Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux should be a part of School Education

linuxfederation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 113 posts

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#41

Post by rbanffy »

computernovice wrote: post #30
pessimizer wrote: post #25

Of course it should. The Linux cli is as good a gateway to understanding of the world around you as the Commodore 64 and the Apple II clis were for me as a kid. If you start a child off with Windows or Mac, look forward to them maybe not ever understanding what a directory is, or that a computer has two types of memory. Consciously choosing and paying a premium to learn computing from Windows or Mac OS sounds to me o…

What are the two types of memory of a computer? Can you recommend any resources (books/websites) to learning things like that about a computer? Edit: I googled it but each result explained a different type of memory (caches, system RAM, virtual memory, hard drive) or (RAM vs ROM) or (Primary vs Secondary).

There are, in reality, a lot of different memory types in your computer. Some of it is DRAM. A tiny little bit is SRAM. There must also be some ROM in there, as well as some Flash, which may or may not be hooked to the computer pretending to be a hard disk. There are various entire subsystems composed of DRAM/SRAM in the peripherals of the computer (such as your hard drive, your wi-fi adaptor, your GPU card).

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#42

Post by computernovice »

pessimizer wrote: post #33
computernovice wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the two types of memory of a computer? Can you recommend any resources (books/websites) to learning things like that about a computer? Edit: I googled it but each result explained a different type of memory (caches, system RAM, virtual memory, hard drive) or (RAM vs ROM) or (Primary vs Secondary).

There's a place called the internet. It has information for you. edit: there's volatile memory and non-volatile memory. Or hundreds of different types for every place they're used, every purpose, and every brand name they're sold under, for trolls who miss the forest for the trees.

I wasn't trolling, hence the account name. Its hard to learn about how computers work because I don't even know where to start. When I typed "types of computer memory", there are a bunch of different resources. Its difficult and inefficient to just google every term/acronym I don't know. But thanks anyways for the answer.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#43

Post by Fuxy »

csmithuk wrote: post #6
simonh wrote: post #4

What a complete load of tosh. Education is about teaching children valuable skills they can apply in their daily lives. How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? The cost argument doesn't really stand up either, books cost money and 'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers' to paraphrase the author. It's not as if computers running Linux cost nothing either. If Linux is going to find a place…

I don't wish to hijack this thread but tying the Raspberry Pi to education is terrible if you ask me. I agreed about the Raspberry Pi being the best device for education right from day one. That was until my father bought my daughter one for her birthday and I ended up being the resident "fix it guru" for it. The thing teaches you merely how to jump through funny shaped hoops to get something working rather than anyt…

The standard RPI os seemed crap to me too that's why i switched it to Arch.

Hardware wise the USB hub is probably the weakest part in it and that's where they have the most issues.

Plus the fact that some hardware part are undocumented because their proprietary.

Try not to be the "fix it guru" all the time though since if your daughter can always ask you to do it she will never bother to learn herself.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#44

Post by weland »

simonh wrote: post #4

What a complete load of tosh. Education is about teaching children valuable skills they can apply in their daily lives. How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? The cost argument doesn't really stand up either, books cost money and 'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers' to paraphrase the author. It's not as if computers running Linux cost nothing either. If Linux is going to find a place…

> How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again?

How many of the will end up making decisions on the assumption that there is nothing else that runs on a computer except for Windows?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#45

Post by hoggle »

userbinator wrote: post #37
hoggle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that you were exited about fiddling with rpi yourself? I don't have children but I guess it's difficult to deliberately not help them (too much) solving problems which are inherently interesting to you (grumpy neckbeardism can't hide that fact, you obviously still care about this). I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today. Today i…

> I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today. Really? In many ways RPi is far more of a closed, proprietary system than the common desktop PC.

True we aren't at Apple II level, open hardware would be great but as I said the whole culture surrounding it as well as the documentation which exists is really good. It's still a very cool project which succeed to get this ball rolling, obviously there is room for improvement.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#46

Post by rythie »

Sanddancer wrote: post #8

One should teach children using the best tools for the job; cost should not be an issue here in the consideration. What is the quality of educational software in the Linux world compared to Windows? What about compared to OS X? What about usability? Accessibility? A rather vapid statement about "cost" isn't going to cut it as an argument as to why Linux should be used. Even amongst Free operating systems, why Linux?…

Which one is the best tool, when you want to teach how a computer actually works? or you want to teach them programming?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#47

Post by rbanffy »

rythie wrote: post #38

The problem here is that (in the UK at least) kids come out of school knowing nothing about about a computer works or programming - windows/mac/ios/android increasingly hide this from you. Kids think that programming a computer game is some trival task and have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs. The counter point is that they shouldn't need to know this, but then why do we teach flower germination? or…

> have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs.

