Colorado Technical University and the University of Phoenix claim that you can receive your bachelor’s degree in just 15 months.  The only way that you can do that is if you leave out a lot of what they might consider non-essential items when in fact, they aren’t non-essential.  They say that they can teach you all you need to know in 15 months and then you’ll be set to go and basically conquer the world.  The online universities say that they can give you all of the “skills” required to succeed in the field.  The amount of time spent in a lab diagnosing a problem on a computer can be replicated, but the environment and the user of the computer cannot be.  That being said, there is only so much you can learn online.  There are a lot of things that you can only learn in a lab with other people around you asking a variety of questions.  You cannot expect a computer to be able to convey the different range of personalities that one would encounter while working out in the field.  Nor could you expect it to come up with all the different environments that one could find oneself in out in the field.  The two key areas that a successful IT technician needs are skills and knowledge.

“Knowledge is Power.”^[3] When it comes to computers, you have to have an extensive amount of knowledge in order to be able to help others with their problems.  There are two main components that one must know in order to accomplish troubleshooting are the following: Architecture of the computer and the Platforms running on the computer.

The architecture of a computer is not that hard to understand once you understand what a computer does.  There are cords galore to most computers, but there are some, called “all-in-one PCs” that only come with the power cord.  Once I had someone approach me and ask me to look at his computer.  He stated that no matter what he did, it would not turn on.  I told him to go and check if the power cord was plugged into the wall.  We went and checked and sure enough, it wasn’t.  I used this story to prove a point.  Sometimes people can overlook the obvious.  This is just one example of something that you would have to learn in the field, because you don’t always know the skill level of your client.  When clients come to you with questions, try to ascertain their level of expertise.  Now if his power cord had been plugged in and he got offended at my question, I would just explain to him the process of elimination to make sure that all of the cords are correctly plugged into their respective spots.  If one cord is not plugged into the correct spot, then obviously your computer will not work as you had wanted it to.

The problems that most IT technicians have occur in the interaction between the software and the platforms.  Platforms are the operating systems that allow the software to communicate with the hardware and vice versa.  There are three main platforms: Mac, Windows, and Linux.  When it comes to problems with viruses, Windows is the worse. Mac comes in at a distant second with only a handful of viruses.  Viruses for Linux are nonexistent.  Additionally, there are programs that will only run on certain platforms.  For example, Internet Explorer is designed to only run on the Windows platform.  IT technicians need to know which software runs on which platforms.  When they know this information, they will be able to easily figure out what is wrong with the application that the client is trying to install.  For example, trying to install Internet Explorer on a Mac or Linux platform will not work because of the difference in the platforms.  Now each platform have different OS versions for them.  The most recent ones for Windows are: XP, Vista, and 7.  For Mac, they are OS X and OS X Snow Leopard.  For Linux, there are many, many different sub-platforms as well as versions.  Some Linux sub-platforms are: Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Suse.  The different OS versions are numbered.  There are programs that are only available for the Windows XP OS version and then there are some that are only Windows Vista compatible.  If you try to run a program meant only for Windows on a Mac, the Mac OS will not be able to recognize how to open the file(s).

“It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.”^[5] In order to fix a computer, one must have the necessary skills to do the task.  There are three main skills that you need to have in order to be really successful and irreplaceable.  These are: troubleshooting, dexterity, and communication.

In order to have good troubleshooting skills, there are three main skills.  They are deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and patience.  One must be able to use deductive reasoning to be able to narrow the number of concurrent problems down to the real source of the problem and then finding the proper solution to that problem.  Then there is the skill of inductive reasoning.  One must use inductive reasoning to go from a single path that a project can take to all the different applications that can spread forth from the project.  The final skill that an IT technician needs is patience.  You know the old saying, “Patience is a virtue?”  Well, its true.  Without some level of patience, one cannot begin to co-exist with others.  One must be able to be patient with a client who is not used to working with computers or is new to the software, so that the client is able to fully understand the product or process.

Dexterity is a key skill in any job having to do with computers.  One must not only have dexterous fingers, but also be able to type quickly without looking at the keyboard.  Being dexterous in this field means that one is physically skillful in using one’s hands.  One must be able to do multiple things at once so that you can diagnose what the problem with the computer is.

