Intense School featured on "The Today Show"

We were asked to do a piece on the insecurity of wireless networks. The cameras came into our CEH class for some footage, and I was interviewed, but none of that made the final cut. Our friend Chris did a wardrive in Houston and did a great job giving them the demos and soundbites they were looking for. It turned out to be a pretty good piece.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891#33530153

Should practices tests be perfect?

We have had many conversations behind the scenes about this topic. There are no shortage of questions about the ethics and proper use of practice questions in technical training. I believe in them, but should they be always perfect, clean and error free?

A perfect practice exam is far less confusing to a student, and there is no question that incorrectly marked answers keep a learner off balance. But the other side to that coin is that a few curve balls, perhaps 3-5 in 100 questions, discourages memorization and promotes discussion in class.

Ultimately whether or not practice questions are an effective learning and assessment tool is almost entirely left up to the way a student handles them. Memorizing is actually the hard way to do things, and it leaves the student rigid and unprepared if the actual test is off by as much as one word on a relatively simple question.

Understanding the exam concepts is the shortcut, because much of the time even questions where all the noise and trivia are not familiar to the test taker, the answer can be figured out from knowing what the question is trying to communicate.

Many will disagree and I will be criticized on evaluations for having practice exams with a few errors in them, but I am for anything that requires the student have to assess their own confidence in how they are really understanding the material. This is not to say there will always be errors in my tests, but there might be, I'll never tell.

Two Tenents of Teaching

There are two things a person must accept before agreeing to be an instructor:

You cannot call in sick during a bootcamp. (This one comes to mind because I am battling a headcold that all the masking agents in the world can't get rid of)

The second one is a bit more complicated. To borrow a phrase from "A Course in Miracles"; All human expression is either love or a cry for help".

This might be a bit dramatic for a classroom environment, but the point is that most of the time a frustrated student is really just a curious one that hasn't found a way to line up their perceptions with the material. The instructor must never take this personally, even if the he is personally attacked in the process or the course itself is scrutinized to the point of missing the point.

Usually one good eye to eye conversation can resolve this issue. Do not wait until the last day of class to have it. Note to students; ask for this conversation. Instructors; watch out for the need for one and be proactive about it. The outcome is almost always improved if the right amount of empathy is involved.