July 30, 2007 -- The Structured Cabling Association, Inc. (SCA) has created a free PowerPoint presentation for schools seeking to offer training in structured cabling installation for communications and security systems.
According to a press release, the free program was created to allow schools to include cabling in their telecommunications or information technology curriculum as early as high school to encourage students to consider this lucrative profession.
"Teaching communications cabling needs to be included in technical programs as early as the high school level," contends Tom Collins, professor at Gateway Community & Technical College in Cincinnati, a founder of the SCA, and a contributor to the curriculum. "Many schools have communications programs but lack the materials to teach a cabling course, essential to the overall understanding of communications technology. Developing such a course is not easy for most instructors. The SCA, true to its non-profit professional society outlook, created this program to distribute free to instructors to facilitate teaching cabling and particularly to encourage younger students to consider a career in cabling, where jobs currently are readily available."
The four-part series includes over 200 PowerPoint slides keyed to the SCA textbook, "Data, Voice and Video Cabling," published by Delmar Learning. Topics include introduction to communications cabling, introduction to structured cabling, structured wiring and wiring practices, and fiber optics in structured cabling.
The PowerPoint slides are editable to allow instructors to adapt the presentations to their classes and add other relevant materials to the slides. The materials are easily integrated into in a telecommunications or information technology curriculum. According to SCA, with the current interest in residential cabling to support broadband connections such as fiber to the home, the material is also appropriate for many electrical training programs and apprenticeships.
Schools may download the presentations from the SCA website. Access to the program is available to SCA-approved schools offering SCA certification programs and SCA-registered schools who wish to teach an introductory cabling course without the complete SCA certification curriculum.