[techtalk] frightening, I know... :-)

[Raven, in Sumerian haze]

Heya --

> My question is simply this: What concepts/ideas would you all
consider 
> to be valuable and important to newbie computer-users? What aspects
of 
> computer use would you aim to teach?

     There are two main things that aren't OS-dependent that you can
instill in your students.  One: don't be afraid of the BIOS.  Two: how
to troubleshoot a problem, even if you've never seen it before.  The
latter is a fine art that may be beyond the scope of one class.

     Your intended focus on hardware sounds good to me.  Demonstrating
some of the errors that you'll get with missing hardware or incorrectly
attached hardware will be helpful, too.  Put the floppy cable in upside
down.  Forget to attach the sound card to the CD drive.  Let them
figure out what's wrong, after being shown once how to do it right.

     I'd spend a significant amount of time in the BIOS, too.  That
way, they won't immediately have a heart attack if they somehow hose
their OS and need to install from a bootable CD or from floppy. 
(They'll have a heart attack because they lost all their data instead,
which is much more geeky.  [grin])

     Are you going to take them through installing both Windows and
Linux?  Seeing how the operating system gets on the computer in the
first place is oddly soothing, and understanding what an MBR is and how
to solve boot issues is nice, too.

     I've found that a sort of Socratic method approach is best when
teaching.  (I teach Unix, Cisco, and networking classes.)  "What's
wrong?  It won't boot!"  "Well, what error messages are you getting? 
What lights are on?  And what do you think that means?" will encourage
your students much more than "You haven't seated the RAM properly."

     Is that enough to start with?

Cheers,
Raven

=====
"Pl.  The mint with the hl."
"What?"
"Polo.  The mint with the hole."
"Oh!  I thought it was 'Perl.  The mint with the bi.'"
 -- RavenBlack and me, while I was sugar crashing

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