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→Mike LeVan talks about "Developing a Linux Administration Course for Beginners"
The talk progressed into textbooks and resource material. Although the textbook used is totally dependent on the type of class, Mike recommends choosing a book that covers the historical, philosophical and technical aspects of using Linux. While [http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/ “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”] can offer a student insight into the theory of Linux it doesn’t go into enough of the practical details. His weapon of choice was [http://www.amazon.com/How-Linux-Works-Brian-Ward/dp/1593270356 “How Linux Works”] by Brian Ward (which I promptly ordered and am now diving into along with the new release of [http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10/ Ubuntu]) and he found it to be quite adept at covering a bit of history and a lot of the inner workings of Linux. The importance is placed on a student learning how to figure out things in the Linux environment because they understand why it does what it does. Mike then holds up the book “The complete guide to Linux system administration” and reads from the back – it sounds good but when you start to read the software requirements? Windows! You can’t even use the software included with the book on a Linux distribution.
The next point is distribution. What [http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/analysis/2132081/linux-100-flavours-counting flavour of Linux ] you choose is also dependent on the type of class – [http://www.slackware.com/ Slackware ] can be great for teaching complete customization all the way up to Ubuntu which is more than likely the easiest Linux to use. Live [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveDistroLive CDs ] can be a great option for letting students try a variety of flavours without having to install.
Mike then goes over a list of topics that can be covered in an introductory course. There is not a lot of time in a semester and so he chooses to spend more time with desktop integration because he finds that getting students to use Linux for their needs in playing mp3s and other daily tasks can really make adoption and learning interest much higher. Topics in a course might include the history, open vs. closed, super user vs. regular user, directory structure, boot process, installation, cli vs. gui, user admin, ssh, cron, sotware admin, compiling kernel, backups, adding hardware – and many more options to one’s liking.
In order to assess a student’s progress the standard tests, quizzes and labs are great but Mike mentions a few other schemes. In one, he comes in before the class arrives and “breaks” their systems by running a script. When the students arrive and discover the bugs they are then challenged to try and repair the damage. This is a great way to give students a real life situation and in some cases Mike doesn’t allow any books or network so that the student must rely on their knowledge of Linux to solve the issues.
Concluding his talk Mike shows us [http://linux-classroom.info linux-classroom (not live yet)] which is a site he is working on to create an online textbook with modules for teaching this course. It is based on [http://moodle.org/ Moodle ] which is a free, open source course management system and has lab assignments and scripts already, hopefully soon it will be live and educators can benefit from his work.
====Mark Surman talk about "Open Sourcing Education in South Africa"====
