When the Fall 2012 course schedule is published, you will notice something different: instead of ITM, courses in our program will have four-character “subject codes”. They’ll still all start with ITM but the fourth character will indicate a broad subject area. The new subject codes are:
ITMD Development: Application development, web development, multimedia, data management
ITMM Management: Management of information technology, business, law and ethics
ITMO Operations: Networking, communications, operating systems and system administration
ITMS Security: Security and forensics
ITMT Theory and Technology: Theory, systems, system design & general topics in IT
Initially all courses will still have the same number as they did before the transition, but new courses will gradually begin to overlap numbers so you will need to read both the subject code and the number to make sure it’s the correct course. 100-, 200- and 300-level courses will retain the familiar three-letter ITM subject code. We know it’s a bit of a hassle, but really, this is a good thing: it only happened because our program is so healthy that we were in danger of running out of course numbers!
Critiquing Your Rewritten Resume
Tues, Feb 7 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm @ Perlstein 131
Resume Review – Have your resume reviewed by IIT staff
Fri, Feb 10 from 10:00-2:00 @ Perlstin 131
IIT Career Fair
Thur, Feb 23 from 11:00-4:00 @ Herman Hall
Questions? Contact Madeleine England at mengland@iit.edu
Pictures from the School of Applied Technology party at the Bog on Tuesday, January 24th are now posted on Facebook. If you didn’t make it, we’re sorry, because it was a great time. It was super to see so many students and faculty turn out and a special thanks goes out to ITM Program Coordinator Madeleine England for doing such a wonderful job setting this all up. Anyway, plan on making it to our picnic next September: we’ve learned our lesson and we’ll do everything we can to not run out of food!
Robert Half Technology has published their 2012 IT Salary Guide (worth grabbing a copy of!). They identify the following hot IT skills based on a survey of more than 1,600 CIOs in the United States and Canada:
5 TECH PROFESSIONALS FIRMS WANT NOW
- Systems and networking engineers: Skills – Cloud computing, Software as a Service, Virtualization
- Developers: Skills – .NET, Java, PHP, Silverlight, Flex, MySQL and portal technologies such as SharePoint
- Quality assurance professionals and business analysts
- Data warehousing and business intelligence professionals
- Security professionals
TOP TECHNICAL SKILLS IN DEMAND (after the break…) Read more…
On Wednesday January 18th many of your favorite websites–Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Reddit, Boing Boing and more–will be blacked out for a day to protest two pending pieces of legislation now before the Congress of the United States: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet, stifle online innovation and creativity, and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States. They appear to violate provisions of the U.S. Constitution by operating with a presumption of guilt and denial of due process, and could seriously harm the integrity of the Internet Domain Name System, particularly ongoing efforts to implement DNSSEC. For more information about this legislation please see the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s site and please contact your Senators and Representative to make your opinion heard.
According to a recent Computerworld survey, the top IT job skills employers will be seeking in 2012 in order of demand are:
1. Programming and Application Development (Especially Web development & Mobile application development)
2. Project Management (Especially those who also have skills as Business Analysts)
3. Help Desk/Technical Support (Especially those who can support mobile devices)
4. Networking (Need fueled in large part by virtualization and cloud computing projects)
5. Business Intelligence (Many need SharePoint developers)
6. Data Center (IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration, and experts in disaster recovery and business continuity)
7. Web 2.0 (HTML5, .Net, AJAX and PHP)
8. Security (Strong technical security and auditing skills)
9. Telecommunications (IP telephony skills)
Read more…
The last day to add courses or to drop them without a fee is January 20th. Please decide very soon what you really want to do this term, and if you are not yet registered, GET REGISTERED! After the final add/drop date, we will add folks to our Microsoft Developer’s Network Academic Alliance software subscription.
Cloud computing is a hot topic these days; if you are considering taking ITM 444/ITM 544 Cloud Computing Technologies in Fall 2012, you should take ITM 456 Introduction to Open Source Operating Systems this spring. It is not a prerequisite, but students who do not have a solid grounding in Linux will be at a distinct disadvantage in the class. (And no one wants to be at at a distinct disadvantage now, do they?)
