This year has been interesting for the most part and has enlightened me a lot on networking. I had almost no prior knowledge on this topic so everything was fairly new to me. One of the main things this class has taught me is that I’m probably not going to have a future job closely related to networking. It’s not that I don’t enjoy this class, it’s just that I can’t see myself as an internetworking engineer or something like that. This is also why I’m planning on taking independent study next year where I’ll be able to choose what I get to learn. Nevertheless, I have learned a lot from this class, and it’ll probably come back to help me at some point in life. In college, there’ll probably be a class closely associated with computers, and having knowledge of how computers interact with each other will be quite essential. Also, it’s nice having general knowledge of these kinds of things, since most people believe this is complicated, high level material so you pull off impressing someone.
In the first semester this course was more difficult, compared to this semester at least. We were a bit short on time and had to rush through some of the materials. Additionally, we spent a lot of time going over the chapter material on the website rather than the powerpoints. That I feel was one of the best decisions we made in the class. Learning course material from the website wasn’t easy to endure for the entire class period, but the powerpoint on the other hand, was shorter and summarizes the significant points. It made it easier to pay attention, and having shorter bullet points aids in memorizing the information. Also, the labs were things that helped me just a bit. The hard labs, where the entire class had to work together, would have little effect to my learning. Then the labs, which were relatively easy didn’t necessarily help me learn either but hopefully has prepared me for the hands-on section of the final. These labs told us exactly what to do which in a way was better for learning, but it didn’t stick in my mind too much. It’s going to be hard to memorize all the commands.
If this class were to be done again to a new batch of students there could be a few improvements for their good. First, worksheets should be done excessively to see whether the students are all absorbing the knowledge and not just temporary learning it to complete the labs. The worksheets that we did do for the second semester did help me learn how everything correlated to each other, and this “book knowledge” is actually helpful in this case. The powerpoints should also be done throughout the year, since this process worked for the second semester. Lastly, they should probably try some more packet tracers because I’ve gotten out of the habit of using it since we’ve been using the real life equipment for so long.
This class has had some confusing topics and following the CCNA Cisco course was a bit hectic at times. Maybe this class could evolve into a class more on teaching everything without going too much in depth with a more high-school friendly approach. Though we are LASA students and are able to handle all of this, by the times the finals come around, we all feel quite unprepared even though we’ve been learning the material for the whole year. I’m definitely not regretting taking this class because I’ve learned so much, and not getting certification doesn’t affect me at all, because from day 1 I was in this class to learn, and I did just that.
In the first semester this course was more difficult, compared to this semester at least. We were a bit short on time and had to rush through some of the materials. Additionally, we spent a lot of time going over the chapter material on the website rather than the powerpoints. That I feel was one of the best decisions we made in the class. Learning course material from the website wasn’t easy to endure for the entire class period, but the powerpoint on the other hand, was shorter and summarizes the significant points. It made it easier to pay attention, and having shorter bullet points aids in memorizing the information. Also, the labs were things that helped me just a bit. The hard labs, where the entire class had to work together, would have little effect to my learning. Then the labs, which were relatively easy didn’t necessarily help me learn either but hopefully has prepared me for the hands-on section of the final. These labs told us exactly what to do which in a way was better for learning, but it didn’t stick in my mind too much. It’s going to be hard to memorize all the commands.
If this class were to be done again to a new batch of students there could be a few improvements for their good. First, worksheets should be done excessively to see whether the students are all absorbing the knowledge and not just temporary learning it to complete the labs. The worksheets that we did do for the second semester did help me learn how everything correlated to each other, and this “book knowledge” is actually helpful in this case. The powerpoints should also be done throughout the year, since this process worked for the second semester. Lastly, they should probably try some more packet tracers because I’ve gotten out of the habit of using it since we’ve been using the real life equipment for so long.
This class has had some confusing topics and following the CCNA Cisco course was a bit hectic at times. Maybe this class could evolve into a class more on teaching everything without going too much in depth with a more high-school friendly approach. Though we are LASA students and are able to handle all of this, by the times the finals come around, we all feel quite unprepared even though we’ve been learning the material for the whole year. I’m definitely not regretting taking this class because I’ve learned so much, and not getting certification doesn’t affect me at all, because from day 1 I was in this class to learn, and I did just that.
