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I teach electronics in Boise, ID using electronics trainers made by
Nida. It's a self-paced course for students, so I pretty much
monitor kids progress and give them one on one help when they
ask.

Aside from learning on the Nida Trainers, I have kids reading
schematics, building breadboards, and designing PCBs using Ares
lite. By the end of the semester the class will shoot and etch their
own PCBs. I give kids individual help and evaluate their designs.

I had a parent who is a bench technician tell me that I'm not
teaching electronics correctly. Since I have a computer
background, he also says I don't know what I'm doing. He also
claims technicians don't make PCBs, that they only use perf
boards

For the techs out there, would you agree with this guy's
statements (even partly)? Am I doing this wrong?

Thanks for your input.

Paul

I made PC boards in high school. In college i used bread boards and perf boards. As a bench tech, I worked on
both PC boards and perf boards. As an engineer, I only did PC boards.

I had a design thar consisted of about 450 10K ECL ICs. with a clock rate of 17.5 nSec. When I was done with the design, my manager said "Well lets get it wire wrapped". I looked at him and said, "And what do you expect lo learn from a wire wrapped board that will help us build a PC board". We skipped the wire wrapped board and went right to PC board. We never did a wire wrapped board again.

So to answer your question, you are probably not doing any thing wrong, maybe incomplete, but not wrong. But does time allow you to be complete. You're not complete until you've taught electromagnetic field theory, Laplace transforms, Nyquist and Bode plots, fourier analysis, .... 3 years of high scool electronics, a bachelors degree, and 30 years experience and I'm still a student.

If you have the attitute that you may have something to learn, is there something else you could/should be doing something more for your students, then you are on the right track. - And any kids father should be glad you're teaching his kid.

Doug Hale

verhap@... wrote:

verhap,

I had a parent who is a bench technician tell me that I'm not
teaching electronics correctly. ...he also says I don't know what I'm
doing...claims technicians don't make PCBs, that they only use perf boards

Don't tell the parent this but he's full of beans. Each situation is unique.
Some techs, especially in large companies, can afford to have their techs
specialize that way. In small companies the tech(s) may do everything, of
course if there are job houses around they can have them do that.
Nevertheless, making at least one PC board will give the student a good feel
for what they are all about. Not everything a student does is geared to what
they will do on the job.

Am I doing this wrong?

I can't comment on anything else you are doing since you didn't describe what
you are doing. It's a constant struggle for an electronics teacher to stay
current and to provide what will most benefit the student. If he is alone,
and that sounds like your situation, it's worse because he has no one to
'bounce' his ideas against. But now you have someone.

I taught electronics at a college level institution for seventeen years and
things changed so much in that time that my years of tech experience were
almost irrelevant... almost. There are concepts that will always prevail,
like being able to think through technical problems, going between the macro
and the micro concepts. Because there is so much to learn today some
employers want to 'gut the programs'. They say that a. it will all have
changed by the time we get them and b. we have to retrain them anyway. Then
they turn around and ask for students with experience that they couldn't
possibly have gotten at a tech school without 100% involvement from the
employers. At my school we only had one branch of the industry doing that,
the biomedical department. They would bring in people from the manufacturers
to do seminars, etc. The only other time we had that was when we were still
doing consumer electronics, our teacher was a member of the EIA and he had
good contacts. That didn't keep the school from dropping consumer electronics
programs however.

Jim

Doug,

I made PC boards in high school. In college i used bread boards and perf
boards. As a bench tech, I worked on
both PC boards and perf boards. As an engineer, I only did PC boards.

The only disadvantage of building pc boards is when you don't have the right
equipment. There's no reason a company that builds electronic equipment can't
cost justify the best board building facility, OR pay to have them built from
engineering designs. I suspect that the best board companies will do or at
least participate in the design, that's their specialty.

I had a design thar consisted of about 450 10K ECL ICs. with a clock rate of
17.5 nSec. When I was done with the design, my manager said ... what do you
expect lo learn from a wire wrapped board that will help us build a PC
board".

For moderate sized projects a proto board version might be a good next step,
but with that many chips designing the board is probably a better use of
resources. What a nightmare, wire wrapping that many chips, 45 would be bad
enough, it just crosses my eyes. The best thing about wire wrap is the wire,
it's great for field mods of pc boards. :-)

We skipped the wire wrapped board and went right to PC
board. We never did a wire wrapped board again.

But does time allow you to be complete.
You're not complete until you've taught electromagnetic field theory,
Laplace transforms, Nyquist and Bode plots, fourier analysis, .... 3 years
of high scool electronics, a bachelors degree, and 30 years experience and
I'm still a student.

Of course most of that is engineering, not 'teching', if the techs got all
that who would need engineers? :-)

And any kids father should be glad you're teaching his kid.

The father was probably showing off, there's showing off by being negative and
by being positive. The former is usually done by someone who doesn't know his
ass*** from his belly button.

Jim

Dear friend

It sounds to me like a case of "my-kid-is-the-best-and-I-want-the-
best-for-my-kid", rather than an academic competence issue... but
then again I may be off the track since I (we) have not attended any
of your classes!

From my experience, I will say this: Electronics can be a lot of fun
to learn, and the most fun in my case used to consist in building
things that actually worked... in the real world and not just on the
bench. Keeping this little equalizer that sounded so nice in class in
a working condition while carrying the Discman around will require
either permanent solder or an awful amount of hot meld glue on the
bread/perf board.

The various mechanical means of establishing and retaining an
electrical circuit are just that: it's the concepts, rules and
formulas that "really" counts, even if it's through alligator clips.
There will be plenty of time for them to get fussy with gold-plated
contacts once they actually understand what they are required for.
And then, they will be equipped with practical hands-on techniques to
put their knowledge to good use.

Keep up the good work.