Social Media Marketing, ITM 495/ITM595, is a last-minute addition for the Spring term. Students in this course will explore the tactics, tools and strategies of incorporating new media channels to successfully grow a business, and/or to maximize the goals of other types of organizations. Topics will include social media components and tactics such as Social Networks, Blogs, Microblogs, Photo Sharing, Audiocasting/Videocasting, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Mobile Apps; social media tools; social media strategies; how to run a business based on social media; and use of social media for customer relationship management (CRM). The course will be taught by Robert VanDame and will meet Tuesday evenings at 6:25pm in Stuart 238 on the Main Campus. Grading for the course will be based on three exams and a Student Project consisting of development of a Social Media Marketing program for a real or fictional organization. If you need a last-minute addition to your schedule this might be the thing.
As a reminder, our BookList is at http://www.itm.iit.edu/data/ITM_Booklist_12S.pdf.
By the way, we hope to add additional seats to all of our closed sections except ITM 461 sometime on Monday.
ITMS 555 Mobile Device Forensics will be offered in Fall 2012. BUT if you want to take it, you must take ITM 538 Computer and Network Forensics first. it will be taught in the spring 2012 semester so you need to do it in the coming term.
Here is a is a PDF file containing:
♦ An updated course description of ITM 538
♦ A description of ITMS 555 as we see it at this time
http://www.itm.iit.edu/data/ITM_Forensic_Courses.pdf
The Data Center Operations and Management specialization has a three course prerequisite chain which begins with ITM 554, Operating System Virtualization, which will be offered in Spring 2012. It is a lab course at the Rice Campus on Wednesday evenings, but there is a bus from the Main Campus. The follow-on courses include ITMT 535 Data Center Architecture in Fall 2012 and ITMM 576 Data Center Management in Spring 2013. These courses have already been identified by some major players in the data center industry as the best offered and will meet an urgent need for data center professionals. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, start with ITM 554!
If you are working toward completing the security specialization, ITM 588 Incident Response, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity will run this spring on Tuesday evenings at IIT’s Downtown Campus; there are buses there to and from the Main Campus, and it is less than a block from Union Station for those in the suburbs. This is also a course that EVERYONE in the Data Center Operations and Management specialization can take as a key elective in that program. It’s at the Downtown Campus because it’s also offered as part of the Master of Public Administration program in their Disaster Management specialization.
(Note the new course prefixes; there will be a bunch of these next fall) Hope you had a great great holiday–and g0t some rest to be energized for the next term!
IIT’s Professional Learning program has been working with Chicago Career Tech (CCT) to help educate and retrain unemployed people for technology related jobs. We recently received this encouraging email that IIT is making a difference.
Greetings,
With 2011 drawing to a close, I want to share our deep gratitude for your support of Chicago Career Tech and offer a snapshot of our busy year. Earlier this year, Chicago Career Tech became an independent not-for-profit corporation and recently received official 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service. This is a huge accomplishment for our organization that is not even two years old.
Program highlights from 2011 include:
- 781 Chicago residents participated in the program in 2011
- 93% of our third class graduated from the program last month and 91% from the second in May
- 63% of our second class graduates have self-reported they have secured employment while 18% are continuing their education
- 173 business, nonprofit and government partners provided hands-on learning experiences to participants in 2011’s three classes
- 149 organizations hired Chicago Career Tech graduates in 2011
While we are very proud of the numbers above, it is the success of Chicago Career Tech participants that motivates our team. I encourage you to visit the Success Stories on our website and meet some of our graduates and participants. A few of our graduates who recently secured employed shared the following with us:
“I love my job, I love the people that I work with and I am so grateful to CCT for existing… I gained more than I had even hoped for.”
– Class 3 Graduate, Microsoft Certified Application Specialist track
“My training through CCT has given my marketable skills an amazing boost. But it has done more than that. The program has taken me from a low point (no job, no income, no money) to a position of growth and excellence. I am so happy to be a part of this program.”
– Class 3 Graduate, SharePoint track
It’s people like these recent graduates who inspire us every day at Chicago Career Tech. However, we cannot do this without you. It is because of your generous support and partnership that 950 families are celebrating the holiday season and begin the New Year with renewed optimism. We look forward to your continued support that will impact even more of our neighbors in 2012.
Marie Trzupek Lynch
President
Chicago Career Tech
