[plug][OT: kinda] SOOTYS: Internet treasure hunt.

[Sol]

Hi Andrew,

Speaking from an educationist point of view (I'm doing a B.Ed), this is 
an exceptionally good suggestion. The key to it being truly successful 
is generating a sufficient degree of challenge for the student/audience. 
Too easy and it gets boring = loss of interest. Too hard and it gets 
confusing = loss of motivation to succeed. I've been toying with some 
similar ideas myself. For instance, it has occured to me that much 
computing is concerned with learning process rather than content. So, 
for instance, if you wanted to teach teenagers how learn skills like 
HTML, SQL and dynamic web pages, you could give them incentive by 
allowing them to choose whatever content they wanted to use (ie: make a 
web site about your favourite footy team, CD collection, jokes, 
whatever). Because the students are focused on the content which is 
intrinsically interesting to them they'll have the required motivation 
to complete the assigned task (assuming that they are not too complex 
too soon) and will learn all the process skills without even becoming 
aware that they're learning them.
Your suggestion for a treasure hunt is similar, and I think would appeal 
to kids of all ages (yes, even the adults) for a similar reason. The 
focus becomes "finding the treasure" not learning something which they 
have already preconceived as being complex and difficult. If the 
"treasure" (ie: the content being searched for) were something of 
intrinsic interest to the students/audience, they would be motivated to 
complete the task and learn the skills incidentally. For instance, to 
find one of the clues they might have actually use telnet to logon to a 
site and find certain information using BASH commands like cd and less.
That's the way I would have conceived it, FWIW. I would be interested in 
collaborating on such a project if there were a clear goal in mind. But 
not right now as I'm already overcommitted. But perhaps towards the 
middle of the year? Keep it in mind at least.

regards,

Sol

Andrew Pamment wrote:

> hi there,
>
> this is sort of off topic yet serious, but then, i forgot what the 
> topic was ages ago. umm i had an idea, kindof like an internet 
> treasure hunt. a lot of people are vaguly interested in learning a bit 
> more about the internet and networks and stuff, and it's can be pretty 
> hard to understand for those of us who arn't born geniouses.
>
> my idea (although, it's proberly been thought of before) wouldn't be 
> so much like finding information on the internet that you learn from, 
> but the actual finding itself.
>
> for example, most people have no idea what telnet is, or ftp let alone 
> understanding the whole idea of ports, sockets, ip addresses and such. 
> some of these people i am sure are curious, but feel put off by the 
> whole complexity of it. so they just type in www.yahoo.com and get 
> there email with absolutly no idea what is going on.
>
> i'm not saying this would be good for learning advanced routing and 
> such, but may just be a kind of, for interest's sake thing. does that 
> make sense? people who are just curious and have a few questions but 
> can't find anyone that speaks their language to explain it to them.
>
> a little like when you go to see the stars through a telescope, you 
> don't plan on becoming an astronomer, but you're curious.
>
> ok, i think that makes sense, now on to the idea..
>
> perhaps, a series of servers, say, a telnet server somewhere, a web 
> page on a non standard port, an ftp server that requires a log in.. 
> and so on, could be set up on the internet at various places, people 
> then need to go to these places to get the information on where the 
> next step of the hunt is, and some information explaining what they 
> have just done.
>
> this is just an idea i came up with this morning, so please feel free 
> to tell me how crap it is, but if anyone has any comments or 
> suggestions i'd like to hear them.
>
> i had further ideas, like a telnet (proberly a fake type of shell 
> login for security's sake) that allowed you to run a (fake again) 
> traceroute to a fixed site, you then have to go to a certain server, 
> say number five on the list, which went on to explain what traceroute 
> just did, what ICMP is, a world that most people don't even know exist.
>
> I think something like this, an easy, and fun (so it doesn't put 
> people off) way of understanding the basic principles of the internet 
> and how it works, may possibly be a good way of raising awareness for 
> basic good security practices, like what a firewall is, why you should 
> have one.
>
> in a way a bit like sex education as well. most people i believe think 
> their win98 machine is in their home and not vunerable on the 
> internet, like somehow they're on the internet but not part of it.
>
> i don't know if it could tie in with linux.conf.au 2003, seems that's 
> really for professionals, but perhaps, it could be a good way of 
> getting the general public curious about the whole thing, and maybe 
> even get some people interested in the internet, networks and linux 
> that would not have usually gotten interested.
>
> does this sound like a good idea to anyone other than me?
>
> andrew
>