I was fortunate enough to be selected to attend the Kennett Area Vocational Technichal School Advisory Committee meeting last night. I was asked to attend the meeting by Terry Bruce, the electronics instructor for the Kennett Vocational School.
As if the catfish dinner wasn’t enough to entice me to go, I was really impressed by the meeting with Terry and the other attendees after the dinner. It seems that the vocational school received a grant to pay for what I would call ‘advanced computer training’ for the students enrolled in the electronics program of the KAVTS. The items that Terry went over were as follows:
IT Essentials I - basic PC computing maintenance and repair
IT Essentials II - more advanced computing maintenance and repair.
CCNA Training I - Cisco Network Certification Training Level I
CCNA Training II - Cisco Network Certification Training Level II
After dinner, which was wonderful by the way, the various KAVTS employees and their selected advisory committee members returned to the instructors classroom to discuss the programs they were teaching. To be totally honest with you, I was skeptical that KAVTS through the associated grant, was attempting to provide what I considered to be very technical training to high school level students. While I feel that the IT Essentials training should be a requirement for students at this level, I was amazed that the Cisco training was included in the program paid for by the grant. With just a small amount of research, you would find that Cisco certified professionals are in highly in demand and definitely not underpaid. I think it is a great thing that the Kennett School System is offering this type of technical training to their students at this level.
Not trying to be negative, but even if only one student passes the actual certification exam, the fact remains that the Kennett school system is providing the opportunity for these students to increase technical knowledge. I feel that a solid technical foundation is a great motivator for these students to continue their education in computer networking, software development, hardware repair or other technology fields.
Kudos to Terry Bruce for being involved in making the grant happen, lending his expertise to the KAVTS Electronics program and offering this opportunity to our students. Oh, and thanks for dinner…