What Should Go Into A 75-Minute BSD Primer? 15
phraud16 asks: "I'm a 16-year-old student, and have been asked to bring in my BSD box, hook it up to the school network and teach my computer class about FreeBSD for the full 75 minutes. Every student is going to have his or her own login, and telnet into my box. I wanted to ask you Slashdot readers, what is the best way to teach BSD? Should I explain the history, then move on to commands? Should I leave out the history and go right to commands? Explain what servers are first? Ask the Class what an OS is? I could talk endlessly about FreeBSD and how good it is, but i'm stumped on where to begin teaching, and what areas of BSD the class should look at. I was thinking of just teaching stuff like: cp, mv, pico, mail, rm, df, and a few other commands? I don't want to bore them to death, and I don't want to only teach for 15 minutes of 75."
Comparision (Score:1)
What is your audience (Score:3)
I think at least you should talk a little about what an OS is, then explain what UNIX is and what Open Source is about.
See older article (Score:4)
Just remember, the rule is to start with the most absolute basic commands that you use the most, then move up...
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
A few questions (Score:3)
You need to tailor what you say to your audience. I would write an outline up and go over it in advance with your teacher, he or she can give you a good sense of if what you are saying is about at the correct level. A teacher will also be able to help you figure out how much material you need for a 75 min talk (A lot really) and probably be a very big help.
Good luck with this, learning to get up infront of people and talk about stuff is a wonderful skill to have. When you are done post an outline and let us know how it went. You might want to go over it after the fact with your teacher to see what you can learn after the fact about presenting material, it won't be the last time you do it.
Grab bag (Score:1)
It also covers some history, the filesystem and a description of some of the various shells. It's an excellent resource, and provides a great intro to Unix - a second-year course at U of Toronto. This was the intro I had, and I will never forget how great a prof he is.
Re:Grab bag (Score:1)
underlying design (Score:2)
pico is not BSD (unless it's picoBSD) (Score:1)
Pico isn't a part of "BSD" per se -- VI is the standard editor. Pico comes from the Univerisity of Washington (I believe) and is usually installed as a part of PINE.
However, it IS much easier to learn than VI, and might be good for people who don't have the time to deal with VI or EMACS.
willis/
X Windows (Score:2)
Have some source that you can recompile and make a small change, ie change a text literal. Then ask them how they'd accomplish the same thing under windows.
Also, rehearse the thing at least twice. there is nothing more embarrassing than somebody fumbling to fix something mid-presentation. This should be 75 minutes of polished acting
BSD Demo (Score:1)
show them multiple server applications (Score:2)
why not let the students choose to access your box in one of these ways:
let some telnet in;
let some ssh in (explain why this is good);
let some browse your slides or notes via apache web server;
let some ftp around;
let some use a remote x session;
oh and you be running some cool window manager, and if possible, be monitoring their activities (tailing logfiles etc).
running some fractal program on your desktop whilst all the above is going on should illustrate the power of the multitasking too! should be a great demo. oh - test it all works correctly before hand! to get an even mix, have a specific number of pieces of paper each with instructions for accessing via that method - let them fight to get the ones they want!
jamie.
Re:BSD Demo (Score:1)
When they compare it to Terminal Server or Citrix correct them on it. Citrix and Terminal Server are kind of like pcAnywhere, screenscrapers.
Sorry, I can't let this pass. Not only is this wrong, but Terminal Server is quite a bit faster than X. It's even fast enough to run Office at a tolerable speed over a 56k modem.
Lesson Plan (Score:1)
You should first go into a conceptual background on UNIX for those that don't know about it and how it can benefit them, then give a brief primer on using UNIX.
For the second part of your primer, I would recommend talking about BSD's strengths and weaknesses specifically and be honest. Take your experiences and apply them to this part of your lesson. Encourage open advocacy from other users that may have other experiences - this will ensure that more experienced users will stay interested and contribute.
Last, make yourself available for questions outside of your class. Maybe even have some burned CDs available to encourage others to use it. Being a valuable BSD resource will help the community as a whole. Hope this helps!
-Pat
Take this suggestion (Score:2)
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
Re:pico is not BSD (unless it's picoBSD) (Score:2)
BTW, pico is included with pine. Its the editor pine calls on.