Teaching Linux this summer

[Daniel Glenn <danielrg@ms3.hinet.net>]

I will be teaching LINUX this summer as part of our summer program here
at White Horse English Development Center in Taiwan. I am looking for
some extra ideas.

The Goal: By end of summer to have a complete and working Web Site up
for the school complete with Homepages for all the students, and various
sections for Parents, and other people we decide would like to view our
site. 

Setup: We have 6 Pentium 100s networked with RedHat 6.0. Netscape 4.5
and GIMP of course.

Students: Probably 10-13 year olds with 1 to 3 years of English.
Possibly High School students. It is unlikely that any of the students
will have ever directly used LINUX before.

Teaching Assistants: I should be getting 2 to 4 College students to help
directly with technical issues, and to do programming for the school (I
want them to do a test question database program for the school), and
their Professor indirectly (interns).



Now, the problem is that the above seems pretty easy. The kids don't
need to do the extremely technical things (however, I'm hoping there
will be mature enough and interested enough students willing to try). So
the problem is, what else should the students learn and know about in a
LINUX environment? It has been 5 or 6 years since I was a CSci student
(getting a minor), and I'm amazed at how much I've forgotten how to do-
I can barely remember how to get in and out of vi! Mostly I just need to
be reminded of the sorts of things that would be useful for them to
learn.


Curriculum outline so far:

1. Being a basic User. 
	Logging in, getting around, seeing who is online, the 
	home directory, starting X, reading Mail, access 
	privileges. 
	* This is probably where I need to be reminded
	  of all the simple things you can do as a user.

2. Write a HomePage. 
	a. Most of the kids have already done this, or are
	familiar with the concept. Shouldn't take more
	than a week or two. The idea is to make sure
	everyone can at least use Netscape's Composer
	and to find out who already knows HTML.
	b. Add images. The GIMP. Find out who is good
	with computer art.

3. Design the basic site
	a. get the students to map out the site in
	some basic way. Discuss what sorts of things
	should be on the site.

4. Form teams. 
	Once we have a plan, we'll have to assign
	people to what they do best. Some will be 
	able to do the Art, some the harder HTML,
	some will just write.

5. Create a mess and straighten it out.
	Go to it, and create a big mess. Then we'll
	have to have a meeting (a class period) of 
	how to fix it. Where are the bad links,
	why do all the pages look different? Shouldn't
	they all have a similar look so surfers can know
	they are still on the same site? etc.

6. View the final product
	And make any final changes that need to be done.

7. Setup the Web Server
	This is the final objective. Put it all 
	on the web. We'll buy a new computer, and 
	find a way to afford a direct connection. 
	Cable Modems are now available in Taiwan
	and this seems a good way to go. That or 
	ISDN or a partial T1.


If you have any comments, I am very interested in hearing them (the
reason I made the post in the first place.)
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