Re: [MLUG] looking for a Linux tutor

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Mikhail Kovalenko wrote:

> I don't think installation should be the first topic. It requires some
> Unix knowledge to be already present. IMHO, a brief history of Unix is a
> good opening topic.

I agree that installation is a bad first topic, but for a different
reason.  To convince somebody that something is useful and cool, and thus
motivate them to learn about it, it's generally best to start by showing
them first how it could be useful and cool *for them*.

This is, alas, easier to do on a one-on-one basis than in any class,
unless the members of your class enter the room having similar or
identical problems to solve.  In my life, I've "converted" maybe a dozen
people to the cause of unix command line tools, and in each case, the
way it has happened is that I ran across them while they were doing some
horribly tedious and repetitious text- or file-processing task.  You know,
the kind of thing that would take the unitiated *hours* to do.  Then you
show them the one-minute command line solution (maybe using a simple
pipeline at most), and the intellectually curious ones will then be
immediately hooked.  

(Important note: likely as not, they'll be doing this silly task on some
Windows box, which is why it's crucial to have either the MKS utilities or
Cygwin installed on any Windows machine you have any control over.)

Note that when I say "hooked", I don't mean that they'll become confirmed
perl hackers or anything, and you must respect the limits of people's
desire to learn stuff like this (which is *very* hard for many geeks to
understand).

Having said all that, I have to say that Unix History is maybe the very
*last* thing I'd ever teach to somebody whose interest was less than
red-hot. :-)

> Then exploration of command-line tools common to all Unices. That'd be
> a good start.

Maybe interestingly, I've found the top "killer tools" for new users to be
"ls", "wc", "awk" (for extracting columns, especially), "grep" (especially
"grep '^word '" and "grep -v 'unwanted'"), "cal" (!), "mv", "cp -R", "lynx
-dump" and the "ftp/prompt/binary/mget coolfile*" drill.

But I always and only start with the problem at hand, get them to
generalize off of that first, and then have them come to me if/when they
want more.

> There are many of books summing up all that stuff such as "Unix in a
> nutshell".

That's something I recommend when I know the person is going to be a
lifer. :-)

[snip]

> The *real* challenge here is to stuff it all into a brief course (about
> 3-4 hours or so) with enough time for hands-on practice. OTOH, it could
> be too much information for one class. It can be split up, too, with the
> subject of security being present in every separate session :)

My advice here again is, whenever possible, one-on-one in several short
chunks driven by student needs.  If you have to do it as a class, the way
I'd start would be to ask around the class if any of them have had the
kind of repetitive/boring task that you *know* there's a slam-dunk
solution for, solve the first two or three of those (so they know you
really do have something to teach them), and then launch into some more
canned material.

jking



--
To manage your subscription, go to http://mlug.missouri.edu/members/edit.php

Archives are available at http://mlug.missouri.edu/list-archives/