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Computer Textbooks For High Schoolers?
wetdogjp writes "I recently became a high school teacher, and I've inherited three classes with no textbooks! While two of my classes are introductory in nature, one for computers in general and the other for networking, the third class should prepare juniors and seniors to enter the workforce and start a career in computers. We have some older textbooks by Heathkit available, but the newest of them are four years old. Do Slashdotters have any favorite textbooks that can help kids on their way to becoming junior sysadmins, programmers, networking professionals, etc.? Would you suggest books to prepare students to take certification tests such as A+, Network+, or others? Any textbooks we use would need to cover quite a breadth of material, such as PC hardware, operating systems, networking, security, and more."
Dietel & Dietel publish a bunch of intro books (c++, java, a few others) that have a bunch of supplements/coding examples/etc. on their website. They're very newbie friendly and cover a good deal of information. Actually, so do some of the AP comp sci review books (my Baron's AP Java book has a lot of clear examples.)
Look at other high schools and community colleges that teach the same thing you do and see what books they're using.
Certification prep is a double edged sword. The books may be accessible, but they also may be too focused on the test and therefore teach to it rather than teach general skills.
Also, you don't need to use a book for everything. All my intro programming books do a brief overview of hardware, and my profs add when needed. I didn't even have a textbook for my high school computer hardware class (basically a build your own computer thing, but we also learned about karnough maps, logic, and other basics.)
open source modern art: laser taggi
Talk to the people at O'Reilly, especially their Safari bookshelf. They might be able to cut you a deal for educational use.
http://oreilly.com/
http://safari.oreilly.com/?cid=orm-nav-global
In the age of auto MDI/MDIX, who uses crossover cables anymore? ;)
don't fall into the trap of using Java as your core language. [...] the result is a bunch of students who [...] only know how to program in a language that almost nobody in the industry actually uses,
[...]
If you have access to a Mac lab, you might consider teaching them Objective-C.
You're joking, right?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
... and found hundreds of links. For the cost of printing out a PDF, you can give each student his/her own text. If you contract with a local Kinko's or printing shop, you could have these printed and bound for minimal cost -- far cheaper than the $40-50 that a computer book would cost at Barnes and Noble.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
The best books for a sysadmin are O'Reilly books, hands down. http://oreilly.com/ Unix Essentials/Linux/Unix in a Nutshell, Systems Administration, BASH, IPTables, Apache, Java, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Sendmail. Thats 10 classes. You could probably cover IPTables and Perl in 9 weeks if the classes were more than once per week. You could probably throw JavaScript and Python in there too.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N