How does an educator teach a subject as busy and constantly shifting as technology in 2018? Gauging what students know, don’t know and need to know, and pooling brain cells with outside experts can help, according to Tom Rasmussen (pictured), director of information technology and instructor at the Greater Boston Joint Apprentice Training Center.

The center comprises the trade school for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Boston, Massachusetts. Roughly 12- to 15,000 apprentices from the electrical and telecommunications fields undertake the five-year program.

“From an educational standpoint, it is challenging,” Rasmussen said, adding that prior knowledge of computers can vary quite a bit among individuals. “They know a lot more now than they did five or six years ago, so it’s a little easier.”

Telecom apprentices usually come equipped with healthy compute and networking know-how, Rasmussen told Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VTUG Winter Warmer event in Boston, Massachusetts. This isn’t usually the case with electricians, but that will change, he added.

Expert trends

“We’re finding that even in the electrical industry, we need to train our electricians to know about networking, because the lighting system is now in Endpoint [an Internet-capable device on a TCP/IP network],” Rasmussen said. “… The management of the security system — everything is going to be on the internet. So as I say, there’s not going to be a lighting switch. You’re going to walk in the door, and say, ‘Computer, turn on the lights, mood level five.'”

Disruption in these industries can influence the topics Rasmussen teaches. “Internet of things” connected devices are finding their way into the electrical field, so the apprenticeship is now incorporating IoT. “It’s starting to come in, because it has to. Those devices are there. Our heating system in our building went down the other day, and it turned out it was an IP address information. So the joke was, don’t let electricians near IP addresses,” he said.

The curriculum is constantly evolving in this way, Rasmussen explained. “It is challenging. I can’t be an expert in hardware, or software, or services, or applications. I kind of have to get in the middle and then hopefully get someone to come and give me a hand,” he concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer.

Photo: SiliconANGLE