4 ms·

If young kids are going to learn linux instead of windows, they are going to need special tutors like this: http://www.ktbyte.com/camps http://www.ktbyte.com/ca

If young kids are going to learn linux instead of windows, they are going to need special tutors like this: http://www.ktbyte.com/camps http://www.ktbyte.com/camps

gshubert17 13y ago
I've been teaching high school computing for 10 years, and our regular classroom and computer lab works fine. Our machines ran Windows XP the first two years, then we switched to Linux, and are running a Debian distribution currently. I don't teach Linux, I teach operating systems generally. Most of my students use different OSes already: Windows on a home desktop or laptop, iOS or Android on a phone. Learning Linux for school is no big deal for them. I teach word processing, not Word or OOWriter; and spreadsheets, not Excel or OOCalc. In a one-semester course, I introduce and compare OSes, do some shell scripts to contrast the CLI and GUI, introduce HTML and create some web pages, then cover word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. This course is required for graduation as is a second one-semester course. This uses Kernighan's book "D is for Digital" [ http://kernighan.com http://kernighan.com ] and covers what any well-informed person should know about computing: hardware, software, networking, and data. I enjoy using Linux as a platform for teaching computing for three reasons: (1) Linux boxes are cheaper than PCs or Macs. (2) The idea of choosing one's OS fits well with our charter school's ideas of making one's own educational choices. (3) Students learn more about the systems they use at home -- Windows, OS X, or whatever -- by contrast with Linux, just as they learn more about their first language (English, say) by studying a foreign language. Special camps and tutors are fine, but I don't think they are necessary in many cases.

4 ms·

If young kids are going to learn linux instead of windows, they are going to need special tutors like this: http://www.ktbyte.com/camps http://www.ktbyte.com/ca

by sentientmachine 13y ago

If young kids are going to learn linux instead of windows, they are going to need special tutors like this: http://www.ktbyte.com/camps http://www.ktbyte.com/camps

gshubert17 13y ago
I've been teaching high school computing for 10 years, and our regular classroom and computer lab works fine. Our machines ran Windows XP the first two years, then we switched to Linux, and are running a Debian distribution currently. I don't teach Linux, I teach operating systems generally. Most of my students use different OSes already: Windows on a home desktop or laptop, iOS or Android on a phone. Learning Linux for school is no big deal for them. I teach word processing, not Word or OOWriter; and spreadsheets, not Excel or OOCalc. In a one-semester course, I introduce and compare OSes, do some shell scripts to contrast the CLI and GUI, introduce HTML and create some web pages, then cover word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. This course is required for graduation as is a second one-semester course. This uses Kernighan's book "D is for Digital" [ http://kernighan.com http://kernighan.com ] and covers what any well-informed person should know about computing: hardware, software, networking, and data. I enjoy using Linux as a platform for teaching computing for three reasons: (1) Linux boxes are cheaper than PCs or Macs. (2) The idea of choosing one's OS fits well with our charter school's ideas of making one's own educational choices. (3) Students learn more about the systems they use at home -- Windows, OS X, or whatever -- by contrast with Linux, just as they learn more about their first language (English, say) by studying a foreign language. Special camps and tutors are fine, but I don't think they are necessary in many cases.