Linux should be a part of School Education • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#91

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:13 PM UTC

ygra wrote: post #82

rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not immune, but chances are that, during the time you are googling solutions for your problem, you'll have to learn something about how computers actually work. If the solution points you to a series of "click here, then here" screens, you won't get any useful insights on how it's done under the hood because you spent the whole time above it.

Suggestions to solve a problem on Linux often are written on a similar level, it's just that »click here, then here« gets replaced by »edit this part of that config file and then run this series of arcane invocations«. Oftentimes you can just copy/paste from some forum and won't learn anything from it.

And when you edit a config file you are forbidden to look at any part of it except the one you are editing, right?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#92

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:20 PM UTC

professorTuring wrote: post #77

rbanffy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bullshit. Most people doesn't know a shit about electronics and they are surrounded with electronic equipment. And this is an example, there are a lot of things I don't know almost anything about them and I can successfully operate with them.

For the values of successful you are accustomed to, that is.

How many people die every year for not understanding the basics of electricity?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#93

Post by gshubert17 » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:25 PM UTC

sentientmachine wrote: post #85

If young kids are going to learn linux instead of windows, they are going to need special tutors like this: http://www.ktbyte.com/camps

I've been teaching high school computing for 10 years, and our regular classroom and computer lab works fine. Our machines ran Windows XP the first two years, then we switched to Linux, and are running a Debian distribution currently.

I don't teach Linux, I teach operating systems generally. Most of my students use different OSes already: Windows on a home desktop or laptop, iOS or Android on a phone. Learning Linux for school is no big deal for them.

I teach word processing, not Word or OOWriter; and spreadsheets, not Excel or OOCalc. In a one-semester course, I introduce and compare OSes, do some shell scripts to contrast the CLI and GUI, introduce HTML and create some web pages, then cover word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. This course is required for graduation as is a second one-semester course. This uses Kernighan's book "D is for Digital" [ http://kernighan.com ] and covers what any well-informed person should know about computing: hardware, software, networking, and data.

I enjoy using Linux as a platform for teaching computing for three reasons: (1) Linux boxes are cheaper than PCs or Macs. (2) The idea of choosing one's OS fits well with our charter school's ideas of making one's own educational choices. (3) Students learn more about the systems they use at home -- Windows, OS X, or whatever -- by contrast with Linux, just as they learn more about their first language (English, say) by studying a foreign language.

Special camps and tutors are fine, but I don't think they are necessary in many cases.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#94

Post by polymatter » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:29 PM UTC

moolriaz wrote: post #58

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…

I won a grant to build, donate, and maintain Raspberry Pi computers to rural schools in South Africa (about 7). It was a large project. Absolute nightmare. In the end I just started buying second hand computers and installing XUbuntu (much higher performance, much lower cost). I donated the Raspberry Pis to a university engineering department and managed to buy double the expected number in second hand computers for…

I'm interested to hear in the problems you had and how getting 2nd hand computers turn out to be lower cost than the Pi. Do you have a write-up of your experience somewhere? Couldn't find anything on your HN profile.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#95

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

daliusd wrote: post #83

Zigurd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a Linux-based OS. You can use an AOSP-derived distribution as a hackable Linux. Nearly every hosting service provides Linux. Linux is in your TV, STB, and car (maybe in the form of Android). How many YC ventures' server software are running on a hosted Linux system? How many of their endpoints are running on Android? Was the toolchain Linux-based?

Joke on you. I don't have smartphone, car, STB and TV. Maybe I do but there are 7 billion people in the world.

> * don't have smartphone, car, STB and TV. *

It's more likely that you have a smartphone rather than a PC. It's more likely you have an old, unused smartphone than that you have and old unused PC for paying with operating systems. If you are writing software, it's more likely you are targeting a Linux instance running in a VM at a hosting service or a smartphone, than a Windows PC.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#96

Post by professorTuring » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:34 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #92

professorTuring wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Most people doesn't know a shit about electronics and they are surrounded with electronic equipment. And this is an example, there are a lot of things I don't know almost anything about them and I can successfully operate with them.

For the values of successful you are accustomed to, that is. How many people die every year for not understanding the basics of electricity?

I believe almost everybody know that electricity can kill you and this is taught at school.

Evidently if you try to repair your TV (without knowing how to repair it), change the electrical installation of your house (without knowing anything), touching a high intensity cable or something like that it is a dead by accident or by stupidity.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#97

Post by professorTuring » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:35 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #80

professorTuring wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of applications that abstract normal people from the "HTTP". Knowing stuff is a great thing, but forcing people to learn stuff is something totally different. Show kids how to build a webpage with HTTP and CSS and they will run for their lives. Maybe you can teach them how to configure any content manager making an effort in explain them how having a webpage can affect their lives and how can they…

Teaching kids the specifics of some content management system seems as daft to me as focusing on MS Office.

So right, but you have to use "something" as example, I don't mind which one you prefer as long as it comes with a "how this affect my life" explanation.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#98

Post by NAFV_P » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

I think I mentioned something similar on /. ...

IMO all kids at school should be taught an ugly, difficult language like x86 assembly. Hardly any of them will understand it to a significant degree, but they will appreciate how difficult working with computers is. They will be more impressed with say, grep, or the original DOOM game.

Some of those kids will grow up to be somebody's boss, that potentially annoying, ignorant boss that expects you to juggle knives while tap-dancing in clogs.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#99

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:33 PM UTC

Linux is so used in education. It isn't used as widely as it ought to be, but it is most certainly used, and its share is growing. I am a CC instructor in a vocational program, and each year our students install both Linux and Windows on our lab PC's. They will use this PC throughout the year to complete their coursework and are responsible for maintaining it. Graduates of our program will have installed both operating systems at least twice, often many more times. I think it is important to promote general computing skills even though that is not my department's core discipline.

I don't think it is wrong for a college to have a Microsoft site license, but I do think it is wrong for a public college to require a specific vendor's products where equivalents exist. I also think it is wrong for a public college to force students' exclusive use of a single vendor's products. Computers are mere tools and it isn't the job of a public institution to choose winners.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#100

Post by NAFV_P » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 3:37 PM UTC

computernovice wrote: post #42

pessimizer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Its difficult and inefficient to just google every term/acronym I don't know.

Hackers love acronyms, I don't mind them unless there is ambiguity (I haven't yet come across any).

A couple of years back I was in the same situation as yourself, when I bagged my first laptop. The only advice I can give you regarding getting to grips with computers is to focus on one subject at a time (which is easier said than done, especially if you get lost in the myriad of wikipedia articles).

A few weeks ago I lost my desktop (I run ubuntu), and could only access the system through terminal. Luckily I knew enough about using the command line to find a solution (I think I typed in sudo apt-get ubuntu-desktop). Sooner or later knowledge of little use becomes vital.