I'm glad someone in the IT media has FINALLY
recognised this as a problem. I learnt most of my early IT stuff by do it yourself hands on and teach yourself from text books. When I finally got around to doing some actual official IT training, about 20 years later, and get some certificates to paper the wall with, I found a lot of students couldn't understand what the teachers were saying as they ALWAYS explained things in IT tech words - assuming the people already knew them. This was at a tech college and the teachers were IT people who'd picked up some sort of teaching qual along the way.
The hardest hit with failures were the programming courses. In one course I did we had a lot of women with an interest learning programming as they could do that at home while still caring for kids before and after school. The two aspects most hadtrouble with were - setting out global variables at the start, and the importance of keeping to the structured order. I was able to explain the concepts to many by simply relating computer programs to programs they've been working with for years - recipes, take a close look and they are set out the same; set up the list of variables (ingredients), and process in the correct order. Also, I found most people could see the correct order concept better if you suggested that they try having a shower BEFORE they take off their PJs one day, and see how well it works.
Most IT concepts lend themselves to such everyday analogies.
