White and Wild by wilshire|oneLearning to teach
Over the past few months I’ve been writing up a series of ‘lessons’ which are designed to hang together as a comprehensive course built around the idea of teaching ‘normal’ people about the amazing phenomenon that is the Free Software movement.
Unlike most other IT courses, I wanted mine to concentrate first on the underlying politics and philosophy that gave rise to the software in the first place, as well as covering basic topics on general computer use.
I started writing them on this blog as ‘Linux Lib’ but decided I jumped in too deep, and have gone right back to basics first.
I’ve noticed that a lot of learning resources on the net are either too technical, or over simple, and most are aimed at the types of geeks, who (like me) are usually attracted to computers in the first place.
My idea is to approach the emergence of Free Software in a similar manner to that adopted by ethical and ‘Fair Trade’ companies, and try to appeal to the heart as well as the head. It’s fast becoming a cliche, but when I tell people that Microsoft = McDonald’s, they soon get the idea.
So that’s why the first lesson is entitled, (Ubuntu Linux – Wholefood for your hard drive).
I’ve already tried it out on a few folks, but it needs work, so when I’m happy with it, I’ll post it up here under a CC license.
