[seul-edu] Introdution and Greetings

[TJ Miller jr <tjmiller@datc.tec.ut.us>]

I have just subscribed to this list as of yesterday. - My name is Thomas
J Miller jr, and I am a secondary/undergrad Instructor at the Davis
Applied Technology Center here in Kaysville, Utah.  The ATC system is
Utah's equivalent of what most states would call a VoTech school system.

Our mission here at the DATC involves not only vocational training with
the local high schools and adult community, but involves partnerships
with local universities and industry to provide courses either
custom-geared for a specific company for a fee ("Custom-Fit" training) ,
but also to provide alternative locations for college-accredited courses
that would normally be held at local universities (such as our MCP/MCSE
classes for Weber State University - http://www.weber.edu)

I myself am relatively new to teaching, having recently been hired on
and certified over the summer. My previous (and last industry position)
was with Ford Motor Company's DCS (computer services) Division. I am an
electronics engineer by training, but have  moved into computers and
networking as time progressed, since they held far more interest and
fascination to me. I have approximately 7 years of experience in
computers as a profession.  I am certified as an MCSE and MCT, and am
currently working in collaboration with Sair Inc  to create instructor
manuals and training material for their courseware.

When I first took on the job of creating an updated Unix course here, I
was up in the air between FreeBSD and Linux, (I still love BSD), but
Linux won out - it's easier to use, less complex for the student, and to
be honest, it incorporated a lot of strengths from System V that I've
really come to enjoy on this machine.

My office machine runs Mandrake 6.5 and Star Office, and even though the
school's grade and attendence reporting is done on a proprietary
Windows-based  (the front-end was written in VB) database, I have still
managed to "cut the cord" and use only Linux on this machine. (For now,
I just borrow one of the classroom NT machines and plug it into the
school network for the daily ritual.)

The Intro to GNU/Linux course is clearning copyright inspection by the
State Attorney General's office as we speak...given the bureaucracy, it
will most likely take a couple of weeks before they hand down a "yes" or
"no."  If it's "no", then I have to modify the copyleft and try again...
(I'm still not used to things running this slowly...)  In either case I
will keep one and all apprised of the situation as things develop.

Before I bore the lot of you to death, I would like to say in closing
that I lvoe how you've managed to corral software and development
resources in one spot - even though my own programming skills are crude
and barely usable, I look forward to pitching in and helping wherever I
can.

Regards to one and all,

TJ Miller jr
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VI VI VI - The Editor of The Beast