Linux Class
 

I am teaching an introductory course to some kids at my old High School who have never seen or used Linux before in their life. I have made a handout answering some basic questions. I'm going to give away copies of Knoppix 3.9 for them to take home and play with on their own time so they don't actually have to install it on their hard drive. I was just wondering if you guys/girls could give me some suggestions of questions that I could answer in an "introductory" course so that I could add anything I may have missed.

Idea1 -I would suggest that you ask each student what they currently
do with computers - ie. what programs they use in windows.

List each of them on the white-board (black-board).

Spend the next session(s) showing them the linux equivalents.

Idea2 - Poll the students as to any spare hardware that they might be
able to bring to class. If appropriate, use these components to show them
how to build a functional PC with linux installed.

idea3 - When students ask questions about linux, show them where to
get their own answers on the internet.

Most Windows users have the inertia to adopt the file system hierarchy. They keep saying "In Windows I can just go to C:, D:, or A:, but in Linux you can't". So be a little keen to give them the basics of file system including permissions, why we need the concept "mount", ownerships, acls, etc.

And you could tell them that GUI is a seperate part, not the actual OS.

And there are lot other things flooding in to mind. So I'll save them for another time. Just try to give them the common UNIX cocepts. Let them know that they can customize it. Let them learn that this is a different OS, not some Windows version.

Yeah, I had some guy come in today sharing Advent children backgrounds with me on his laptop, and he looked across and saw that I was using Linux, and it took me 5 minutes to finally get it across that Linux was not in any way related to Microsoft or Windows. Thanks for the suggestions, I made it a point to explain mount points including the /mnt directory and the root permissions and the purpose of not giving yourself a user with root permissions. I laid out the paper like an FAQ page, and I titled that section with "What Happened to C Drive?"

That sounds nice, guess you would publish them (if possible) on-line as a Newbie FAQ.

Another thing is /media (according to the newer FHS), and if it allows about runlevels too (may be later)

You could ask them what they've heard about Linux--either from the media or their friends/family. Then you can ask them how much of what they've heard they believe to be true and why.

You can also give them a list of tasks to try to accomplish in Knoppix--some easy; others more "difficult." Give them a time limit to accomplish the tasks in (do not have them do this in pairs or small groups), and tell them they have only their computers (i.e., the internet and help manuals in KDE) to use for support. After the time limit is up, have a little debriefing about what they were able to accomplish and why it was easy, as well as what they weren't able to accomplish and why it appeared difficult.

Then, you can demonstrate how some of those "difficult" tasks are easy if you know how to do them.

I don't know if that really answers your original question, but I used to be a high school teacher myself, and I just think in lesson plans, I guess...

That sounds cool, I'll see if I can work something in like that. Oh yeah I managed to turn that handout into a web page document and upload it to my freeservers account so if you want to check it out and tell me if I missed anything important it'd be awesome. Forgive any type-o's I'm still revising it.Handout Here

I saw the hand out. It's promising. I'll go through it whenever I have time and let you know my feedback.

One thing I notice, you can tell your students that eventhough FOSS are open they have proper development lifecycles usually(may differ from commercial developments). For example thousands around the world contribute Apache but it is well maintained by a team and architectural vision lies with them. So FOSS doen't mean bad designing and spagetti coding. Not just bunch of newbie programmers hacking the code here and there. Its transparency enables it to be superior.

Keep up the good work, and spend a little time with LQ Wiki and tutorial section too. You may want to see above aysiu's posting also.