The greatest skill needed in the IT field is one that is universal for all fields.  It is called communication.  Without communication, we would not be able to do anything.  There are two skills that a technical person needs to be able to excel with communication.  They are active listening and being able to use common terminology.  Active listening is necessary because one must be paying attention to the speaker so that one can understand what the speaker’s problem is.  The other necessary skill is being able to use common terminology so that non-technical people can understand what the IT technician is saying.  What this means is that the IT doesn’t use technical jargon around people who wouldn’t necessarily understand.

There is more to being an IT technician than meets the eye. If one would be thinking about going to college to become an IT technician, it would make sense to go to a four-year college so that he/she could acquire all of the necessary skills to make oneself successful in the field.  So one should instead go to a four-year college in order to develop the full potential of becoming an IT technician.

Bibliography

1. ^ ITAA.org, p30, Accessed December 1, 2009
2. Technician (Wikipedia), Accessed December 1, 2009
3. The Quotations Page, Accessed December 2, 2009
4. Career Planner, Accessed December 1, 2009
5. Brainy Quote, Accessed December 3, 2009

The topic for my paper is going to be IT Support and the skills needed.

How will you start your paper?

Defining what an IT technician does for people.

What is your thesis?

Being an IT technician is a job that requires a multitude of skills not only pertaining to Information Technology.

What is the counter argument?

Being an IT technician isn’t all its cut out to be, you don’t really need any skills to become one.

What are the three points of your argument?

Skills– Troubleshooting, Reading Comprehension, Critical Thinking, Active Listening, Writing, Speaking, Learning Strategies, Active Learning, Instructing, and Complex Problem Solving.

Abilities– Inductive Reasoning, Oral Expression, Deductive Reasoning, Written Comprehension, Oral Comprehension, Problem Sensitivity, Speech Clarity, Speech Recognition, Near Vision, and Information Ordering.

Knowledge– Computers and Electronics, Customer and Personal Service, Engineering and Technology, English Language, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Administration and Management, Production and Processing, Design, and Psychology.

What is your conclusion?

There is more to being an IT technician that meets the eye.

Name at least three of your sources.

Technical support

Computer Support Specialists

IT Technical Support Officer

When communism collapsed in the spring of 1989 in Europe, there was a plethora of Americans telling former Communists how they should govern their countries.  The Americans were trying to create a “new society” in which the former communist countries were to adopt constitution like America’s.  About a decade later after the euphoria of post-communism began to fade away, there was another “new society” that was introduced.  This new society was called the Internet. The Internet was a system in which no government could regulate.  Code is cyberspace’s “law” as put by William Mitchell.  The Internet helped change the world in that saying that change is possible.

Chapter 2

The first story talks about MMORGs and MMOGs and how they correlate to the real world.  There was a story about a lady named Martha who grew poisonous flowers and her neighbor’s dog ate one.  The dog subsequently died, causing the owner to have a heated debate with Martha.  One such MMOG is called Second Life.  The second story talks about how the government can’t regulate what it can’t govern.  The third story was about what the virtual world does to people.  It allows people to express how they truly feel inside without the consequences of the real world.  The fourth story is about how computer worms work and whether or not they violate the fourth amendment.

Chapter 3:

Talks about “is-ism.” “Is-ism” is the mistake of confusing how something is with how it must be.  The first “is-ism” that the author talks about is that cyberspace can’t be regulated.  He states that cyberspace can be regulated based on it’s architecture.  If it is control you want, then you have to sacrifice autonomy and vice-versa.

Chapter 4:

Talks about how everybody is the “invisible man.”  Also talks about how CompuServe came up with a fix so that they could filter users by country.  Talks about how credentials can be forged/faked and how that can lead to security risks.  The author talks about how in real life, autonomy has to be  created, but in cyberspace, it is given.

