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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Intro and a request for information

From: Chris Lale
Subject: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Intro and a request for information
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:19:01 +0000 
Hello Simon.

On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 19:52, Simon wrote:
> I'm teaching ICT in a secondary school.
> One of my incentives to get into teaching ICT is to get Linux into the
> classroom. I have been given the go ahead, by my Head of Dept, to start
> a "Computer Science Club" after school, basically getting the kids to
> play with Linux.

Have you thought what you might so with Linux once you have got it
running? Here are some thoughts.

If you find attendance is falling away after the first few weeks, you
may wish to inject new interest by introducing new topic every half term
or so. (You can easily let any keenies who have developed an interest
continue with a previous topic in the background, so to speak.)

Some students may be more attracted by design activities, and others by
programming. You could provide a mixture of topics.

Here are some ideas for topics using Free Software. You will probably
not find a live CD with all the software that you require. Building your
own live CD with Morphix may be the solution.

1. MIDI music
   ----------
Perhaps you could borrow some MIDI keyboards from your Music department
for budding composers. Rosegarden4 provides a mixed Audio/MIDI sequencer
(for playback and recording), a multi-track editor, music editing using
both piano-roll and score notation, MIDI file IO, etc.

2. Art/design
   ----------
Some creative people just love IT art. Inkscape is excellent for vector
graphics and has a good tutorial available from the Help menu. For
artists and photographers there is the superb Gimp.

3. Web design
   ----------
Mozilla has a built-in WYSIWYG editor. Amaya is also WYSIWIG, but a bit
quirky.

4. Simple programming
   ------------------
Javascript is a surprisingly good introduction to programming. It is
(sort of) OO and the output is in the familiar web page. You can write a
script with the minimum of HTML tags. (I seem to remember that just
<html></html> and <script></script> will suffice.) There are lots of
resources, including tutorials, on the web. The Bluefish editor supports
javascript.

5. CGI programming
   ---------------
You can run apache on the local linux machine and do cgi with forms,
etc. Again, there are lots of resources on the web. You might consider
eg Perl - Bluefish supports this too.

6. Programming small applications
   ------------------------------
Libcurses-perl will give you a Graphical User Interface in terminal
mode. Perl-tk, tcl/tk, etc give you a GUI in X. If you are feeling
adventurous, how about Mono? The December 2004 edition of Linux Format
magazine has a short tutorial on building a web brwser application!

7. Microchip programming/robotics
   ------------------------------
PIC chips are ubiquitous, especially the PIC 84. You can build a serial
port programmer on veroboard for just £1 (based on the 7805 voltage
regulator, a capacitor, a diode and two resistors). Or you can by a
commercial programmer kit which includes LEDs to test outputs for £10
-£40 - see adverts in eg Everyday Electronics magazine. Perhaps you can
involve your Physics and CDT departments in building hardware, including
buggies, robots, etc. You might also be interested in the Micromouse
competitions (maze-solving, etc).

Nitpic is a X-based simulator for the Microchip PIC family of
microcontrollers. Picasm is an assembler for the the Microchip PIC
family of microcontrollers. Simulpic simulates the execution of any
program on a Microchip PIC16C84 microcontroller.

HTH

Chris.
-- 
Chris Lale <address@hidden>
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