The simplest possible programs are still very simple and short. Even with verbose languages.

One drawback here is that even a simple game by modern standards is light-years ahead of my best efforts on the Apple II. And those best efforts would be considered rather mundane or sub-standard today. A modern-looking program involves interacting with a GUI library and they are complicated animals.

What a successful teacher should do is to instill the love for the essential part of the program. When you write a "guess the number", there is no need for particle generators, applause, music and animated backgrounds. Keeping the basics short the kids will learn that programming is no different than creative writing using imperative forms all the time.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#48

Post by RussianCow »

fit2rule wrote: post #19
simonh wrote: post #4

What a complete load of tosh. Education is about teaching children valuable skills they can apply in their daily lives. How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? The cost argument doesn't really stand up either, books cost money and 'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers' to paraphrase the author. It's not as if computers running Linux cost nothing either. If Linux is going to find a place…

You're contradicting yourself in the rush to sound like an authority. Androids is a Linux computer. Learning linux is vital - because Linux runs everywhere, and almost everything! Been on a train in Europe? Your life is being protected by Linux. Made an Internet connection in the USA? You're using Linux, somewhere. Teaching kids to use the Linux OS should be as equally valid an approach as teaching them Windows. The…

I don't have to understand how my car works in order to be able to use it. Sure, everyone would benefit from someday learning to use Linux, but to say it's vital is extreme exaggeration.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#49

Post by ygra »

rbanffy wrote: post #34
radida wrote: post #14

No it shouldn't, and honestly neither should programming. Sometimes I swear we can get so drunk on our own farts that we think engineering is the only valuable profession in the world, when in reality not everyone needs to be able to code a rails app if all they want to do is check their Facebook. There are many other jobs that are important and valuable to society that do not involve CS - lets just put down the kook…

If a person does not understand how the world around them works (and most of it is driven by computers), how can we expect them to adequately operate in it? A couple weeks back I remember the case when someone bleached her home because she feared she could catch the viruses on her computer. There are many people who do, for the lack of a better word, rituals with their computers because they can't figure out their wi…

So Linux is somehow immune against people ritualising how they interact with a computer? They will have a problem one day, google for a solution and remember that solution. Few will actively try understanding the solution and how and why it works.

Operating systems don't have magical powers for making users interested in their internals.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#50

Post by csmithuk »

hoggle wrote: post #32
csmithuk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't wish to hijack this thread but tying the Raspberry Pi to education is terrible if you ask me. I agreed about the Raspberry Pi being the best device for education right from day one. That was until my father bought my daughter one for her birthday and I ended up being the resident "fix it guru" for it. The thing teaches you merely how to jump through funny shaped hoops to get something working rather than anyt…

Could it be that you were exited about fiddling with rpi yourself? I don't have children but I guess it's difficult to deliberately not help them (too much) solving problems which are inherently interesting to you (grumpy neckbeardism can't hide that fact, you obviously still care about this). I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today. Today i…

Not particularly excited. After spending a number of years with embedded systems, my tolerance has faded a little. We tried the "follow the instructions" and no help thing to start with. Unfortunately we were blessed with only a composite video cable which is to be fair, a flipping nightmare of reading inconclusive LED states and fumbling around in the dark with no video output. That is where the documentation stops and years of prior experience of embedded systems and knowing what to search for kicks in. Each step came with its own pile of crud to deal with. Each hoop jumped through chips a little bit of interest away. The inevitable question that gets asked is:

"Dad: is this what your job is about?"

It's not and never has been.

The perfect Apple 2 / C64 (or in my case, BBC Model B) was the one that you opened the box, plugged it in and it worked the moment you turned it on without fail, every time and never poked you in the eye unless you told it to.

I still think the (partial inspiration for the Pi) i.e. the BBC Micro is still a better starting point than the Pi itself. Well documented, relatively simple, very powerful, forgiving and the ability to write high level (basic) or low level code (assembly) from the get go from the books that came with it, can play games on it and if you screw anything up, just restart it.

Post reply on HN