Chapter 5:

The author talks about how London solved its traffic congestion problem by tracking cars during the congestion hours and imposing a tax on the cars who didn’t have a special permit or were taxis.  He also talks about VoIP and how the government is currently using wiretaps to listen in on the conversations.  He talks about how the FBI uses the cell towers to locate cell phone users.  He also talks about two different types of code called, “East Coast Code” and “West Coast Code.”  East Coast Code refers to the code that uses commands to control.  West Coast Code refers to how codes like Net95 regulated to disable centralized control; code that encrypts regulates to protect privacy.  He talks about z-theory and how it For the very same design that makes it possible for an Indian immigrant to invent HoTMaiL, or Stanford dropouts to create Google, also makes it possible for malcontents and worse to create viruses and worse. These sorts use the generative Internet to generate evil.

Lee Sheldon is an assistant professor of telecommunications in Bloomington. He has a BFA in Directing for the Theatre for being a playwright from Boston University and a MFA in Film Direction for being a screenwriter from the California Institute of the Arts. His first career was in Hollywood as a writer-producer for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Charlie’s Angels and in New York as a head writer for Edge of the Night. He has written 18 video games.

His second career was as a game designer. He was the writer-designer for games like Ripley’s Believe It or Not! The Riddle of Master Lu to a current series based on Agatha Christie novels and The Light Flight (a 1996 alternate reality game [ARG] called a web mystery back then). He was also a writer-designer-producer for some virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online (MMO) game worlds from Cyan’s URU: Myst Online to Disney’s Virtual Kingdom.

His third career was Books. He has written fiction and non-fiction books. Some examples of his fictional books are Impossible Bias (a murder mystery) and The Keys (a thriller [currently in progress]). His non-fiction book is called Character Development and Storytelling for Games.

His fourth career is what he calls “serious games.” At Duke University, the game that he created was called, The Truth. In this game, he was the writer-designer and the game was federally funded sci-fi multiplayer game designed as a drug intervention. At the University of Southern California, he was a consultant for a Department of Defense (DoD) game to teach Iraqi Arabic to soldiers. At the University of California at Berkley, he was a consultant for a virtual world recreating Oakland jazz clubs of the 1940’s and 50’s.

Projects he worked on at Indiana University were Quest Atlantis and Virtual Congress. In Quest Atlantis, he was the writer-designer-consultant for the virtual world that was designed to teach social and ecological responsibility to 4^th-6^th graders. Sasha Barab was the principal investigator for this project. In Virtual Congress, he was the consultant for the virtual world, which teaches students how Congress works. This was Lee Hamilton’s project.

Current projects

He is the writer-designer for a game called The Skeleton Key, which is an ARG. Jeanne Johnston who is in Kinesiology was the principal investor and Anne Massey who is in the Kelly School of Business was the co-principal investor. They were testing the efficacy of games as a direct fitness intervention. The game supplements HPER P105 class. The base center is in the Briscoe residence hall, which is the Fitness & Wellness Living Learning Center. The players consist of 60 students split into teams of three. The story elements contain a missing professor, a sinister conspiracy, mad scientists, dangerous experiments, unnatural creatures, UFOs, atypical agriculture, all designed to engage students and make them fitter without really noticing.

Londontown is a virtual world/MMO that is a commercial game. Private LLC with an agreement with IU Bloomington to legally use faculty and resources. Made with Emergent’s Gamebryo Engine. The world of the game consists of lore (Victorian London, time stands still), non linear, narrative driven, dynamic, responsive ongoing content, shallow learning curve, kitchen sink design, and convergence.

His future goals-

Bloomington Campus Collaboration-

Telecommunications, Informatics, Education, Theatre, Music, School of Ed Resource Study, Gamebryo, and Students

Inter-Campus Collaboration-

Internships, Teaching, Telepresence, Grants, Assets, and the IU Institute of Media & Science

Ivy Tech Collaboration- to be announced

The OLED screens are now al the rage for people who have a knack of breaking things. OLED screens are the successors to the LED screens.  Not only do they use less energy, but they also are incredibly thinner and, get this, FLEXIBLE!!!  The reason that I am interested in OLED screens is because the numerous applications that will be able to be applied with this technology.  For example, this technology could be integrated into clothing for stealth applications. The pros to OLED displays are the flexibility, durability, low energy consumption, and the thinness of the screens.  A temporary con is the price of OLED displays is currently far more expensive that LED displays, but as OLEDs become more readily available, the price will start to fall.

