Tips and tricks for setting up cloud for your classroom

Oracle Academy Tech Chat

In this episode Tyra Peirce speaks with Oracle Principal Architect and adjunct professor Victor Statchura about teaching cloud computing in the classroom, and some of the specific things that faculty should think about when they embark on teaching students in the cloud. ---------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;35;10 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. 00;00;35;11 - 00;01;06;09 I'm your host here appears in this episode. I'm joined by Oracle Principal Solution architect and adjunct University of Buffalo instructor Victor Stachura. In this episode, Victor and I speak about setting up cloud software and how it differs from setting up on premise software. Welcome, Victor. Thanks, Tyra. Glad to be here. So, to start off, can you give me a little bit about your background, your role at Oracle and the class you teach at University of Buffalo? 00;01;06;13 - 00;01;30;10 Sure, I can do that. I've got a long history, which means I've got a lot of experience. I've been working for a long time. I've been with Oracle for about just over three years. I've been teaching at the University of Buffalo for over ten years. I'm always in an adjunct role. Right now, I'm a principal solution architect, so I'm in a pre-sale’s tactical role. 00;01;30;12 - 00;02;01;12 Prior to that, at other companies, I was director of Enterprise architecture, software engineer, presales consultant, all kinds of different things. So, the courses I teach one is called Enterprise Models, which is basically a consulting solution architect type course, and the other one, which is more applicable to this podcast was called Big Data Technologies. So, students learned about concepts of big data, and they were hands on with Hadoop. 00;02;01;14 - 00;02;28;00 So, for someone who's interested in using cloud in their classroom, what is a key difference between cloud and on prem software? Well, when I started this course and I've been working with Oracle University, I was very excited to find out that they offer OCI credits to students. I was very concerned about installing Hadoop on each student's laptop because they all don't have laptops. 00;02;28;02 - 00;02;52;26 Some have Windows, different operating systems, some have, you know, Mac, you know, laptops. Some are using tablets. Some are using their phone. So, the previous instructor had a lot of problems with all the students and all the devices and trying to get software loaded up saying, great, let's use OCI. Everyone's working off from the same platform no matter what device they have. 00;02;52;29 - 00;03;20;21 They can access the cloud, and they can go from there. So that was really kind of the idea and the genesis of this whole thing. I wanted to eliminate a whole boatload of problems installing in different devices. So, what are some particular things that you think about when you set up a cloud environment, particularly for the classroom? Yeah, that's a really good question because these students, they were undergraduates, so they had very limited cloud experience. 00;03;20;23 - 00;03;42;11 I think there's a lot of people in industry, even to this day, even though cloud is a multibillion-dollar business for us and other companies, all they know is the marketing literature. I get out a credit card. I can go create an account. I go spin up a compute instance. I can move along. They don't realize all the details that have to go into that. 00;03;42;13 - 00;04;06;17 These kids, I had to give them instructions, too. You had to create private and public keys. What are keys? What are the tools you use to create these keys? They don't know anything about that. Yeah, you can speed up your spin up your environment. Well, you need an Internet gateway so you can access it. You need to use things, you know, different access tools to get into that environment. 00;04;06;19 - 00;04;27;10 You got to change network settings. There are security lists. There's, you know, security on the network cards, storage. You want to use block storage. There's a whole other set of commands you have to do to attach that. So, you need to understand the basics of cloud infrastructure, networking. If you're actually going to go and use some of these things. 00;04;27;10 - 00;04;52;13 It's not just a platform as a service. How to set up a cloud instance differ from setting up an on prem instance? Yeah, it's really understanding. In the cloud instance, you have to understand all that networking. You have to touch all those different parts of OCI and get used to using a lot of new tools. If I'm going to install software on my laptop, I'm going to download IT installer, let it run and away I go. 00;04;52;16 - 00;05;13;22 Okay, so in some respects it might be simple to do that. But again, when you're in a classroom environment, you got 50 kids or 40 kids and they all have different versions of hardware and software, it becomes complicated really quick. I think that's really interesting because we're all operating on different operating systems. I know I have a mac and some of my coworkers have PCs. 00;05;13;24 - 00;05;30;19 And so, when we go in and we're putting things in like our mail programs and we're trying to do share mailboxes, things like that, the commands that they use are different than the commands that I use based on operating system. And I think that, you know, it's cool that once you're in the cloud, that kind of levels, that playing field and everybody's the same. 00;05;30;27 - 00;05;50;15 Exactly. I gave these students very detailed instructions, typed this command, typed that command. I only had to do one set of instructions if I had Mac and Windows at least two. And then there's probably some other variants in there. If somebody throws in Linux or Unix or something else, even like you've got another set of instructions on top of that. 00;05;50;15 - 00;06;12;28 Exactly. Exactly. And these students, some of them are using iPads. They write on their iPads. A lot of them are using their phones. They're Yeah, I know there's tiny little screens, even though iPhone or a galaxy really large, they're using their phones. So how they interact in the classroom is very different than you and I or what we would think or how we. 00;06;13;00 - 00;06;31;28 However, we were back in school, we brought our computers, or we had our just taking notes in our in our notebooks and then going into the computer like that is crazy that they're starting to use their phones now to run their databases and things on the that's just actually several of them had the laptops that they're trying to OCI. 00;06;32;05 - 00;06;55;01 The instructions are on their phone and it's, you know, flipping back and forth. They can barely read it. No one is. They're skipping steps. It wasn't very efficient. I literally said to the class, we may go old school, and I may print these out for your paper because they were missing steps. But I digress. So, what are some key skills that students learn when they set up a cloud instance? 