(Fwd) Linux Certification at SRJC

[Nancy Harrison]

To NBLUG: here is the *real* skinny on the new SRJC networking
course, from Sean K:

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:           	seank at gracie.santarosa.edu
Subject:        	Linux Certification at SRJC
To:             	vulpia at sonic.net
Date sent:      	Fri, 18 Jun 1999 18:56:20 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Nancy.

Eric Skagerberg forwarded a message that you had posted to the NBLUG list 
about our new networking curriculum. As the architect of the Linux 
certification track, I thought I could offer some additional information 
about this to the members of the NBLUG.

The basic premise behind these courses, as Sujan described to, is to provide 
a series of courses leading to certification as a CNE (Novel), MSCE 
(Microsoft), and LCE (Linux). The first two have fairly well defined courses 
of instruction as mandated by the respective corporations that own the 
products. The Linux certification process is less well defined in that up to 
now, there has been no authoritative sources for the definition of what Linux 
certification means.

Two Linux vendors - RedHat and Caldera - have both begun providing 
certification training. My analyses of their programs suggest that they do 
not provide exactly what we feel is necessary at the JC. In the case of 
RedHat, they do not currently allow for others to provide course content, nor 
testing for certification - it must be done at their facility. Caldera does 
provide for third party content delivery, but is rather pricey.

There are at least two other Linux certification efforts underway that I am 
aware of; SAIR (www.linuxcertification.org) and the Linux Professional 
Institute (www.lpi.org), which is described in this month's Linux Journal. I 
do not know much about the LPI effort as I just found out about it. I have, 
however, looked hard at the SAIR program and have tentatively decided to base 
SRJC's Linux track upon the contents of the knowledge matrix defined there. 

There are several courses in each of the three-certification tracks. I will 
focus my comments on the Linux track, since that is the one that I will be 
most closely involved in.

If you visit http://gracie.santarosa.edu/networking/Certification_Track.html, 
you'll find a graphical representation of what we're planning. 

Each of the three tracks begins with a Practicum - setting up a PC with an OS 
and simple networking client - and a Networking Theory and Concepts course to 
provide a sound theoretical background in telecommunications and networking 
technology. We envision these foundation courses to take about 1 semester.

Then the three tracks diverge. The Linux track will begin with a revamped 
version of our Introduction to Unix course, which has been offered at the JC 
for nearly 7 years. We're adding some additional topics that bring this 
course in line with those suggested by the SAIR knowledge matrix. This course 
will remain a semester long course (it used to be a pair of 8 week courses 
for some bizarre reason.)

The second semester Linux course will be in System Administration. The web 
site shows a potential (though subject to change and almost certainly will!) 
outline for such a course. This offering is still under development.

We then plan to offer a series of short, intense 8 hour seminars in various 
aspects of running a Linux box, including setting up and running web servers, 
DNS, mail configuration, and others as we see a need or demand.

Finally, our plans include a course at the very end of the track to set up an 
Intranet that uses servers and workstations of each of the three supported 
O/Ss. We call this Network Operating System (NOS) Interoperability, and is 
perhaps the most important part of the entire curriculum. Many business 
environments heterogeneous and contain a mix of two or more different types 
of systems. This third course will allow students to explore some of the 
issues involved in setting up and running network systems that exploit the 
best that each platform has to offer.

As part of this curriculum, the JC will become affiliated with the Sylvan 
testing centers and we will use this mechanism to provide certification of 
our students. Assuming that a student successfully passes the tests for the 
appropriate track, he or she would then become a certified professional for 
that particular operating system.

The current plan is to begin offering the foundation courses in the spring 
semester of the year 2000 (we think of this as S2K), with the various layers 
offered in succeeding semesters. Ideally, we'll be able to train enough staff 
(possibly by hiring new faculty) so that we can offer some of the more 
advanced courses earlier than they would appear if the tracks were followed 
sequentially. In particular, there are hundreds of former students in the JC 
area that have already taken the Intro to Unix course, and we want to be able 
to offer them an early chance at the administration course. This will be 
difficult to accomplish given our current staffing levels.

We will be offering these classes at the Coddingtown facility, where we will 
have three new servers dedicated one for each O/S, a dedicated LAN, and 20 
workstations with removable hard disks so that students can get practical, 
hands-on experience with the topics that they are studying.

We are very excited by the opportunities that this curriculum presents to the 
JC community. 

I hope that this information is of use to you and the NBLUG. Please don't 
hesitate to contact me if you have further questions concerning the Linux 
track.

	Sean R. Kirkpatrick
	Instructor/System Administrator
	CIS Department
	Santa Rosa Jr. College

As a postscript, I'd like to acknowledge all of the others involved in 
developing this curriculum - it is not a one-person job, by any means. Our 
team leaders have been Metha Schuller (CIS Chair) and Sujan Sarkar. Technical 
team members have been Jeffery Diamond (MSCE), George Lancina (long-time lab 
wizard in Magini Hall and soon-to-be CNE), and yours truly. We've had support 
>from others in the department as well; Eric Skagerberg and Pat Grosh who are 
revising the current Unix curriculum to fit the SAIR knowledge model, and 
Barbara Heiman who has provided valuable input on the 
telecommunications-networking theory course.


-Nancy Harrison, Life Sciences Dept., Santa Rosa JC
http://www.sonic.net/~vulpia/index.html
http://www.sonic.net/~vulpia/cnps/mbaker.html (Calif.native plants)
Linux...'nothing can resist an idea whose time has come.'