Laptops are becoming ever smaller and lighter, but this is about as small as they get. Sony and Orkin Design have found a way to make a 17″ multi-touch laptop that also is a flat screen TV and a tablet PC. The reason why I like this so much is that this technology will eventually be available for very cheap and will be mass produced so everyone will be able to use them. The pros for this product are that it is a light-weight laptop that is able to perform a variety of functions. The only temporary con that I see is that if you want to use a CD or DVD, there is no place to insert them. You would have to buy an external CD/DVD drive in order to use it.

This is every parent’s dream fan.

You heard me right. FAN. This is an actual fan that works.  It was made by James Dyson and it is called the Air Multiplier.  This in interesting because of the moment when you look at it, you wonder what it is and better yet, what does it do?  You thinking about this when you plug it in. “This thing should not work. A gust of air should not be coming from this giant, blue Fruit Loop.”  It does work because it is a vacuum cleaner that is inverted, forcing air into the grey base of the fan, then out through the tiny holes in the “giant, blue Fruit Loop.” In doing so, the following cheapscape graph show that the air creates suction and forces air through the ring. This technology is innovative because it looks like it shouldn’t work, but it does.  That is what draws me to it.  Some pros are that there are no plastic blades spinning at high RPMs to get your fingers mutilated by, and it is very quite.  Some cons are that “there’s no emulating Darth Vader’s voice with this thing,” and the very high price tag.  The price is set at $300-$330.

The WaterCar Python is a Corvette/luxury speedboat that is developed by the company Watercar.  Base price  is $170,000 and for an additional $30k to $50k you can upgrade the engine from the base LS1 to the LS9 which is used in the Corvette ZR1. It can go from 0-60 in 4.5 seconds.  It can easily top out at 60 mph in the water.  Some pros to this are that technology is becoming easier to integrate into everything, thus making it easier to make “watercar” that works are efficiently on land as it does in the water.  Another is that you don’t have to unload this boat, you can just drive into the water, press two buttons (one making the wheels retract, the other starts the jet), and then be on your way in the water.  Some cons are that the owners need to register their vehicle as both a car with license plates and a boat with marine stickers. On top of that, special amphibious vehicle insurance must be purchased unless owners want to buy both a car and boat policy.  This is a con as well, but it is also funny.  This could be a very good getaway car in the LA regions.  In the future, I can see all of our types of transportation merging into one unit. For exapmle, eventually, we may all have the Jettson’s family car.

Apple is talking about shipping a new type of mouse with their new iMacs. This mouse is rumoured to have the innovative feature called multi-touch incorporated into it.  It is a feature that has recently come out with the entire Macbook and Macbook Pro lines.  This feature allows you to right-click by touching the trackpad with two fingures. The mouse is also rumoured to have a new way to scroll pages by using an inertia feedback program.  This topic is of interest to me because I love using mice with my computers, but the Apple mouse is more difficult to use than a PC mouse.  There are some pros to the mouse.  One is that this mouse could reolutionize the mouse.  The second is that with the multi-touch, it doesn’t matter if you are left-handed or right-handed anymore.  There is only one con that I see and it is that this mouse will take a while to get used to.

This article is about what Google is doing to make all of your data available to all of your devices all of the time.  Google has created a device called, GDrive, that will mirror all of your information.  When they say mirror all of your information, they mean that for every change that is made to your data, the GDrive makes the same change simultaneously on every device and on the web.  The only problem that Google faces right now is that GDrive requires an internet connection so if you are offline, you are out of luck.  This article is interesting to me because it would make my life so much easier instead of owning a handful of different USB drives with different thing on them, I could keep all my data on my devices and not have to worry about maing sure that I brought the right USB drive.  In the far future, I could see this working.  There are a few cons I have about it though.  If this does come to pass, we won’t have control of our data.  So all of our personal information can be easily accessed by hackers and the like.  Another con I see is that if you don’t have an internet connection, your cloud is useless…  There are a few pros that come to my mind as well.  There won’t be much of a need for USB drives and big harddrives anymore, so that will increase the speed of your comuputer.  Another is that all of your data is accessible on all of your devices, not just your Ipod, desktop, or laptop.