00;06;55;03 - 00;07;16;25 Well, they are going to learn about cloud infrastructure and what needs to be set up for that. They're going to learn about some of the networking infrastructure that needs to be set up. So, they're going to get some hands on with that and they may not have any experience to that. You know, getting that set up the security lists and block storage and those things that I mentioned previous. 00;07;16;27 - 00;07;45;07 The other skill is a soft skill that some students can do well, and others couldn't, meaning figure things out if it didn't work well. Okay, maybe they made a typo in the instructions or in the commands. Maybe they skipped a step. Okay. Or maybe is permission wasn't set up right. Some were very good, and they would do, you know, do a Google search and they would find it or ask a gen. 00;07;45;12 - 00;08;07;13 I know the question and they would solve it on their own. Other kids would say it didn't work. I don't know what to do. So, their lack of problem-solving skills is something I'm going to have to address going forward because I'm going to teach this again. Okay. They will learn some basic even UNIX or Linux commands. Okay. 00;08;07;13 - 00;08;29;27 Because look, there was the operating system we use at our compute instance, Ubuntu Linux. So that was something they're going to learn too. I think it's very interesting you talk about problem solving skills. I think of back in my development days when I had you have to do debugging or testing. I think that that's such an important skill that no matter if you're going to be a programmer or if you're writing instructions or any time you're working in tech. 00;08;29;27 - 00;08;55;07 I think debugging and learning how to figure out what went wrong is always a really, really important skill for everybody to learn. Absolutely. And the thing is, all of us in that class, when I when I taught it, we were not the first ones to encounter any of these problems. Somewhere in the world they found it out and they put it somewhere YouTube or all these tech sites that are out there, Slashdot or whatever. 00;08;55;09 - 00;09;15;16 And there was one group of students that were very good at, I'm going to Google, I'm going to research, I'm going to read the and that's what I was doing, Yeah, okay. Because this is the first time, I had to teach this course, and I had to learn it too. So, I'm doing that research. And then there was other students that I had a talk with, and I says, look, you need to learn to problem solve. 00;09;15;19 - 00;09;41;11 And no, what's going to give you the answer when you're out in the real world? They're going to give you general direction and you have to figure it out. Internet search engines are your best friend. There's so many things, whether it's like fixing a sink, you know, fixing the garbage disposal under my sink or like figuring out how to debug my email software or like figuring out why Apex or Excel is not working for me. 00;09;41;11 - 00;10;03;05 Like, there's so many, so many ways that even in not just our computer science and programing classes, but in everyday life, the learning how to problem solve is a really essential skill for students to have. Absolutely even in your jobs, you get it. Bring something to the table. And I give them an example myself. I got hired at a bank here in western New York. 00;10;03;08 - 00;10;22;28 I was the head of the strategy for the integration platforms. Okay, So I come in, I find out where the coffee urn is and all that type of stuff, and I go to my new boss. This is where do you want me to start? He goes, Learn and form an opinion. Okay, can I have a couple of names to start with? 00;10;22;28 - 00;10;45;05 And he gives me a couple names. So, I basically started an interview process, and those people gave me more names and I had to learn, figure out the questions to ask, and then come back in a month. And here's my opinion. You know what's more nebulous than that? No one said, Vic, go do this, okay? And so, you have to you're going to be expected to bring something to the table. 00;10;45;07 - 00;11;12;17 I 100% agree. And so on to my last question. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, what would it be? Well, I came up with quite a list of what I'm going to do differently but review the basics. Okay. Because there is a large variability in skills. In my class, some people were very well versed in basic Linux commands, others weren't. 00;11;12;18 - 00;11;37;12 So, I have to go through that, provide some teaching for them and refuse to talk about the problem solving, how to go about do that. Here's some websites you can use. Okay, I'm going to go over an architecture diagram of a basic cloud environment because they have no pictorial concept in their mind what it should look like. 00;11;37;14 - 00;11;59;08 It's very nebulous. Okay, I have this virtual machine that's my computer and I have a there's a virtual network card and virtual storage and security lists and gateways and service gateways and internet gateways and all this type of stuff. So, I'm going to kind of go through all these basics with them before we actually get into the instructions. 00;11;59;10 - 00;12;16;12 I think that's really important to be able to go back to basics. So, you know, when you're an instructor, you're going in your teaching aside, go back to basics depending on the class of your teaching. So just kind of level set for everybody. I think that's such an important such an important piece of information is, hey, these are basics. 00;12;16;12 - 00;12;37;13 We're going to start here, and then we'll build upon those basics once everybody's comfortable. I think that's such a such a great piece of advice. So, a big thank you to Victor for joining me on the podcast today. If you're a student learning more about Oracle Academy, please check out our website and subscribe to the podcast. Thanks for listening. 00;12;37;16 - 00;12;44;04 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.