Make sure you are teaching multiple levels of your class, and that they are not required for one another. Students nowadays have the wherewithal to be very proficient at everything from applications to programming to electronics and hardware before they ever set foot in a computer classroom. You need classes catered for, at least: 1) Students who have never been exposed to a computer. 2) Students who have used a computer and are familiar with how it works, but want to learn how to be power-users of important working applications such as Office (especially Excel) and how to be effective and courteous netizens. 3) Students who want to learn the basics of programming 4) Students who already know how to program and want to learn the Computer Science behind it.
I think they should all contain some element of web awareness and good netizenship, as those are going to be more important in the coming years, but most of the rest is going to be specific to the class.
Your course for basic computers should probably happen on a Mac. If that's possible. I only say this from experience watching my family: people can find things on a mac by reasoning it out, whereas you have to already understand the organization of Windows to find things there. It should cover the basics of starting a computer up, installing an application from CD, how to uninstall applications, the importance of anti-virus and anti-spyware, how to get and use a basic e-mail account (thunderbird, I believe, lets you sign up for at least one type of email account right within the wizard), how to create multiple users and why that is important, etc.
The Office course should at the very least cover using some of the more powerful features of Excel, how to create and collaborate (read: track changes) documents in Word (especially with automatic section numbering, advanced formatting with sections, headers/footers, etc.
The basic programming course should be done in a basic language that actually has real world applicability. I would recommend perl or C++. Java is an alternative, but I have my own issues with it that aren't relevant to this discussion. The essential thing to make clear to your students in this setting is that you are trying to teach them the basics of programming, not how to code. You need to be very clear about designing the program from the ground up and documenting it all along the way. When you teach them bad habits, make sure they know they are bad habits and why, and also why the better habit is being avoided. They shouldn't have to learn these when they are laughed at by an employer.
The advanced programming class should NOT be specific to a single programming language. Somehow, this seems like a novel concept to a lot of people. These kids know how to program, so don't make them learn your language or your style! Focus on computer science concepts such as recursion, algorithm design, data structures, etc. Obviously you will have to limit what language they can use (BASIC doesn't have OOP, data structures, etc), but anything from Perl, Ruby, and PHP all the way out to C++ could be used for a class of this style. Have a project-oriented class which focuses on deliverables and hands-on demos, as well as having to explain their code and methodology. These are essential skills in the workplace. Bosses don't care about the code, they care about what it looks like, how it works, and why it's better than what some monkey could write.
This is a lot to start up at once, so don't try to start all of the courses at the same time. Try to gauge interest first and start on the ones you can first. Don't stretch yourself too thin, or you'll just be doing your students a disservice.
Not only was she stupid enough to have her yahoo account password resettable by an outsider, she was stupid enough to conduct state business on this and other non-state-secured e-mail accounts.
I'm sorry, but anyone who doesn't realize that in order to be safe it ALWAYS important to assume that your emails are immediately and fully in the hands of your worst enemies is hopelessly naive. Besides the sketchily legal issue of conducting state business over unsecure email, she also copied her husband on some of it.
Seriously Palin? Talk about it over the dinner table. Sending the email to your hubbie sends it over unsecure servers in the internet proper where they could be read in transit by any number of unruly or dangerous individuals. And that's assuming that she was sending it from a state-secured email on state-secured servers, which she obviously didn't at least some of the time.
The scary part now is that if she were to pull the same stuff in the whitehouse, there would be terrorists and spies trying to get ahold of national secrets, not just the inner workings of a state government. And I think we can all agree that the resources they have at their disposal are frightening.
I'm much happier with her gambling with Alaskan politics than National Security.
Slashdot Mirror
Make sure you are teaching multiple levels of your class, and that they are not required for one another. Students nowadays have the wherewithal to be very proficient at everything from applications to programming to electronics and hardware before they ever set foot in a computer classroom. You need classes catered for, at least:
1) Students who have never been exposed to a computer.
2) Students who have used a computer and are familiar with how it works, but want to learn how to be power-users of important working applications such as Office (especially Excel) and how to be effective and courteous netizens.
3) Students who want to learn the basics of programming
4) Students who already know how to program and want to learn the Computer Science behind it.
I think they should all contain some element of web awareness and good netizenship, as those are going to be more important in the coming years, but most of the rest is going to be specific to the class.
Your course for basic computers should probably happen on a Mac. If that's possible. I only say this from experience watching my family: people can find things on a mac by reasoning it out, whereas you have to already understand the organization of Windows to find things there. It should cover the basics of starting a computer up, installing an application from CD, how to uninstall applications, the importance of anti-virus and anti-spyware, how to get and use a basic e-mail account (thunderbird, I believe, lets you sign up for at least one type of email account right within the wizard), how to create multiple users and why that is important, etc.
The Office course should at the very least cover using some of the more powerful features of Excel, how to create and collaborate (read: track changes) documents in Word (especially with automatic section numbering, advanced formatting with sections, headers/footers, etc.
The basic programming course should be done in a basic language that actually has real world applicability. I would recommend perl or C++. Java is an alternative, but I have my own issues with it that aren't relevant to this discussion. The essential thing to make clear to your students in this setting is that you are trying to teach them the basics of programming, not how to code. You need to be very clear about designing the program from the ground up and documenting it all along the way. When you teach them bad habits, make sure they know they are bad habits and why, and also why the better habit is being avoided. They shouldn't have to learn these when they are laughed at by an employer.
The advanced programming class should NOT be specific to a single programming language. Somehow, this seems like a novel concept to a lot of people. These kids know how to program, so don't make them learn your language or your style! Focus on computer science concepts such as recursion, algorithm design, data structures, etc. Obviously you will have to limit what language they can use (BASIC doesn't have OOP, data structures, etc), but anything from Perl, Ruby, and PHP all the way out to C++ could be used for a class of this style. Have a project-oriented class which focuses on deliverables and hands-on demos, as well as having to explain their code and methodology. These are essential skills in the workplace. Bosses don't care about the code, they care about what it looks like, how it works, and why it's better than what some monkey could write.
This is a lot to start up at once, so don't try to start all of the courses at the same time. Try to gauge interest first and start on the ones you can first. Don't stretch yourself too thin, or you'll just be doing your students a disservice.
Not only was she stupid enough to have her yahoo account password resettable by an outsider, she was stupid enough to conduct state business on this and other non-state-secured e-mail accounts.
I'm sorry, but anyone who doesn't realize that in order to be safe it ALWAYS important to assume that your emails are immediately and fully in the hands of your worst enemies is hopelessly naive. Besides the sketchily legal issue of conducting state business over unsecure email, she also copied her husband on some of it.
Seriously Palin? Talk about it over the dinner table. Sending the email to your hubbie sends it over unsecure servers in the internet proper where they could be read in transit by any number of unruly or dangerous individuals. And that's assuming that she was sending it from a state-secured email on state-secured servers, which she obviously didn't at least some of the time.
The scary part now is that if she were to pull the same stuff in the whitehouse, there would be terrorists and spies trying to get ahold of national secrets, not just the inner workings of a state government. And I think we can all agree that the resources they have at their disposal are frightening.
I'm much happier with her gambling with Alaskan politics than National Security.
We'll effectively be stealing energy that DIDN'T strike earth! Sucks to be anyone else harvesting energy from Sol...