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grunthus
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:08 pm    Post subject: Gentoo for High School Clubs Reply with quote

Hi

I run a computer club at school and mostly post through the gentoo-wiki.com site.

I work with children aged 12 to 15 in the club and find that I have to rephrase a lot of the docs. I am trying to find a good source of gentoo docs aimed at novice children - any? If not where would be a good place to post them?

It doesn't feel like a 'HOWTO' to me, more like a series of howto's needed for novice youngsters.
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djdunn
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

how would you have to rephrase it?

is it too technical or what are the kids having problems with?
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monkey89
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 1:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think Gentoo-specific guides probably aren't what you're looking for, since I doubt these kids will be getting in depth in the specifics of the system. You should probably google for a beginners linux guide, which might be a good resource towards getting short tutorials on how to do certain things. There are tons out there.

-Monkey
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grunthus
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's not absolutely that it is too technical, since we have a wide range of abilities - some pupils are baffled by HOWTOs others take to them well. The need is I think for documents which are more akin to teaching materials about the main parts of gentoo, such as the layout and purpose of the various parts of the filesystem (like what /proc is for what /usr/portage is for. I have made a couple of worksheets up for some of these things already, so I wonder where best can I put them for others.

What I would like would be a nice collection of teaching materials, some gentoo specific as above and some (as has been pointed out) just general worksheets on things like BASH basics, what a kernel is, what compiling means. All GNU FDL or Creative Commons licence of course.

With my club at the school we have installed systems together and that has been quite a long process over repeated lunchtimes. I don't propose tackling anything to do with the install guides. So far, either I have helped pupils to follow the install docs or I have done bits of it for them. So I think any teacher/educator can present their students with installed systems to learn on or can help them through the installs.

Here are some fairly random thoughts on 'worksheets' , 'exercises' or 'activity' sheets which might be good to have:

Using ROX-filer to Organise Files and Folders
Using BASH to do What You Just Did with ROX

How Mounting Works
How to Get Drives Mounted Automatically
What Are Daemons and How to Start/Stop Them
How to Maintain boot and default Runlevels

*nix and Permissions
Gentoo Users and Groups
How to Setup New Users Using a skel File

...stuff you could give to a group of 10 children who have used only MS-windows, sit them down in front of a ready-to-go system and expect 8 of them to manage after a short introduction. The gentoo-wiki HOWTOs and the gentoo.org docs do not achieve or aim to do that. They don't include any exercises for youngsters to try either, or suggestions for project work etc.

The presence of a well organised central repository of such materials would surely encourage people to set up 'Gentoo Clubs' at their schools. A search for 'Children's Linux Guide' etc on google does not produce much at all.

Chris
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Mben
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wish someone would do this at my school :wink: (10th grade)

I would also include:
how to get X up and running
basic programming languages into -- enough to be able to fix little compile errors and what not.

another thing good to do would be some basic intro to the hardware. maybe build and set up a computer from more or less scratch. many kids have never seen the inside of that Dell they think they know inside out.
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wjholden
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 12:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a good idea, however it would be more appropriate that TLDP do this and not the Gentoo Foundation IMO.
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shash
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 8:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This being the FOSS world, I doubt it really matters who does it, as long as it gets done...

Gentoo for kids... Not a bad idea at all! :)
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grunthus
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have posted up the beginnings of something at
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Index#Learning_and_Teaching_Gentoo

I need some sleep, will add more tomorrow.

Cheers
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wjholden
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 1:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

grunthus wrote:
I have posted up the beginnings of something at
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Index#Learning_and_Teaching_Gentoo

I need some sleep, will add more tomorrow.

Cheers

I'm working on the hardware section right now. I'm not sure this is what you want, but whatever, that's what Wikis are for. Pictures would be fantastic. I don't know how one uploads pictures to Wikipedia -- if you need image hosting I've got unlimited bandwidth where I'm from.

Edit: ok I just finished the "Hardware Inspection" section, although I ended up writing it as a series of exercises for students to open a computer and look inside, then tear it apart and put it back together. The best way to learn is to get your hands dirty! :)
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manywele
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 5:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

grunthus,

As someone who plans on doing in a year or so exactly what you're doing I applaud your efforts to document it. I hope you keep up with it because it will be used.
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grunthus
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 11:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cheers everyone,

I have added i a pile more stuff. Feel free.

Also, I wondered should we move this discussionto the 'discussion' bit of the HOWTO itself or not??
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curtis119
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

manywele wrote:
grunthus,

As someone who plans on doing in a year or so exactly what you're doing I applaud your efforts to document it. I hope you keep up with it because it will be used.


Me too. I have 2 young kids who are slowly learning to be geeks... I mean... gurus like me. I'll be keeping my eye on this wiki entry. Thanks grunthus.
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wjholden
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

curtis119 wrote:
manywele wrote:
grunthus,

As someone who plans on doing in a year or so exactly what you're doing I applaud your efforts to document it. I hope you keep up with it because it will be used.


Me too. I have 2 young kids who are slowly learning to be geeks... I mean... gurus like me. I'll be keeping my eye on this wiki entry. Thanks grunthus.

Curtis, you are so _not_ a guru. You're not even l33t anymore. You're a god...I mean mod :lol:


Added some stuff about the kernel just now. This is looking great!
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TanNewt
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 7:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, keep up the good work. I can see pontential in this with my friends. So many of my friends have Windows skills but not computer skills.

I was working with Garage Band on a Mac at school and a friend asked me how I knew to use it. I said I'd used Acid. Same type of program. Seems to me that computer skills are taught to one specific program when a variety would expand overall knowledge.

Just my 2 cents.
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grunthus
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 10:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

grunthus wrote:
Cheers everyone,

I have added i a pile more stuff. Feel free.

Also, I wondered should we move this discussionto the 'discussion' bit of the HOWTO itself or not??


Well, maybe its nice to discuss stuff here too! What I have done is put in a discussion entry on the wiki 'About this page'. This is my suggestion for what the intent of the HOWTO might be and where we might like to take it.

As I mentioned on that discussion, I'd like to get 'worksheets' or exercise and project sheets together someday.

Thanks for all the kernel stuff, I'll use that with my group, maybe week after next. We got distccd up and running last week. It gives a good speedup with 4 hosts - we'll be up to 7 soon.
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wjholden
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Simple Hard Disk Partitioning and Gentoo Filesystem Layout sections seem redundant with the cfdisk Windows section at the bottom.

Also, something you might not notice is that I changed the size of the boot partition from 64MB to 32MB as the handbook recommends 32MB. Remember to spell "disk" consistently.

/me shamelessly told students to set up an FTP server :D
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