-- In Electronics_101@y..., verhap@o... wrote:

I teach electronics in Boise, ID using electronics trainers made by
Nida. It's a self-paced course for students, so I pretty much
monitor kids progress and give them one on one help when they
ask.

Aside from learning on the Nida Trainers, I have kids reading
schematics, building breadboards, and designing PCBs using Ares
lite. By the end of the semester the class will shoot and etch

their

own PCBs. I give kids individual help and evaluate their designs.

I had a parent who is a bench technician tell me that I'm not
teaching electronics correctly. Since I have a computer
background, he also says I don't know what I'm doing. He also
claims technicians don't make PCBs, that they only use perf
boards

For the techs out there, would you agree with this guy's
statements (even partly)? Am I doing this wrong?

Thanks for your input.

Paul

emploi1,

Electronics can be a lot of fun to learn, ..most fun...consist in building

things that actually worked...
...either permanent solder or... hot meld glue on the
bread/perf board.

Glued together?

it's the concepts, rules and formulas that "really" counts, even if it's
through alligator clips.

There will be plenty of time for them to get fussy with gold-plated
contacts once they actually understand what they are required for.

It's true that the best designed and most meticulously built widget isn't
worth spit if it doesn't work. OTOH I can tell you that a little extra time
and effort can make the diff. between something working and not.

And then, they will be equipped with practical hands-on techniques to put
their knowledge to good use.

Yes, you might have to get something together with 'bailing wire and chewing
gum' but as soon as they get hooked on building they need early on to learn
that workmanship is vital to a circuit working, especially long term.

Jim

I had a parent who is a bench technician tell me that I'm not
teaching electronics correctly. Since I have a computer
background, he also says I don't know what I'm doing. He also
claims technicians don't make PCBs, that they only use perf
boards.

As others have said, you're clearly doing a good job and have had to deal with an unpleasant parent. I feel bad for his kid.

The larger issue, however, is a lot trickier. I've always had a bit of a problem with high-school electronics. I'm not at all sure that kids are mature enough to understand the issues, and my sense is that that, for the most part, they'd be better off studying electromechanical equipment, leaving electronics as a black box until they're a bit older. At least that's the impression I've gotten from the few occasions I've taught electronics in high schools. (I'm assuming that this is a high school course from the 'k-12' in the address.)

Having said that, however, there's no reason that kids can't learn to solder, etch circuit boards, and just deal with the components while they build something that works. There's certainly virtue in this, even if it doesn't obviously lead to a deeper understanding of circuit theory. The issue of perf board vs. PC boards is irrelevant, as others have mentioned. I think we've all built circuits on pieces of cardboard, or just hanging in the air, for that matter.

A far more difficult question is what we want the students to take away from a high-school electronics course, and this should be a matter of some discussion. It seems to me that in a short time period, they could be given either a general walk through the components catalog: this is an inductor, this is a bipolar transistor, etc. Or they could be given a general view, made specific with appropriate labs, of how we use electricity to transmit power and transmit information.

I favor the latter approach: the component electronics that's taught at most community and technical colleges is about thirty years old, and I rather doubt that high-school programs are further along than that. Columbus State Community College's EET program, for example, doesn't include digital communication except as part of one optional theory course. In most programs of its kind, the students are made to spend a great deal of time learning to bias a bipolar transistor amplifier without a clear indication of just what an amplifier might be used for.

The usual electronics course also devotes an enormous amount of time on what educational theoreticians are pleased to call "hands-on" work. This is because educational theoreticians don't understand science and technology and thus have some vague idea that you can learn electronics by coming in physical contact with electronic components for a certain number of 'clock hours.' My own opinion is that lab time is wasted on a student who hasn't had a fairly sound theoretical introduction to the work that he's going to do. I rant on about this sort of thing at great length at .

At any rate, it certainly sounds like you're doing your best with the kids. There's nothing in a computer background that should preclude you from being a good electronics teacher: many technicians with years of experience cherish some of the strangest notions of circuit theory imaginable.

I would, however, be interested in knowing what those kits contain.

M Kinsler



M Kinsler

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Yes, you might have to get something together with 'bailing wire and chewing
gum' but as soon as they get hooked on building they need early on to learn
that workmanship is vital to a circuit working, especially long term.

You've never built a circuit on a block of wood? Or tacked leads together and sort of crumpled the thing together inside a little box?

My current favorite technique uses cardboard. Draw the circuit out on the cardboard, punch holes through it, insert the components, and solder 'em together on the back. Looks like hell but seems to last forever. You kind of want to watch it with high-wattage resistors, though.

M Kinsler

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Mark,

You've never built a circuit on a block of wood? Or tacked leads together
and sort of crumpled the thing together inside a little box?

Of course, but as circuits get complex the construction method can impact the
viability of the circuit. Did it fail because the design was flawed or because
it was poorly constructed. Beside proto boards do a great job and are more
dependable than things crumpled inside of boxes.

...circuit out on the
cardboard, punch holes through it, insert the components, and solder 'em
together on the back.

A circuit worth building is worth building well. I'm not talking about building
a pc board on the first pass, and depending on the complexity not even a perf
board. Even a simple series parallel circuit is better on a proto board.
Inexperienced learners have a terrible time relating components to a circuit.
Believe me after seventeen years I know. Today's electronics students don't seem
to have the 'seat of your pants' skill to conceive something and carry it off,
especially something as abstract as electronics. If they are building a
mechanism some students will be able to see how it works when they look at it.
Electrical devices are a different story. So a proto board can be used to orient
the parts as closely as they are drawn in a schematic diagram. Then the diagram
and the real circuit are similar and the student needn't bridge such a large
gap.

Jim

Looks like hell but seems to last forever. You kind
of want to watch it with high-wattage resistors, though.

M Kinsler

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