Advice on IT (1 Viewer)

[LC14199]

Hey guys,

I have a rather interesting question to pose to all of you today. I'm a Year 11 student, almost going into Year 12, and I do pretty well in the class room. Achieving marks in the sciences of 80+%, (chemistry was 96%). However maths is my lowest point.

This is irrelevant, only provided as background information. My true question is what can I do to get the school to help advance my skills and interest in IT. They don't offer any courses on school grounds for IT, (except for computing in Years 9-10, which was pitifully inadequate for my knowledge gathering) and the TAFE course I'm doing is a Cert III which I'm sure as you can guess, is basic at best and far below my capabilities.

I'm looking for a way to get the school to let me learn more about the advanced functions of IT, such as networking and desktop infrastructure. But they're hiding behind legalities. Which is fair enough, I'm not saying that legalities aren't important, because they are. But what I am saying, is that I've done workplacement for my TAFE course at a local IT business which is a moderately large business with multiple corporate contracts for onsite services. I worked at this business for 1 week, and I got an outstanding evaluation, and the following comment from my supervisor "If I could hire you, I would do so on the spot".

Unfortunately he isn't the boss of that business The evaluation basically stated that I have an outstanding and well rounded knowledge of IT, and that I leave with his recommendations. I'm looking to further advance my knowledge base.

So does anyone have any ideas on how I can convince the school to allow me to do anything related to working with IT? I was "unofficially" fixing computers in the classroom from years 8-10 (mostly small things, such as speakers not working, or a video wouldn't play, etc) but now that I'm in senior years, these small tasks have dried up and I'm feeling rather upset that my interest is being ignored, even though they can SEE that it has potential.

TL:DR

Advice on how to motivate the school to help expand my knowledge of IT, because right now they're not budging. I've asked the principal to extend the olive branch recently, and I'm waiting to see what occurs after that. Perhaps he'll come through. This is the backup plan if he doesn't.

 

[OzKo]

Schools are bureaucratic organisations and depending on the type of school (public, private, etc.), they will be required to go through official procurement channels if they need complex issues resolved.

It isn't so much that they don't want to help you expand your knowledge, but rather they need to minimise risk. Considering you don't have any formal qualifications to do this work (even if you are actually able), I would be surprised if they did budge.

 

[LC14199]

It's a Catholic school, and there it is again with the pieces of paper... That's all anyone cares about these days... There are people in the world that have tonnes of certificates and pieces of paper saying that they can do X job, but people like say my mum, who've got less pieces of paper, but a ton more experience (in their specific industries), get left out.

I think the KNOWLEDGE should count for more than anything else. Not some dumb piece of paper that says you "should" be able to do the job!

 

[AAEldar]

It's a Catholic school, and there it is again with the pieces of paper... That's all anyone cares about these days... There are people in the world that have tonnes of certificates and pieces of paper saying that they can do X job, but people like say my mum, who've got less pieces of paper, but a ton more experience (in their specific industries), get left out.

I think the KNOWLEDGE should count for more than anything else. Not some dumb piece of paper that says you "should" be able to do the job!

Which diocese? Maybe see if you can do something at the CEO. Not sure how easy that is in the metro dioceses but I know in the more regional ones it's not so hard to get a placement/job at the CEO for IT.

What exactly do you want to be doing in IT?

 

[LC14199]

I'm in the Wilcannia Forbes diocese. As for getting a job/placement, please bare in mind that I am in Year 11 ahaha, so a permanent job full time job is certainly out of the equation.

As for what I wish to do, I wish to expand my knowledge on networks and apply said knowledge in a work environment. I had a chance to do so in a work placement for TAFE at my local computer business (It's a medium-large business with large corporate contracts, so don't think it's small because it's local haha) which I absolutely loved. I learned an absolute ton. I have a strong well-rounded knowledge in IT (quoted from work placement supervisor) and I'm basically looking to put these skills to use.

If you'd like a summary of what I know I'm happy to fire off a few of the things I know about. However this list could be rather long because I'm constantly experimenting with my own computer at home (I use Virtual Box and Microsoft Dreamspark in order to get Windows Server 2012 R2, as well as 2008 R2). I've been a back-end server admin for a large gaming community in the past so I do have a relative history of working with servers. (This was an actual dedicated server hosted by Volume Drive, not just some game server GUI, I would RDP into the server on a daily basis)