I have been considering doing a basic intro to computing course along these lines aimed at 8-12yo kids. The school where my kids go have XO machines that run Sugar Desktop for the little kids and gnome for the older kids. We just upgraded all the XO machines to something based on Fedora18. (from 17)
That school has a lot of Window PCs and tablets, but the XOs outnumber the PCs. A Typical class will have 20-25 XO (1 per child) and maybe 5 PC and 5 tablet. The computers are really there as a tool to teach them reading, maths, science etc not really for them to learn about computing. I was hoping to introduce them to some of the fundamentals of computing and let them make up their own minds. I don't think you can just jump into CentOS or any other operating system and truly understand how it works without some background. I started to write down some topics I might teach at a lunchtime computer club. The idea is to give a basic introduction, so they have heard of the terms and can go look up more things in Wikipedia or Google. Of course I would use the Linux based XO laptops for any practical hands on stuff. COMPUTER BASICS AND INTRO TO HARDWARE Input, Store/Process, Output Binary, Hexadecimal, ASCII, UCS2, GB2312, UTF8 CPU, Intel, AMD, ARM Memory, RAM, ROM, Flash Hard Disk, SSD, SATA, SAS Removable Media, USB, SDCARD Power Supplies, UPS INTERNETWORKING Ethernet, Packets Network layers - Physical, Link, Network, Session, Presentation, Application WiFi, PPP, DSL (Link) TCP/IP, DHCP, NAT (Network) [mention IPv4 & IPv6] Domains and DNS, Email HTTP, FTP, SSH, SIP (Session) Google, Apple, Microsoft, Linux (Presentation, Application) OPERATING SYSTEMS Microsoft Windows & Metro Apple OSX & IOS Google Android Linux, Fedora/RHEL/CentOS, Ubuntu/Debian, Mint, FreeBSD, OpenBSD LICENSING AND OTHER LEGAL STUFF GNU, Free, OpenSource Shareware Proprietary software (EULA) - Payware Software patents PROGRAMMING FUNDAMENTALS Hello World Assignment, Operators Flow Control Looping Events Classes PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE TYPES Assembler Compiled Interpreted Template 4GL DATABASES Row, Column, Key Create, Update, Retrieve, Delete Relationships SQL AUDIO VISUAL DATA FORMATS A: mp3, ac3 V: jpeg, png, gif, svg S: sub AV: mpeg, divx, xvid, mp4, avi AVS: mkv WHAT ARE APPLICATIONS AND WHAT DO THEY DO Word Processing Spreadsheet Presentation Photo Editing Accounting OTHER IDEAS Gibibytes vs Gigabytes OpenGL vs DirectX THE NEXT YEAR Arduino Projects If anyone see's any gaping holes please point them out. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
