Last Wednesday, the 25th, I submitted my final piece of TAFE work.
It was a long and boring assignment on Managing Complex Projects, Managing Quality and Development Methodologies.
Over the past two weeks I had three practical exams on Windows Security, Linux Security and Enterprise Wireless Networks. By some miracle I was able to achieve full marks in all three despite going into them feeling less than confident.
If I had to pick one exam that contained the most BS, it would have to the wireless one. Each student was given an incredibly unreliable D-Link wireless bridge. I was one of the two lucky ones to actually get their bridge working on the day and it was seen to be working by two teachers, however when it came time to get my exam marked it had stopped working!
I lost one mark because of this and I was pretty pissed. But then, suddenly, without me touching anything the bridge started working again! Thankfully I got that extra mark, but I cannot believe I was going to penalised for the crappy equipment we were told to use.
Thankfully, I don’t have to put up with that shit anymore though.
Congrats
Got any thoughts about what you’re going to do now?
It’s a shame that they weren’t able to give you functioning equipment, and then penalized you for it. There is a thinking there that is fundamentally flawed. I can’t even articulate what is wrong with it, but it just seems like a corruption of responsible education.
I’ve been reading a bit about recent educational styles in the west. One criticism that academics make about some aspects of education is that it doesn’t equip students with a common vocabulary that allows us to communicate with a basic, implied level of knowledge. Basically, it means that a student might be taught how to read the manual for a specific piece of technology, but be unable to generalize that knowledge to other manuals because they lack the broad common knowledge about computers and computer architecture that is common to both manuals.
I guess I’m wondering, do you think the TAFE course teaches people to learn computers and networking? Do you feel like it taught you how to use some specific techologies, without an emphasis on generalizing those skills? Did it achieve a balance between those two aspects of learning?
It kind of sucks that my reply is like 1/10th “that’s awesome”, and 9/10ths “what went wrong”. I kind of get an impression that you rightly aren’t too impressed with the opportunities TAFE offered you. Lets talk about it a little!