. I will push for TeraTerm more aggressively from now on for it supports Secure Shell (SSH), a common industry practice. Previously, I let the students choose between TeraTerm and HyperTerminal for they serve our purpose equally well. However, the industry wants SSH and HyperTerminal falls short in this aspect.
2. IOS upgrade is a common task in the industry. While our students knew about TFTP, they did not link the two tasks together. I will put a note in the VCN lab and use Packet Tracer for simulation practice.
3. It is heartening to hear from the students that the exposure to VoIP help them in their confidence. They may not know what to do exactly but they have a toe hold on the problem on hand.
Everyone at the table was inspired by Jackson’s feat – he obtained five professional certifications during his internship. I wish them Godspeed in their quest.
“What is the maximum number of connected switches in the spanning tree protocol?”
“Which has a higher priority: routing or voice packets in QoS?” (routing packets refer to packets sent by routing protocol)
“What is the minimum/maximum load size in an Ethernet frame?”
These are very technical (dry) questions if I were the one asking them. But this time, they were checking each other out. They were all ears. Why? They were sharing questions that their supervisor loved to ask during interviews. This is Learner-centred-Learning (LcL) in truth and in practice.