[seul-edu] Re: How to "teach Linux"?

[Michael Shigorin <mike@lic145.kiev.ua>]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 02:21:08PM -0500, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
> I would like to take the students through the basic structure of 
> UNIX/Linux, and want to install Red Hat on several machines with them.  I 
> was thinking of both hands-on (e.g., build a server) and lecture (this is 
> how the boot process works, etc.).  Short of feeling my way through this, 
> I'm looking for suggestions from those who have gone down a similar path!
Just as an idea: try to give them main "cetus" ideas UNIX is
built around, such as small sharp tools (modularity), "good
enough" (say traditional UNIX file perms are not exactly
state-of-art, but they do 80% of job seamlessly and their simple
form makes usage actually *easy*), not saying about native
networking and multi-everything.

And show them *where* and how Linux can give them opportunities
to have more fun/time or better job.

My students were just happy to see Netscape from Pentium
appearing on 486 -- or to see sed and regexps helping solve some
"real" problems like webmaster's job of maintaining the site
tree.  Well, they were pupils and I was a student :-) -- but
that's not the difference.

I'd recur to some basic HOWTOs (like DOS-Win-to-Linux,
From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt, XWindow-User), refresh some
beginner-oriented books' content in my memory, and try to imagine
"what _interesting_ could that type tell me?"-asking boy or girl.

Happy teaching -- and curious students! :-)

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike@altlinux.ru>
  ------ http://visa.chem.univ.kiev.ua/~mike/

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