Re: Are teachers really so unwilling to learn?

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

bickiia@earlham.edu wrote:

>
> But there are a lot of important ideas in computers that aren't just
> little details.  If a teacher wants to *understand* what they are doing,
> they need to know these things.  They need to understand the concept of
> file types, the notion of folders/directories, the client/server aspect
> of the Internet... there's a bunch of them.  This isn't the same as
> knowing how to set up a dial-up PPP connection -- that's just a skill,
> useful to some and not others.  It's about understanding the concepts
> around which skills provide only a shell.

I'm sure there are books out there that intend to teach such concepts as these.  It's just that they're aimed as Computer Science majors rather than at the general public (which teachers count as in this discussion).

It's well within the purview of seul-edu, and probably SEUL in general, to develop conversational guides to the concepts behind current computer use.  We'd better use Linux in any examples we use, of course, but such guides would apply beyond the Linux comunity alone.

We should come up with the basic concepts we want to illuminate, and then start work on the guides for them.  This is something that doesn't require coding skill.  You need to understand the concept (and probably have a good reference book on it available to help you on details) and to be able to write clearly.  From what I've seen on this list, we should have an abundance of people able to do that.  We should also try to get the currently-very-low-volume seul-pub list involved, as this is also up their alley.

So let's discuss a bit just what concepts we should work on, and then get to it!

--
Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
dloss@csrlink.net    those in authority off their guard and give
(570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
                        Mark Twain