How Do I Talk To 4th Graders About IT? 531
Tsunayoshi writes "My son volunteered me to give a presentation on what I do for a living for career day at his elementary school. I need to come up with a roughly 20-minute presentation to be given to 4-5 different classrooms. I am a systems administrator, primarily Unix/Linux and enterprise NAS/SAN storage, working for an aerospace company. I was thinking something along the lines of explaining how some everyday things they experience (websites, telephone systems, etc.) all depend on servers, and those servers are maintained by systems administrators. I was also going to talk about what I do specifically, which is maintain the computer systems that allow the really smart rocket scientists to get things into space. Am I on the right track? Can anyone suggest some good (and cheap/easy to make) visual aids?"
Old gear? (Score:5, Informative)
One cheap visual aid would be an old computer and or server, so you can show them what it looks like inside a computer. My kids tend to like watching me swapping components, at least.
offtopic, but important (Score:2, Informative)
anyone has problems since yesterday with the layout? the tagging words appear too close to the read more links on firefox 3.
on IE the spacing is better but the css and/or javscript has issues and doesn't look right.
Re:Keep It Fun & Exciting (Score:4, Informative)
About 55,000, with a size ~8 font size (depending on font).
(Bastard, you knew that half the people here wouldn't be able to help themselves.)
Fourth graders (Score:3, Informative)
Use lots of flashy colors, slides with sounds and visual effects, and you can make anything look important if you have spongebob squarepants say it in your slide.
Re:offtopic, but important (Score:3, Informative)
Relate IT to something they know (Score:2, Informative)
Relate IT to something 4th graders are interested in. Perhaps talk about the IT behind movies like Spiderman or IT behind Webkinz.
Re:offtopic, but important (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, the tagging looks like crap to me too.
More on-topic, it would be great if you explained a little bit about the difference between a system administrator and a software developer, let the kids know there are many different sorts of jobs in the computer field .
Re:Keep It Fun & Exciting (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with keeping it entertaining. As a geek who also happens to have taught English to Japanese elementary school children for two years (talk about incomprehensible subject matter!), it's all about how much fun you make it for them. The good news is, fourth graders are the sweet spot for the balance of enthusiasm with smarts. Keep in mind mind that just because your job is IT doesn't mean that you have to be constrained to talk about it the entire time.
Seeing that you have 20 minutes, I'd say you've got eight minutes for a warm-up and the rest for a game. Definitely keep the focus on aerospace and computers, keep the IT talk to "I keep the computer systems running," and go from there. Keep in mind that fourth graders are NOT stupid, though, so make sure simple doesn't equal patronizing.
Above all, being easy-going and cheerful makes all the difference. Photos and hands-on props are always good, and if your company has any PR people, you might want to pick their brains on what's cool about where you work, too.
Re:Pictures of your data center (Score:3, Informative)
Animate, animate, animate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Keep It Fun & Exciting (Score:3, Informative)
A stadium full of people.
I would pick the one that is closest to the school so they know which one you are talking about. You got US football, the college stadiums to pick from. Not too hard.
Educator Chiming in: (Score:3, Informative)
With risk of sounding reflexive, you have to treat 4th graders like your grand parents when it comes to computers. Sure, the 4th graders have probably spent more time online (laptop, PC/Mac, cell phone) than your grand parents, but they understand the workings just as well... or just as not.
Now, if you're going to talk to them about IT (not just "Hey, look what a computer can do") you have to first sell to them that they are actually interested about the workings of *anything*. Liken what you do to a doctor working on a patient where instead of dealing with blood, you're dealing with thoughts and communication. In fact, you are the emergency room doctor that's called on when people NEED to communicate but have lost the ability to do so.
After you relate yourself to something they WILL know, then talk about easy to swallow details. If you're helping rocket scientists get things into space, bring a large stack of dot matrix printer paper full of data and explain to them that it's your job to make sure all that information is squeezed through a tiny cable (this is where you hold up some wire or cat5). That's your blood vessel, that data is the blood, the computer is the heart... and you fight the disease of viruses, bugs, errors, and injury!
And then you win @ 4th grade. ;)
uum, whats 4th grade? 5yr, 10yr 15yr? (Score:1, Informative)
rest of the world calling.
Re:Keep It Fun & Exciting (Score:3, Informative)
No, because there was a schoolteacher on board as part of the "schoolteacher in space" program the launch was obviously going to be on TV in schools.