The Student Network Administration Project (SNAP) is an initiative of the
Maryland Virtual High School (MVHS). SNAP's goal is to develop, test, and
disseminate curriculum and training materials for two secondary school
courses. The materials are being constructed by Matt Shibla, under the
leadership of Mary Ellen Verona and Susan Ragan, at Montgomery Blair High
School (Montgomery County, MD).
Matt Shibla is finishing the first classroom trial of Networking I during
first semester of the 1997-1998 school year at Blair. This class teaches an
introduction to data communications, computer networking, operating systems,
and computer hardware. The course is designed as a survey of these topics,
with the expectation that parts can (and will) be modified to fit the
resources of the teaching environment.
Trials two and three of this class will be conducted during the second
semester of the 1997-1998 school year at Bennett HS (Wicomico County, MD)
and at Northern HS (Garrett County, MD). The teachers at these schools,
Linda Davis and Tom Bulka, have been members of MVHS for several years and
have a good working relationship with MVHS initiatives. The Networking I
curriculum will be refined during the second and third trials.
The next phase in the development/testing lifecycle for this course is to
attract six more schools who are interested in offering this curriculum to
their students. A week-long workshop will be held in the summer of 1998 in
Montgomery County, MD. This workshop will represent the first trial of
teacher training materials, designed to prepare an instructor to teach the
curriculum of Networking I. All teachers who are interested in receiving
and teaching the Networking I curriculum in the 1998-1999 school year should
attend the summer training workshop.
All materials related to Networking I will be maintained, updated, and
disseminated electronically through the Internet. It is expected that
electronic dialogs (email) will be established and maintained throughout the
academic school year. There will also be several scheduled face-to-face
meetings at certain points during the school year. The goal of these
communications is to provide support for the teachers of the curriculum, and
to collect feedback regarding both the curriculum materials and the
effectiveness of the teacher training materials. A follow-up workshop will
be held in the summer of 1999 to collect and organize feedback and
improvements to the curriculum and associated materials.
The second course being developed will be a more in-depth study in network
and systems administration. This course will be geared toward unix systems
administration issues, but we hope to be able to develop materials for other
platforms as well (primarily NT, MacOS--likely Rhapsody, and Novell). The
development cycle for the second course will closely follow that of the
first course. We hope that schools interested in offering the first
curriculum will also desire to participate with the second. The second
course will also have a summer workshop associated with it, to be held
during the summer of 1999. As with the first course, the second course will
also have a follow-up workshop in the summer of 2000. All materials related
to Networking II will also be disseminated through the internet.
Matt Shibla
Last modified: Tue Mar 3 14:19:01 EST 1998