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What Should Go Into A 75-Minute BSD Primer?

Posted by Cliff on from the rounding-out-a-presentation dept.

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."

8 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. What is your audience by biglig2 · · Score: 3

    How much computing knowlege do they have?
    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.

    --
    ~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
  2. See older article by autocracy · · Score: 4
    Suggestions For Starting A Linux Education Course? - You'll find some suggestions on a course, including mine. Just cut out the X section and the LFS machine. Basically, you're going to teach them the history of BSD and its principles (10 minutes), strengths, places of use, etc. (10 minutes), and how to use it (55 minutes). Teach them basics first (opening, editing, moving files, changing directories). Then, move up a little bit to permissions, ownership, etc. (chmod, chown). Go on to e-mail, etc. You'll have a lesson fast!

    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...

    --
    SIG: HUP
  3. A few questions by Zachary+Kessin · · Score: 3

    How technical are the students in your class. If they know Linux or Solaris you will want to talk about how BSD is different from Linux, if they only know Windows you will want to talk about very different things.

    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.

    --
    Erlang Developer and podcaster
  4. underlying design by Dukhat · · Score: 2

    I think it would be good to discuss some of the underlying design of UNIX operating systems. In particular, the fact that almost everything on a UNIX system can be treated as a file, so you can cat out a file, you can redirect the output to another file, and the file you redirect it to can be a device such as another terminal window. You can even cat a ".au" sound file to your audio device. I think the fact that you can glue together different commands with pipes is one of the coolest and most distinguishable aspects of UNIX not found on other types of operating systems.

  5. X Windows by Usquebaugh · · Score: 2

    If they're *NIX newbies for god sake show em X-Windows over ethernet. Preferably with KDE/GNOME and a decent theme or two. If you just show telnet etc they're not going to see the GUI.

    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 :-)

  6. show them multiple server applications by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  7. Take this suggestion by autocracy · · Score: 2

    I concede, the parent of this comment gave a much better suggestion than I and should have been modded higher. Follow it...

    The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...

    --
    SIG: HUP
  8. Re:pico is not BSD (unless it's picoBSD) by AntiBasic · · Score: 2
    Right, but vi in some implementation is on every UNIX box you'll come across so its best to learn vi. Now I prefer GNU emacs but its not always there so its best to learn vi primarily. The students will be in his class for 75 minutes so yes, they do have the time to spend "dealing" with vi.

    BTW, pico is included with pine. Its the editor pine calls on.