Work Experience Students

[nelliott]

I have been asked to take a couple of computer science students for work experience, other than the normal mundane tasks, could I have some ideas of tasks/projects I could get them working on?

[Edu-IT]

Is there anything in your development plan that they could be doing research on, and pulling together the details / proof of concept?

[nelliott]

It is a brand new network/school which only opened in the summer, so we don't have one in place yet!

Just didn't want them doing the dull boring jobs, ie cleaning screens, swapping mice, etc...

[Steve21]

I personally try to do it around what the students want, if they're looking at network wise, get a few old/spare machines together and get them building a basic domain up etc. One who wanted web-dev stuff got them building a basic web project up (asset register etc)

 

Steve

[Oaktech]

I've had them:

* Pinging/arp-a-ing blocks of IPs to create an assignment spreadsheet,

* Working with me running cables and terminating patch panels,

* Independently replacing screens on laptops,

* Redoing the cabling in a laptop cabinet,

* Inventorying a pile a old of old kit, preparing the writeoff report, presenting it to SLT for sign off and then making the call to PRM to get it all collected.

* The obvious general support work- one guy I've had is super switched on with all the classroom presentation kit so he did all my desktop support for a week, it was heaven!

 

I like to do projects with them that they can see all the way through in the week they are here, but who they are and what they are interested in defines what they are capable of achieving. I've had one guy who wanted to work in computing, but it very rapidly emerged that he knew nothing and was only really capable of doing kit inventory, whereas I had another who knew nothing about computers per-se, but was able to knock me up a really nice intranet site in 2 days. Another was keen, but had more practical skills, so he was the one that redid the cabling in the laptop trolley and ran network cables with me. Once he'd been shown how to do it, I was able to leave him to do all 48 ports on a patch panel and the corresponding wall plates and come back later. He had a great time and made less mistakes than I would have done!