Re: SEUL: Re: Are teachers really so unwilling to learn?

[Joshua S Bernstein <askjosh@juno.com>]

Hey,

	I agree totally, I'd love to write these papers and such on this. I work
actively in a school with many teachers. If I could get a list of such
ideas and concepts I could start a small paper on it.

				-Joshua Bernstein
				Gigahertz Computing

On Sat, 18 Sep 1999 09:38:45 -0400 Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net> writes:
>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