[plug] Linux in _home_ education

[Christian]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 06:41:36AM +0800, Leon Brooks wrote:
 
> I'll have to cover children who will never be interested in computing as 
> such, as well, but suggestions like this are still useful because 
> they'll occasionally bring some obvious point to mind that I would 
> otherwise have missed completely, to my unending dismay.

My suggestion is that a good point to cover might be the sort of
advanced information technology literacy that using Linux often brings.
For example, many children who learn computers in school merely learn
interface-matched procedures.  For example, "To print your document go
to the File menu and find the Print option."  Thus the student gains, at
best, a meagre understanding the sort of interfaces they may be
confronted with but learns zilch about even the most general actions
that are being performed beneath the surface.  On the other hand, using
Linux often brings you face to face with what's going on "under the
hood" (to borrow a phrase from Matloff!).  Thus the student learns more
about how *computers* behave and not just how *interfaces* behave (given
that the former is much less prone to change than the latter).  Thus in
a world where new forms of information technology are being developed
all the time (often with dramatically different interfaces to the
previous generation) and with various forms of digital convergence, the
student who can predict the underlying behaviours of the machine will be
the one who can tackle these new forms of technology with much greater
success than the one who is simply looking for the interface they have
seen at some stage before.  This applies even to students with no direct
or immediate interest in computer science as a discipline.  Today the
majority of people are information technology users and consumers.  In
the future virtually everyone will be.

Feel free to quote me. ;-)